A fond farewell to my mountain bike

January 9, 2009

Well here it is, 2009, and my last post was way back in September, 2008, when we returned to Benson after our summer trip.  Only one noteworthy event occurred in October…to me, at least.  Our Park held an autumn yard sale during which I sold my mountain bike!  Realizing various health problems have made riding bike rather hazardous for me, it was still a difficult decision to make.  In private, I shed a few tears…as it was like losing a dear friend!  More than that, it was giving up an era in our lives, and an activity Rodger and I enjoyed immensely for many years.

During our travels, our bikes traveled with us on a rack on the back of our travel trailer, and everywhere we went, we found new and interesting places to ride:  Ranch roads and old cattle trails in British Columbia, side roads in Death Valley, many miles of sandy trails in Borrego Springs National Park, California, and along the banks of canals near Niland, California.

Along the Arizona/Mexican border we camped in the Buenos Aires Wildlife refuge near Sasabe, AZ.  Here, we rode virtually every road in the refuge.  We have also ridden our bikes extensively around the desert in Yuma, and Quartzsite, AZ.  We biked along old railroad grade trails and logging roads in Minnesota, and in various recreational areas throughout the Midwest.

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In the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, we rode endless miles of roadway along irrigation canals.  Our bikes also  traveled with us to Mexico where we rode to quaint old villages, and also to a remote beach where “Catch 22’ was filmed.

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In my fifth and final book, The Strait Years, I wrote about riding our bikes on the Olympic Peninsula, where we lived at the time, and taking our bikes with us on boat trips, then going for rides along country lanes in the San Juan Islands, and to quaint seaside harbor towns.

The third book of the Maverick Series, Southwest Adventures, includes more stories about our mountain biking adventures.  Our favorite excursions were around Quartzsite, Arizona.  Quartzsite is a small desert town, surrounded by mountains, with many miles of rocky old tracks and trails in the area.  These rugged trails meandered up, down, and around, through the ever changing and beautiful mountainous desert countryside.

Some of the “sites and sights” we came across on our desert bike outings in the southwest included:  Ancient Indian camps with deep mortars in the surrounding rocks, where seeds were ground into flour, hidden springs,  petroglyph and pictograph sites, and ancient intaglios created on the desert floor.  We also located several strange rock alignments, and odd old structures that seemed to have no explanations, which I referred to simply as “mysteries of the desert“.

From days when prospectors roamed the hills looking for gold or silver, we came across crumbling rock house ruins, old campsites with makeshift fireplaces still intact, abandoned mine sites, ghost towns and cemeteries.  From still more recent times, we discovered old training campsites from WWII.  Rock outlines designated where the camp sites had been, and tracks of huge tanks are still visible, wandering across the desert floor.

We frequently walked our bikes across or through huge deep washes, around washed out trails, and over rugged, rocky areas.  Often we would stop, park our bikes and hike.  This allowed us to discover remote sites we never could have reached with any other mode of transportation, including 4-wheel drive vehicles.

We often saw wildlife: Deer, mountain sheep, coyotes, kit fox, jackrabbits, and once, a badger.  Smaller critters included horned toads, lizards of all sizes, and iguana.  On one ride we encountered a rattlesnake!  Wide varieties of birds were also seen and heard. And, it was a joy when we could identify yet another new species.

Every bike ride also took us through gorgeous desert scenery.  Surrounded by high mountains, we were in awe of the many unusual rock formations, and hiked through awesome, deep sided canyons. We enjoyed the various species of cacti (especially lovely when in bloom) and other interesting desert trees and plants in this beautiful “living desert”.  Now, although our mountain biking and hiking days appear to be at an end, we can still go back and relive those days through my books, and the hundreds of photographs we took!

If you enjoy mountain biking, historical sites, the outdoors, or traveling off the beaten path in general, I’m certain you would enjoy Southwest Adventures, and ALL of the other books in the Maverick Series!

My Web site www.ElaineSeavey.com features each of my books individually.  To see more photos of the various places we have visited, check on the “photo gallery” link for each book.  My ongoing BLOG is also filled with photos of more current travels and events.

For more information or questions, you can contact me via e-mail:
ElaineSeavey@escapees.com
To order personally autographed books, shipped free, write to me at:
Elaine Seavey, 600 East Saguaro Drive – #132, Benson, AZ   85602

Hope to hear from you!
Elaine Seavey

(click on pictures to enlarge)

Life takes Sisu

May 24, 2008

It’s been a while since my last post. Unfortunately, my time has been taken up with pain management specialists in Tucson, where I have been undergoing various injections for “severe cervical stenosis”…My last treatment was Radiofrequency Ablation. In this procedure, a needle is injected in the affected joint. A michroelectrode is then placed inside the needle. Then, radiofrequency current is sent to the nerve of the joint. The heat from this current supposedly kills the nerve, thus reducing the pain level. This procedure is repeated in other joints that are affected. During this process, the patient is awake, as it is necessary to inform the doctor when pain is felt, so they know they are injecting the correct nerve. It was a very painful ordeal, lasting about an hour, and was performed in the outpatient department of Tucson Medical Center.

The actual effects of this procedure may not be evident for a few weeks. However, to give me more immediate relief, at the end of the radiofrequency procedure, my doctor injected a analgesic/steroid combination. Hopefully all of this will give me a relatively pain free summer.

I was reminded again, during this ordeal, of a Finnish term …..SISU. Since I am of full-blooded Finnish descent, I heard this word a lot as I was growing up. It means…a quality which Finnish parents hope to see in their children….meaning determination, perseverance, ambition, a strong will to succeed, along with a bit of stubbornness! As a child I often heard my Dad say to Mother…”Maybe Elaine has a little bit too much sisu”! (Click on the picture to read about Finnish fortitude and resilience on Wikipedia.) At the time, I wondered what kind of a disease I might have…until I grew older and learned the meaning of this word!

I strongly felt that my SISU saw me through my year long battle with non-Hodgkins Lymphoma in 1999. It helped me through the many long hours of organizing and writing the Maverick Series….and, I could make a long list of other examples. Anyway, it’s not a bad quality to possess!

We will be leaving, perhaps tomorrow, with our 5th wheel trailer, heading east….Our first destination will be Mobridge, South Dakota. We have spent quite a bit of time here over the years, as we enjoy fishing Lake Oahu, a reservoir on the Missouri River, and staying in a lovely campground on the shores of the reservoir.

Then we will move on to Minnesota, where we have family and friends….Our roots are here. So, continue to check my posts to read about our summer travels.

Rodger & Elaine

Write-up in Home Town Paper

My home town newspaper in Grand Rapids, Minnesota recently published an entire page article about our retired lifestyle and the books in my five-book “Maverick Series”.  This article, written by Britta Arendt, appeared in the Sunday, December 9th edition of the Grand Rapids  Herald-Review in their Leisure Living section.   I think they did a nice job, and would like to share this with you.

<<click picture to read article>>