Day 9, April 28, 2014

Why wife says that before criticizing, sandwich the criticisim with positives.  Ok, I didn't get hurt today, I wasn't at work today, I rode my bike 102 miles today, all positives.  Now for the bad things, let me count the ways;

(It's not a good omen when the day's words of inspiration posted to the daily briefing bulletin board, quotes George Armstrong Custer; didn't he get killed because he was stupid?)

1.  Unfortunately, for Jere the "Gathering of Nations" also included Montezuma's Aztec warriors.  They struck Jere (likely food poisoning) in the middle of the night leaving him with gastric issues from both ends.  By morning he could barely get out of bed.  Jere was relegated to riding the back seat of the van, with a stolen hotel pillow, and his bike on the roof rack (Jere would ride through hell and back before surrendering his bike to the roof rack, but Montezuma's revenge was stronger medicine than Jere's bull head)

2.  I had a flat 6 miles out of the hotel, which put our three person group of myself, Dave and Frieder playing catch-up all morning.

3.  We climbed most of the morning with the wind gusting in our face and side, the temperature  dropped from the balmy mid 40s to the upper 30s (I had no idea what the wind chill was, but with 23-35 knot winds, it was freezing).  We experienced a little hail and snow, nothing of significance, but just enough to remind us it was cold!

4.  We had lunch at a fire station outside of Santa Fe.  The fire station was gracious enough to open their doors and allow us to eat inside out of the wind and cold.  One of our  two New Zealand riders, Simon is a Fire Chief back home.  He presented the two EMTs and one volunteer fireman on duty with a T-Shirt with his fire station insignia as a gift and the first responders chatted each other up.  We left the fire station a little after the two Kiwis, but caught up to them about 2 miles down the road and passed them.  About 10 miles down the road, we had to cross a cattle grate in the road before crossing under Interstate 25 and entering the interstate.  After we crossed over, our group stopped for a nature call before getting on the interstate.  By happenstance, Dave looked back and saw that one of the Kiwis had crashed when crossing the cattle grate.  We rode back and assisted, calling 911, the ABB staff etc.  Simon's wheel caught in a gap in the grate and he face planted.  As it turns out the EMTs he presented the T-Shirt to were his first responders.  He was taken to the Santa Fe hospital for evaluation.  He seemed to be responding at the scene and we are all hopeful he'll be back on the bike after a day's recovery and finding a new helmet and sunglasses.

5.  After entering the Interstate the hi-way turned southeast and downhill, so the 35 knot wind and grade had us cruising at 30+ mph and making up some time and easy miles.  With about 10 miles to our final SAG/rest stop, Freider got a flat.  Just he when he had it fixed and ready to pump, the support van pulled over.  We thought what perfect timing, we can use a floor pump rather than a mini pump to pump up his tire.  Unfortunately, the signal was given for a second time in as many ride days that staff is pulling riders from the road because the wind gusts were increasing and too dangerous to ride.   We had 102 miles and lost the last 32 miles of the ride into Las Vegas, NM.

Now for something positive; we've ridden the last of the interstates for the duration of the trip.

Tomorrow we turn right out of our hotel onto Rt. 104 and the next turn we make is into our hotel, 102 miles later in Tucumcari, NM.  The direction of travel is SE and the wind is forecast out of the NW, the road is flat, so we may have a much needed easy, fast day.  I hope tomorrow nights blog entry will be unremarkable.  Till then ...