Passed The 1000 Mile Mark!

What a day! Wowie - Zowie! This morning as we sped out of Las Vegas on the way to Tucumcari NM (yes that is the real name. You know that I would never make some thing like that up) we passed the 1000 mile mark of this adventure. Today was and adventure in itself! The route was 111 miles of rolling hills. The weather started out in the low 50's and would up in the low 90's, which was just a little more than this Canadian can take for riding better than a century in.

At the first stop I picked up Tom E who rode with me the whole day. Having him with me was a God send. Together we just smoked the route. There were lots of places where we were over 30 mph and between the second and third rest stops probably averaged 25 mph. We hit a high of 37.8 mph on this one big down hill. However all good things come to an end as I bonked at about the 95 mile mark and Tom pulled me in. Thank you Tom. Never the less we finished the ride in 6:42 with an average speed of 16.6 mph. And even though we didn't get a top ten we did get a 13 and 14 place finish out of it.

Although the ride was through total waste land there were lots of interesting sights. Some creative person choose the middle of the high desert to make a political statement by spray painting on the road "BUSH SUCKS" Tom and I laughed and joked about that for miles. We later learned (well heard though the grape vine)that Margaret had done it. Now Margaret is this very quiet soft spoke Crossroads staff person. At first we were loath to believe that about Margaret, but it is always the quiet ones that do stuff like that.

I guess that the the other thing we saw was lots of colourful locals (I didn't say red necks). At the one rest stop which was close to this reservoir, there was a fellow selling fishing gear out of the back of his 70's suburban. This grizzled old fellow had a huge assortment of beat up old rods and reels. Naturally I had to talk to him where he got his inventory, but he wasn't sure what inventory was. At any rate he got is stock from garage sales, estate sales, want ads and of course some of it he had just found. When I asked what kind of fish they caught in the lake the answer was "Why every sort you can name!' Not to pass an opportunity for sport I asked about sharks and he replied "Absolutely why just last year they pull a 22 lb walleye out that had six lures stuck in it."

Today's picture is just out of Las Vegas. I guess that it needs no explanation. 1000 miles in 15 riding days. Totally amazing for an old fat guy!

Once again thank you for visiting my Blog and thanks for all the great comments. Really I am not just saying that!

See you down the road a bit.

Terry