Thursday and Friday, September 9th and 10th

Had a great breakfast of 3 big pancakes, this is tremendous stick-with-you fuel for a long ascending mountain bike ride. Got a little late start as we mailed back the excess stuff John and I had been carrying for 2,000 miles, guess it takes a while for us to catch on to what you absolutely need. John had a huge amount of water he was carrying because we knew we couldn't make Cuba in one day, particularly given the tough climb. The countryside is short shrubby trees, rocks and sparse grass, a fairly arid typical New Mexico looking scene. We made our first mesa in good order, but after that it turned steep and rocky for a short segment, a prelude to our climb later in the day. As we turned up a long sand and limestone climb had a B1 Bomber jet fly 1,000 feet right over us. Just came out of the blue, in fact we were so startled by it, couldn't figure out what the noise was until it was right over us. Strange to be struggling up a hill and have a huge jet just buzz above you out of nowhere.

John reads a lot about other riders and especially about the Great Divide Racers that go from Banff to Antelope Wells every year starting around June 10th. There is a segment of the route that is called the "GDMBR (Great Divide Mountain Bike Route) Rights of Passage", the reason being is it is fairly steep, ridable, but technically challenging with loose baseball-sized rocks, loose gravel, etc. You get the GDMBR Rights of Passage seal of approval if you can make it up this climb riding. Well of course I wouldn't have written all this description if we didn't make it, so we got it! We have achieved the exclusive list. John did it pulling an extra 10 pounds of water up the mountain too.

Riding this segment I had several observations. One the market share winner in New Mexico is clearly Bud Light, saw so many of those cans by the side of the road it was hard not to notice. Another once we left Abiquiu we did not get passed either way by a vehicle of any type for 8 hours, not one. Finally I am still trying to figure out why a road would be rough at the top and graded and improved in the middle and then completely washed out and never improved at the bottom. On this road we were coming down towards twilight hitting huge ruts, big rocks and more baseball-sized loose rocks when it happened . . . another crash. This time John hit a big rut he couldn't see well and went right over the top of his handlebars. I was further down the road and missed it but was waiting for him to catch up and knew something was up, it was taking too long. He finally came down and explained what happened, fell right on his helmet, got a small bloody knee but everything else was ok. Shortly after that segment we found a place to camp, for an entire day of a riding with no goofing off we still only rode 42 miles, which underscores how rough the terrain was and how much climbing we had to do.

Friday we hoped would be an easier day, which turned out to be the case but it is never as easy as we envision. There was still the up and down areas, but the roads were better. We polished off the final 38 miles into Cuba without incident, checked into the motel and started the routine of bath, food, catching up and laundry. A cold front had moved in the night before and it was unseasonably cold for this time of year. When camping in the mountains we woke up to a lot of frost on our tents and needed to put them in the sun to dry them out. At this point it looks like we only have about 10 days left to get this journey complete. We had expected New Mexico to be a breeze but as with segment of this trek they all have their unique challenges. Oh yea, bought some wasp spray, going to be prepared for the dogs in the future that come charging after us!

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