Pancake Flat

Riding Day 12

The team stayed in a hotel last night and awoke refreshed and ready to roll! The winds were forecast to be light until mid-morning, when it was predicted that they would increase to over 20 kts…from the west-southwest, which if correct, would mean that after two days of hellacious headwinds, we would have strong tailwinds. And lo and behold, that’s exactly how things played out.

We were rolling by 8:25am, and within the first few miles we caught up to our pals Wendell and Von, the bothers we had met on the second day of the ride in that other place and time when we thought we knew what we were doing. They were stopped on the side of Interstate 10, the route we would follow the entire day, and were talking to another coast-to-coast rider named Oscar, who is from France. We pulled up and were greeted warmly by the brothers and then met Oscar for the first time. We shared tales from the last two days of wind and the carnage it inflicted on our psyches and bodies, a shared experience that you had to be there for to fully comprehend. After a few minutes we all mounted our respective machines and took off in a pack, and I thought we might actually stay together for the entire day. But Odie and I are strong riders despite our age and various ailments, and without really trying, we started to pull away. I thought about slowing down and basking in a little good old-fashioned camaraderie for a few miles, but the wind was starting to blow as predicted and neither Odie nor I wanted to waste its benefits, especially after our milage had been drastically limited the previous two days.

The day’s route was pancake flat, and the shoulders along Interstate 10 were amazingly smooth. Our speed crept up to 18mph, then 20 and then 22 with hardly any effort. Our friends quickly disappeared, and I hoped they were also taking advantage of the wind at their own pace. We had arranged with The Bob to do 15-mile increments, and when we arrived at the first break, The Bob was surprised at how quickly we had covered the miles. For the rest of the day this trend continued, and by roughly 4pm we had destroyed 106 miles and found ourselves only 13 miles from Las Cruces, NM. We decided to quit for the day and go enjoy a good meal at a restaurant that specializes in New Mexican cuisine, a style of southwestern cooking that includes Hatch Chilies and delicious sauces. We asked Yelp for Help and ended up at a great place with excellent food and very cold beer.

Tonight, we are camping at a KOA in Las Cruces with hot showers and a great view of the city. Tomorrow we will be taking another day off because Hank needs a tune up and a new rear tire. El Paso is our next destination, and after that it will be 432 miles of small towns with limited services and no bike shops until we hit Del Rio, Tx. Since we will need to take a day off to get the work done, we decided we’d much rather spend the day in Las Cruces than in El Paso. I had planned 15 off days into our schedule, and tomorrow will already be #6, which is frustrating, but 3 of those days were due to the OREM’s warning light issues and totally unexpected. When we get underway on Wednesday, we won’t take another “planned” day off until Del Rio. It’s not that we have any hard and fast deadline to meet, but I do want to ensure that The Bob is home by mid-May as he’ll be departing on another epic voyage with an old friend near the end of May.

As you might imagine, I’m a little tired so I’ll stop blathering for the night and climb into my bed. Hope all is well in your world…