Day Fifteen
Yesterday, April 14, was a monster day in terms of progress towards goal—118.5 miles is 3.7% of the trip. Solid.
My evening at the Las Cruses KOA was topped off with an invitation to dinner. John and Pat, and Mike and Jen, are two retired couples who are next-door neighbors and best friends in Sun City, Arizona in the winter months, and when they head home in the spring, to Ohio and Washington, respectively, they travel together to part of the country none of them have ever seen. This year, it's New Orleans. I was treated to spaghetti and salad, a Coors Light, and a Crown Royal nightcap. And they sent me out the door of their RV with enough cookies to last another day.
I didn't get a very early start this morning. I needed bike supplies (more tubes and patches) and the shops don't open until 10 am. I also needed a big breakfast and enough time with maps to plan my next week in West Texas. I also shipped home my drone, which I had hoped to get to know well enough to get some aerial video. But it's been in the bag two weeks now and honestly, I just don't have the bandwidth on any given day for recreational learning. Just doing the ride well is taking everything I have. I'll figure out the drone thing later and you'll see aerials from my next big thing.
The bike shop owner led me to an item I didn't know existed: self-sealing inner tubes. If they work, I'll thank “the Maker”. We know that tubeless rims and tires, with the goo sloshing around inside the tire that keeps the bead sealed and instantly fills punctures like the ones I've been getting, are the Now Big Thing in cycling. But the rims on my bike are not tubeless-compatible, and I didn't want to spend another $800+ on yet another "must-have" item. Next time I will. But anyway, maybe self-sealing tubes in my old school rim/tube/tire set up will help.
And, about the day. Fill in your expletive here: .
Visibility dropped and sweaty me has not been so dust covered, I mean DIRTY, for a long time. In the midst of not getting anywhere fast, I picked up another steel wire in rear tire. Fortunately, I was near a rest area and got in behind a windbreak (is this wind a regular feature here?) and installed my new self-sealing tube.
El Paso has a mountain range in the middle of the city, tall and steep, running north-south. I crossed the New Mexico/Texas state line and started down the west side of the range.
Yesterday, I was going east, and so was that beautiful wind. Today, I turned south in Las Cruses towards El Paso. The wind remained a westerly, and picked up tremendous force, building to steady in the mid 20s with gusts in the mid 40s. And it swirled up a dust storm that has completely engulfed the region.
And the wind strengthened further. Looking at the map more carefully, I saw that at the north end of the mountains, a road climbed to a pass, then descended. On the east side of the range, there are more neighborhoods of the city, with lots of services, and and a highway that parallels the one on the west side, north-south, but possibly on the lee side of the mountains (less wind?). Even if the wind was the same over there, the westerly wind would push me up the hill and on the other side of the pass, I would have the same side wind, but would be going downhill.
I turned around and re-entered New Mexico, got pushed up the hill as expected, and hit a maximum speed of 38 mph on the eastern descent.
But alas, the wind was no less on the east side than the west. I continued south, leaning well to the right on my bike to keep rolling straight, instead of being pushed left into overtaking traffic.
Once I was rolled into the City of El Paso proper, highways and infrastructure were very good. The scale of the highway design shows they are engineering for growth. The roads are built to handle thousands of more cars, and very robust concrete works have been built to handle surface flash flooding, which suggests they anticipate the water management consequences of hard scaping and armoring thousands of acres of built communities.
As it passed 5 pm I understood that my planned destination, being more than 3 hours away at this rate, was beyond my reach. My objective was to ride 80 miles today. I called it quits at 6 pm, having covered only 59 miles.
Looking ahead to the next week, my plan has changed several times and I feel it's still a day-to-day thing. I have heard so many times: "Texas is all fenced private property that you cannot camp on. If they see you they'll confront you, probably with a gun." Is this true, or is it just the good people of New Mexico smacking down their Texan neighbors?
In West Texas, there are few parks, because there is nothing worth visiting that is worth the upkeep that would be needed to keep it open. There are practically no public camping facilities, and what passes for RV "resorts" are raked gravel with the vegetation removed, with rusty, listing power pedestals scattered about. Local motels are run down, and the corporate hotel chains are as clean and efficient as you expect anywhere, at the high prices you also expect.
I have yet to see a local bakery in the Southwest. Maybe one in a dozen restaurants appear to be not part of a corporate chain of some sort. There's basically no local culture. There are plenty of places that encourage me to buy a keepsake to remember my visit here, but the only thing to remember is the act of purchasing the item of remembrance, which was probably made in the Far East anyway. People are performatively polite, meaning they are trained to treat paying customers with politeness. Nobody asks questions. They don't talk to me, but they also seem to not talk to each other, either. A few people appear to be curious, but my story most often brings the admonition to "be careful". And they aren't talking about being careful in nature. They are warning me about the menace they expect from people. I've been warned about people far more than I have encountered people who actually seem menacing. What I experience the most with people here is disinterest. In anything.
I'm told there is a town called Marfa, that is an "artist community". I'm also told that the artist community is about two blocks long, and one block wide, where I'll be encouraged to buy something so I remember passing through town. I'm supposed to be interested in Marfa, and I'm supposed to expect that Marfa has no reason to be interested in me. San Antonio is out there, about 8-9 days away, across the wastes of West Texas. This IS what I signed up for, and it must be passed through on my way to where I am going, and now I'm here. Woo-hoo! The dusty wind is still howling outside. It's predicted to settle by morning.
I’d love to hear from you. Donate to the ride and send along your words of encouragement and tell me why getting kids outside matters to you.
