Wind!

What a difference wind makes! Yesterday we were averaging over 18 mph (with ease) and today we were averaging just over 10 mph (with effort). Too bad my Garmin (bicycle computer) doesn't record wind speed and direction.

Tonight we are in a motel in Van Horn, TX. The next official campsite is in Fort Davis, 90 miles east of here on the otherside of a 2000 ft pass. With a west wind, I think we could make it in one shot, but tomorrow's forecast is for more east winds ... so we may be camping at a picnic area along the roadside tomorrow night.

We are now in the central time zone. Progress!

Ugh! Wind from ENE 19 mph!

Mid Day Musings

Ok here is one of my mid-day musings. I've actually stolen it from John Irving's book Cider House Rules (I think). I keep thinking about a moment in the story when the two main characters (teenaged boys) walk under a railway bridge and the train happens to cross the bridge at the same moment in time that they are under the bridge. The one boy's reaction is happy excitement at the chance of their path intersecting with the train's; whereas, the other boy's response is calm, claiming it's fate.

I definitely fall in the box of the first boy, and am continuously amazed how often we are biking for miles on a quiet road without any traffic, and then two cars pass us at the same time (one going each direction) so we could, play a game of "trying to ride 4 across", Greg and I on our bikes, and the two cars. Of course, usually we choose not to play the game and respectfully, change our speeds so we pass each other, safely, one at a time.

I ain't no AZ prepper

No stockpiling survivalist

I'm just a biker
That's a pedal bike cyclist

Don't have no gas tank
Lessen ya count my belly

I don't need no oil
'Cept on ma chain

And after six hard days
I might have a little pain

But I don't need no motor
Just two good legs

And after some oatmeal
Maybe a coupla eggs!

After 5 hours in tha saddle
Might be a little wiped

But seein' that lizard...
Whoa! That one was striped!

It sure keeps us goin'
Mile after mile

And after a night in the tent
It sure brings us a smile

Might be time for coffee?!
And another bike ride

I'll take the first pull
And you can echelon real wide

Cause we got us a cross wind
It'll be a hard day

But that ain't nothin' we can't handle
After we've come all this way

We're sure lookin' forward to home
To see our family and friends

So we can hoist a cold one
And maybe make some amends

But that's all for now
Got some laundry to do

Before we hit that hot tub
And laugh like a foo!

We've got many miles to cover
Lots of ground to see

Before we make it back to Wisco
And sit under the shade under our own tree...

We biked 65 miles to El Paso today

From Mesilla/Las Cruces
We saw no cyclists
And one pedestrian: one white guy, walkin'
And he was the "pedestrian crosswalk" guy!

Crazy.

Although now that I think back to the very beginning of our ride this morning we did see one guy walkin'; looked like an older Apache dude, maybe? And I swear that as we biked past him and waved "hello" that he blessed us ...

Pecan pickers will be prosecuted!

I can read the sign (in English, anyway)
And ... "Readin's fer rich people"
Riding through miles of pecan trees today
Into a brutal headwind/cross headwind
I kept thinkin' of that song, but with slightly altered lyrics
"Millions of pecans
Pecans for me!"

And it was makin' me think of the windy riding this time of year, at home in the Flatwest
And how it seems every year people (that I ride with, anyway) need to learn to ride efficiently in a group
Again
So
Ride towards the wind
Call "car back!" for the person out front, givin' you the echelon, workin' their glutes off - for you!

Unless it is a race
And you've got a wheel sucker
Then make that SOB gutter grovel!

This PSA brought to you from the pecan growers of S NM

Today's "Quote of the day"

So far
Is

"I wish headwinds had a 'top'".

Why do you think

The Budweiser truck driver honked his horn RIGHT as he passed us?

Do you think he read my earlier blog post?

Man, this bikin' in a dust storm

Is killin' my throat, my lungs, my eyes.

I guess it must be bad for me.

Mid-day Musings

Riding along, for hours at a time
The mind is freed up
To be creative

And Heidi keeps coming up with great, out-of-the-box ideas.
I have encouraged her to blog about them
But she has not

Do you want to hear about
Heidi's Mid-day Musings?

Guidebook

We saw a couple yesterday, heading the other way, into the cross headwind (we, of course, had a cross tailwind. Yes!)
They had no helmets, cut off jean shorts, and cotton, sleeveless shirts;
With nothing but their smiles protecting them from passing motorists and the ever present sun overhead.
They looked like they were straight out of the guidebook - from 1974!

Hey! We saw javelinas the other day!

And they were cute
From our perspective, above them, from the road, while they grazed below us, along the creek, sneaking from cover to cover...
They were shy, and sly. Really hard to get a decent photo of them. So that's now a goal of mine - get a good photo of a javelina.
They looked furry. I kind of expected them to look like small pigs. But they looked different, fer sure. Warmer, cuddlier.
I have some bad photos, if you wanna see 'em. But they look mostly like photos (and one video) of shrubs...
Next time!

Customer Service, today

I was thinking about this blog post about "customer service", in general, earlier; but never got around to it. I was thinking about our experiences in the various "outdoor stores" that we've stopped in over the last 2,000 miles; the good, the bad, the in-between. After working in retail I am always curious to see what is out there, what stores and people are like. Do they give good customer service?

Then today we stopped at the one bike shop listed on the ACA map in Las Cruces - Outdoor Adventures. I called them from a couple miles out to make sure they were open, that we had the address right, etc. I was tired, hot, and covered in dust from the blowing sand/dust along the bone dry Rio Grande; standing in the shade, drinking a cold iced tea at Family Dollar. I asked weird questions like "Do you have dehydrated food?" (Camping store?) And "Do you have a bike mechanic?" (Bike shop?) I wasn't sure what "outdoor" adventures they specialized in, and wasn't sure quite what to expect...

Turns out that they are a bike shop that carries some climbing gear, and from the moment we walked into the store our experience was awesome. The guy I spoke to on the phone, Pablo, greeted us. He was patient, attentive, knowledgeable, and a good mechanic - and able to test ride my big bike! (And replicate "the noise" on mine, and figure out what the noise was on Heidi's - which was impressive, I thought.)

We picked out some bike stuff (white jersey, thin socks, Clif bars, etc) while Pablo worked on my bike first, then Heidi's. We ate next door while Pablo continued to work on our bikes; and he came over and told us what he found on Heidi's bike, why/what was making the noise. Then we bought some groceries nearby and went to pick up our bikes. My noise was solved, Heidi's was understood (and ok to keep riding, if a bit annoying.) New rear derailleur cable, new cleats, greased pedal and bb threads for me; adjusted gears and some sealant in Heidi's tubes, and we were off (with recommendations for which RV park to camp in, where to get green chili margueritas near it, and which route around El Paso to take.)

Now that's some great customer service!

(And I still plan to think/write more about our other experiences, as well; some good, some not.)

19 mph?!

(This post is anachronistic, but I gotta do it. I keep forgetting until we're riding; after setting up the tent, dinner, hanging the food, etc. ... Plus it kind of cracks me up, because every time I remember, 30 min into the next day's ride, I yell, in my head, "19 mph!" - like that scene in "The Lost People of Mountain Village" - "19 bathrooms!")

There we were, biking along the suburbs of Phoenix (I think?!) and I look down, in the nice clean, concrete curb (after hundreds of miles of "fog line, and broken pavement edge"), and there's a little lizard, racing us, like he's a dog or somethin'. That cat was movin'! So I looked at my speedometer and it said 19.5 mph; so I figured that he was goin' just a tiny bit slower than us, and I gave him credit for 19 mph. Not bad for a little lizard (maybe 6 inch body, 5 inch tail?)

But the really impressive thing was when he did a u-turn, in that tiny space, and was immediately goin' full throttle the other way! What an athlete!

And, as of this morning, the dogs are chasing us. I swear I just about got a chomp on my right calve when we stopped on the sidewalk, here in Hatch, NM. The dog snuck up on me, out of the shadows, and was focused on my leg like "a laser". Luckily, a dude I took as the owner yelled at him just as he was about 1 meter (that's 39 inches for the Americans, Sri Lankans, and...[what's that 3rd country still not using metric?] in the audience) away from his second breakfast. Man, I wasn't lookin' forward to this aspect of the trip, yet. I thought it wouldn't get bad till Tex Ass. Guess I was wrong!

That's the Rio Grande!

Not very grand, at all.
Just a tiny outflow from the res.
And I don't mean "reservation"!
I mean "lake", uh, "reservoir".
We keep hearing "10 year drought" (and 11, and 5, and...depending on which valley you are in)

Archaeologists believe the people at Besh Ba Gowah (if you looked at the Google Maps/Earth images of Globe/Miami [massive open pit mines {more massive open pit mines in Tyrone/Silver City, so don't be confused! Lots of massive mines here}], then you saw the area) left their village around 1,300 - during a 24 year drought...
Less than 10% of "normal" in the "res" right now.
Wow.
Dry.
What happens in August?!

We heard at the cattle ranchers have already sold their cattle - no way to grow hay/feed with the drought.

Honey, it's time for some stripping!

The Wild West has an "open range" reality, where you need to put a fence up - not to keep your cattle or horses in, but to keep your neighbors cattle or horses OUT. A kind of Great Wall of China approach to "the 4 legs".

Ranchers are king here; have been since we drove the Apache on to "reservations". A lot of policy decisions and public spending (of your tax dollars) is dictated by those guys (gals?); a lot more than should be, most likely.

For instance, it seems like every time we go from private land to National Forest land there is a fence and a "cattle guard" - to keep "the free ranging" cattle from going on to that particular piece of public land (there is lots of private grazing on BLM public land, I do believe). I assume you and I paid for those fences and cattle guards.

I assume the dear reader is familiar with "cattle guards" - heavy metal "bars" running perpendicular to the vehicular direction of travel - which can give a cyclist quite an uncomfortable rumble, depending on spacing, tire size/pressure, etc. And, of course, cattle won't cross them for fear of stepping into "the abyss between bars" [kind of like WI snowmachiners!]

Most of the cattle guards that we have encountered on this trip have also had thin metal strips welded to the top of the top of the cattle guard, going IN the direction of vehicular travel. Maybe to give the big metal devices more structural integrity? Maybe to make it smoother for motor vehicles? We, however, began aiming for and riding those thin metal strips - to smooth out our ride. They're typically about 1 to maybe a max of 3 inches wide. Anyway, it's not really all that exciting; but to juice it up a bit we've taken to calling it "stripping". And don't worry mom, we're keeping our spandex on!

We've gotten pretty good at it, in fact. Heidi really impressed me when she hit one of the skinny strips, going uphill! She has also hit them "blind", riding behind me, in my draft, on downhills. When I say that she is a truly a gifted "stripper", you know what I mean!

Ah, campin' in the National Forest

Shootin' and stuff
Lotta horsepackin' in this here spot too, I reckon, from all the horse poop
Campfire's still goin' (Fire Danger is only "Moderate" today, after all)
"10 year drought" is the word on the street...

Not sure this is readable?

From my phone/camera?

I do love the "I claim this land for Spain!" thing

Or Mexico, or England, or "the king of ... Whatever"
But I'll bet every modern historian - and the Apache - would disagree with this sign!

("First scientific account", "belonged to Mexico", "Emory" pass)

And, it turns out, Emory may have not even gone over this pass, but one to the south of here....

Happy Earth Day!

8,228' above sea level.
The high point on The Southern Tier ACA route.

(Former home to the Warm Springs Apache; the place is stunningly beautiful. No wonder they defended it so staunchly, first from the Spanish, then the Mexicans, and lastly from the "united" American Army, post civil war - on behalf of the miners, ranchers, and "settlers".)

Thanks to all the European-Americans (like Aldo Leopold, John Muir, Gaylord Nelson, Clinton P. Anderson, and others) who had the foresight and sense to protect some of these places from "progress", before they were all gone.

"In wilderness is the salvation of the world."

Be good to your mother.

We decided to camp at Railroad Canyon

On the way up Emory Pass
Just cause
It's so beautiful

The Rio Grande can wait till tomorrow

Photovoltaics and Gunsmiths

Welcome to the new Wild West!

Half-true Ryan (WI Rep and VP candidate in 2012) making New Mexico news!

"Yeah, I ran that marathon in 2 something..."

http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2013/apr/21/paul-ryan/lincoln-backed-slavery-measures-us-rep-paul-ryan-s/