Miscellaneous Thoughts 3

I started this post several days ago and hope to complete it now; Rich is a far better blogger then I. What follows is a series of random thoughts from my days of riding.

Oh what a difference a day makes.  On May 6th, we left Albuquerque with a head wind and the crossing of the Sandia Mtns in front of us.  Within 2.5 hours we had made 16 miles; the next day, May 7th, we made 16 miles in an hour. That is how the past few days have been, either the wind with us or against us.  Today, we are trying to decide if we ride at all.  Wind and rain.  

When Rogers and Hammerstein wrote Oklahoma with the line "where the wind comes sweepin' down the plain" did they have any concept of what the wind is really like or just a romantic notion of watching a hawk make lazy circles in the sky.

So a bike trip cross country starts with the dream and the romantic notion of coming into contact with the real America and after a few days of riding the effort becomes real.  Long hours on the bike give you plenty of time to think.  Songs get stuck in your head.  Your body deals with the heat, the struggle of that last climb, and physical limitations.  You start recognizing on-coming vehicles by the sounds they make; I can always pick out the Peterbilts.  You learn how to eat and drink while peddling and create a routine to make sure you have enough fuel in your system.  You suffer from the boredom of the ride and scenery but revel at the ever changing beauty of nature and the kindness and interest of people you meet along the way.  

The wind! I believe it was Willa Cather's 'O Pioneer' where I first came across the concept of Prairie Madness.  The concept that the pioneers, mostly from cities or wooded areas slowly went mad as the wind constantly blew.  The frustration of the wind, at least as bike riders, is real.  Every day we check the next days weather and now look at the projected wind speeds and direction.  We pray for a direction that has "west" in its name.

I never thought about how elevation change will make riding harder.  We were as high as 7500 feet above sea level; rare that I ride much above 1,000 feet.  It does affect how you ride.  I find I need to stop more often, not because I'm tired but because I need to catch my breath.  I first experienced this a few years ago in Nepal when I was hiking.  Our guide made sure we stopped and just breathed facing down into the valley.  Still use that technique.  

When I worked for the city of Providence there were certain developers who thought I was a hard ass! Well after three weeks of riding I have one now!

Grain towers are the plains equivalent of a medieval cathedral; the center of a town!

When Google says flat, it means something different then what I think the word means.  I've never climbed so much on a flat ride as I have over the past few days.

The same can be said about downhill.  When Garmin says the ride is downhill, I expect it to be downhill.  I have climbed hundreds, even thousands of feet on rides that Garmin says are downhill.

Speaking of Garmin, Rich got a new one for this trip; it tells you everything.  Rich loves looking at the information.  At the beginning of the trip he was telling me things like - in four miles we have our next climb, and it's two miles long and goes up 1000 feet.  I really don't care.  I don't want to think about the next climb; I just want to face it when it's there.

Over the past three weeks, the body and the mind have toughened up.  We are soon leaving the region of the country where the roads are long and straight and you can see forever.  We have seen some beautiful places and some boring places.  But it has been a great experience so far.

Finally, when we entered New Mexico we discovered, through a local sign, that the GPS was sending us on roads that didn't exist.  We ended up riding on some roads that took us through a beautiful part of NM.  After we crossed the continental divide and started downhill to I-40, which we had to get back on, we passed a small school St. Bonaventure in Thoreau, NM.  There were people on the front porch of the school who waived and cheered us on.  That small gesture warmed my heart and encouraged me to ride on that day.  I was so touched by that wave, that I made a small donation to the school.  You never know what your smile or wave will mean to someone.