November 8, 2016
58.1 miles today
(1607.3 miles, cumulative)
2260 feet of climbing
(61,211 feet of climbing, cumulative)
We were on the road at 7:10. A few days ago when daylight savings time ended we also changed time zones, so for us the difference was two hours. We have not adjusted yet, and were wide awake at 3:30 this morning. Fortunately we got back to sleep for a while.
We want to thank all of you who have called, texted, tweeted, emailed, Instagrammed, Pinterested or even walked up to the counter at the New Mexico State Department of Wind to ask for northeast winds for us, because that is exactly what we had, both yesterday and today! Along with warm (but not hot) sun it made for a very peaceful day of riding.
Well, mostly peaceful, as we changed our route for the last 15 miles and instead of taking back roads that were chosen by the Adventure Cycling Association as a way to get to Santa Rosa by avoiding the freeway, we took the freeway. The reason: less chipseal pavement. We had another tire wear through and blow out, so we are down to one more spare, and it is an already used tire. The chipseal has been hard on tires, while the shoulder of the freeway is very smooth.
The result was that we arrived safely, were not too tired, and we covered fewer miles than originally planned. Here below are some photos from our day. The first few show that we were riding through typical wild west areas here in eastern New Mexico:
Very long freight trains appeared more than once:
This underpass appeared old to us. The stonework was nice:
This photo shows the frontage road that we again had to ourselves much of the day, until we made our route change and moved onto I-40. The solitude and separation from fast-moving trucks was great, but the chipseal surface took a toll on our tires:
Today was the first day we've come upon cattle guards, and I think there were ten or twelve. We walked the bike across them all:
At one point the road deteriorated quickly:
It led to this underpass, which we walked through just to be safe, since it was dark enough that I could not see what was on the surface. We came upon four more such as this one, but each of those had water from one side to the other. Fortunately we did not have to go through any of those.
Here is I-40 where we spent the final hour of our day riding on the shoulder. Most of our miles were on an even better shoulder than this one. Though no trucks appear going in our direction in this shot, they did come along regularly. Again, we had no close calls at all, just loud noise:
Our long day of 75 miles tomorrow with significant hills to climb will be spent 100% on the shoulder of I-40. The original Route 66 path went north through several small towns, and then through Santa Fe, before dropping south again to Albuquerque. Many cyclists take that route, but it has scarce motels and several days of climbing, so we decided to take the freeway, which is a more direct route.
We have, however, taken up John Thurston on his offer to drive over from Amarillo and meet us in the morning to take the bulk of our panniers in his car and follow us at intervals. That will lighten our load and provide help should it be needed. After we reach our stop for the night, Moriarty, New Mexico, John will continue on for several days of visiting friends in Albuquerque and Colorado.
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