Let's Hope Tina Louise is Not Right

We made it to New Mexico. After yesterday that seemed like no big deal. It was. I went to sleep last night knowing my front tire was flat. I found the wire that was causing the flat so I wasn't that concerned. When I woke up this morning, my rear tire was also soft. So after breakfast Thom and I started to change both tires. It went smoothly but we weren't convinced that we had found the wire causing the rear flat. After about 30 miles the tire went flat. Thom was ahead so I texted him to come back. That meant riding into the wind, uphill and against the traffic on Interstate 40. That's what friends are for.  After several frustrating attempts to remove what we thought was the offending wire, we decided to use the bike trick of using a folded up dollar bill (or $20 bill in this case) to cover the wire inside the tire.

Meanwhile I had texted Claudia telling her we needed to meet up. I then got tied up the tire and didn't look at my phone to see that Claudia had asked if there were any injuries. Bad me! I told her no, as soon as I saw the question but she had to worry for awhile unnecessarily. 

We met up in Chambers, had lunch, fixed the tire and where back on the road. We had 25 more miles on the interstate. We both stopped once to pull wires from our tires. We were pretty glad to get off the interstate for the last 25 miles of the ride. The wires in the tires had taken a lot out of us mentally but we were glad to have finished 94.40 miles and ended up in Gallup, New Mexico. 

Here is the ride on Strava. 

I keep forgetting to tell people that Thom and I have some pretty funny questions for each other when we are next to each other and can hear what the other is saying. About a week ago, I asked Thom if he was riding home (about 18 miles) to his house when we arrived at our house. He assured me that someone from his family was going to pick him up.  Yesterday Thom asked me where we were sticking our wheels in the Atlantic Ocean or Narragansett Bay. I explained that we were doing it at the end of the North Kingstown Bike Path in Mount View. He was concerned that we were going to add miles by going to Goddard Park or the end of Ives Road. Both questions made the other person laugh. 

I should explain about being able to hear each other and when we are together. We don't stay next to each other during the day. We try to stay within eyesight of each other and definitely meet up every few miles.  So far either one of us can be in the lead. When you are riding on the interstate the noise from the trucks is overwhelming. I laughed at how loud Thom sounded when we were riding through Gallup at the end of the ride and he was telling me an intersection was clear. 

 Progress

We are over 25% done with our ride in terms of distance and 33% in terms of climbing. 

Here is the usual detail.

So what's the title refer to, you may ask? Well what would be a Rich Kerbel writing without a reference to Commander Cody. Tomorrow's goal is to make it to Grants, NM. The weather forecast includes a chance of rain in the afternoon. In the song Tina Louis, Commander Cody and the Lost Planet Airman talk about New Mexico rain falls on the windshield.  Let's hope that doesn't happen to us.