Lordsburg, New Mexico

Easy ride today, fast, cool and tailwinds. We did our 65 miles in a little over four hours. There's not much here in Lordsburg, a little better than some of our Texas towns but just junk stuff around. The desert is very cool at night. Tonight down to 30 with a wind chill of 27. Going to have to put on everything we have to ride in the morning. by afternoon it will be in the 80's.
Nothing but tumbleweed and sand in this area. Not too hilly today either. Very difficult forva lady to find a place to go to the bathroom along the road. Hiding behind a lone cactus brings honks from the truckers. Sometimes that's all you can do! Modern conveniences are few and far between. We crossed the Continental Divide this morning. Signs continue to warn of poor visibility because of blowing sand. Nothing in bloom here. No wild life. No road kill. Freight trains are numerous. I always count the cars and think of how excited James would be. Longest today was 127 cars long.
Trip is getting closer to ending. It feels bitter/sweet. I am enjoying it all so much. But all of you are missed too. Stay with us.

New Mexico , We're Here!

Finally we got through Texas. We are in Las Cruces,New Mexico at the wonderful home of Lee and Cindy Herman who are Warm Showers hosts. They are situated on the edge of the desert with a yard full of different kinds of cacti, some in bloom. It's a different world. No grass, no flowers. Mountains line the near horizon. The home is huge. All tile and marble floors. Cindy showed us immediately to the shower. Guess we were pretty bad looking. The shower was actually big enough to hold all four of us at once.

Tonight the Herman's are hosting a house concert. The folk singer Beth Wood arrived around 4:00 and we all sat down to a supper of soup and salad. Ron and I made the salad. We'd become the salad experts when the whole group was still together and cooking group meals.

This is now Sunday evening: last night became very busy as 30 guests arrived. We helped to put out food and enjoyed meeting so many local people. The concert was delightful and I'd love to begin hosting house concerts myself. Ron has actually done it several times in Canada.

We all got up early. Beth stayed the night too and needed to get on the road early, like us. Lee cooked a big breakfast of French toast with real maple syrup and fried apples and bananas in butter. Was very good but it's no wonder I'm not losing weight.
We headed west by 7:30. It was chilly. As the day went on the winds continued to intensify, and of course from the west. It takes all your strength to hold the bike upright. We couldn't even ride faster than 8 mph and at long intervals it was only 6 mph. It was an exhausting day!

El Paso, Texas

Landed safely in El Paso yesterday afternoon. On the road yesterday we were as close to the Mexican border as you could be. Police and border patrols were everywhere. Saw men and women being stopped, searched, held at gun point and cars being torn apart. It didn't feel like we were in the US. There are fences everywhere with spiral barbed wire on top. Even a hospital had that kind of fencing. We were not stopped anywhere. Glad we made the decision not to visit Mexico.
We are in a slum motel in El Paso! $30.00 for a room that we share. The towels are so thin that I would've made them my rags. No wash cloths, no bath mat. But an inspection of the sheets didn't reveal bed bugs. What more could you ask for? After all, it's a step up from some of our places!
We took the bus down town last night but everything closes up early so we just looked around and hopped the bus back to our swanky motel.
This morning we headed out in the traffic to get to the bike shop that had ordered tires and other supplies for us. I bought some heavy duty insulated water bottles that should help with water supplies in the desert ahead of us. Dean and Ron stayed at the bike shop for maintenance help. They still don't have the problems totally fixed and it cost them a fortune in labor. Bob is still working on the tandem. He changed both tires and greased all the chain, gears and derailer. He has the tools and knowledge to do it all himself and he enjoys it. We took a break to have some lunch and a little walk. Mailed a few more things home. That will lighten our load a bit more. Bigger mountains are coming!
Tomorrow night we will be staying with Warm Showers hosts in Las Cruces, new Mexico. They sound like quite interesting people and have invited us to be part of a house concert that they are hosting. The performer will be staying in their home also and many of their friends are invited. They will have dinner and wine. Sounds like a late party night for we early riser bikers. But we deserve a little entertainment too. The host couple are both Mac computer geeks who work from home. He has a web site and I could only check out a few of the many things that they have going. Will be fun to meet them.
The winds have picked up again today. Hope we can get to our destination tomorrow before they get bad again. John from Long Island who left us told us that when he tried to ride up one of the mountains the wind blew him right over on his side. He ended up pushing his bike up the mountain six miles! Not fun.
People have no lawns here. Either it's sand and dirt or they hauled in stones. Mountains all around the city. It gets cool at night but in the 90's during the day. But no humidity makes it feel good. The trip gets tougher from here, especially going west with the winds.
Posting may be difficult tomorrow with the house concert and party.

Fort Hancock, Texas

We're back on the bike after two days of hurricane strength wind. We got up at 5:30, ate our oatmeal and were on the road as light barely broke the dawn. We all have lights on the bikes so are allowed on the road before daylight. It was quite cool and although still windy, nothing like yesterday. We had a couple of long mountains to climb almost immediately but then heading toward El Paso the terrain again lost altitude. That means that we'll have that same climb plus more when we leave on Saturday. At that time we will finally leave Texas too!
The winds picked up today to 38 mph hour but we were able to get to Fort Hancock. It was a hard 69 mile ride. We met a few cyclists on the road today, all of them going east. The strong winds are in their favor but they too said they had to get off the road yesterday. They couldn't control the bikes and were blinded by blowing sand.
More winds are predicted on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. hope they are not as bad.
We are now on Mountain Time. That means a 2 hour difference from Michigan time.

The mountains were beautiful against the blue skies today. I'll try to post some pictures on Facebook but Verizon service is very poor here.

Fort Hancock sounds like a decent size town but don't be fooled! It too is a dead, nothing here place. One restaurant in town with the only vegetarian choice being retried beans, again!
Had some when we got in to town and will have to have them again when we walk over for supper in a few minutes. I'm so hungry for fresh fruit and vegetables. No wonder obesity is such a problem with poor people. They don't even have fresh stuff in their stores or restaurants.
Off for some retried beans!

Van Horn, Texas

Wind! Wind! Wind! Sand blowing everywhere! It's like a hurricane with the sun shining. Lining the town of Van Horn are a range of mountains. With the blowing sand they aren't even visible today. We spent the day going over the bikes, doing laundry visiting around town and reading. We rode up to Papa's Pantry for lunch. It's a real home cooked Mexican restaurant. Even homemade bread. Had fun meeting the locals. Don't know how they make a living in these towns. Bob wanted to get a haircut and thought today would be perfect. Two barber/hair stylists in town but neither opened up. When we went for lunch we noticed that one had opened. She said she was going to go for lunch to check later. At 2:00 she finally ended her lunch but said she wouldn't have time to trim his hair today. You'd think they'd grab any opportunity to make a buck.
Met a young man, his wife and 14 year old daughter today. Neither has worked in four years.
But the amazing thing is that they all love it in these small towns. They don't suffer from ulcers, I'm sure.
The wind is supposed to die down after midnight so we are heading out as early as we can. The wind will pick up in the afternoon to 30 mph and that's hard to manage too. They haven't had any rain here since October so it's nothing but dry leaves and grass and loose sand and dirt. Hope we can make our 60 miles tomorrow.

Ft. Stockton , Texas

Couldn't blog yesterday because of no wifi or AT&T service in the dead town of Iraan. You can't believe what a sad place that was! We bicycled 14 miles off the route to find it. The town was made up of empty stores and trashy tiny homes. It was unbelievable. The people who still live there are oil drillers. They had a couple of restaurants. We ate lunch when we arrived around three in one of them. But the waitress made it very clear that she had been working since 7:00 and wanted us to hurry up because she was tired. When I ordered the salad bar, even before she took the other orders, she told me to "then hurry and get what you want because I want to put it away". She then started to sweep the carpet with a broom, dust flying everywhere. When she brought the plates out she carried the food with one hand and held on to her broom with the other. When we left we asked if there was a place we could get supper later after we cleaned up. The reply, "The only other one is Isabella's but she only opens if she feels like cooking". Darn, wouldn't you know it, Isabella wasn't in the mood last night. So off to the gas station to pick up whatever we could call supper.
We left Iraan at 7:00 to try and beat the hottest sun. Getting out of Iraan involved a steep mountain climb that was exactly one mile up. Good way to start a long day.
Just yesterday we had drawn the conclusion that the only armadillos that exist are dead ones. Then this morning we spotted our first live one. Now we know why they are always road kill - they are rather slow moving, At least our one spotting was. Also saw several skunks wandering around and then a herd of wild boars. (not sure if the plural is boar or boars, and not sure if a bunch of them is really a herd). Anyway, they were pretty interesting to watch. I hopped off the bike to try and get a picture but I freaked them and they ran off pretty fast.
The ride to Ft. Stockton was long and hot. 67 miles in sun that was dangerous. No place for water or shelter. You just have to keep going. Ft. Stockton is a bigger town but not much going on here either. We tried to walk to one of the many restaurants but they obviously didn't feel like cooking today either. We talked to a man who was from Vietnam and asked him if he'd drive us somewhere to get supper. He had a pickup but since the back seat was full of beer we had to ride in the bed of the truck. He had to go quite a distance to find a place open. We offered to buy his dinner if he'd stay and drive us back to town. He said he wanted to go get his wife first. So he came back with his wife, a teenage boy and both of his wife's parents. It turned out to be an expensive taxi. But after dinner, back into the back of the pickup.
Tomorrow is Easter. Bob was so nice and suggested that I look for a church for Easter morning and we would just get a later start. I started calling all the churches on my phone app. The catholic church only had a mass in Spanish at 11:30. The others didn't even answer. I even tried the "cowboy church".
So I will spend Easter Sunday in the same bike clothes, sitting on that hard seat again.
I will be waiting for pictures of my precious babies in their Easter outfits.
Happy Easter to all my family and to Bob's family too. We will be thinking of you. More tomorrow, if we have service.

Ozona, Texas

Yesterday's ride and heat took it's toll on all four of us. When you become dehydrated it task more than a day to recuperate. We decided over coffee at 6:00 this morning to ride a shorter day. The only towns available were 37 miles or 77. We knew that 77 was an extreme in this heat and wind. So we opted for a landing in Ozona, Texas just 37 mles west. We even got another motel room. I did the laundry for all the men and they worked on bikes. That's fine with me to be the laundry woman because the bike maintaince is out of my league and I so appreciate that they can take care of that part.
We found Easter cards last night at a Dollar General. They were mailed this morning but it's still possible that they will be late. Aubrey, I sent one to your house addressed to everyone so if it's late, you need to just report to everyone.

We all got to bed late last night since Bob was trying to help Dean with his tire problem till after 10:00. We're planning to walk someplace for supper early and then get to bed earlier tonight. Uneventful day but still moving westward. Love to everyone.

Don't forget that you can also view pictures from the blog that Dean is forwarding to his daughter to post. Go to crazyguyonabike. Then select Journals. Then select Dean Fesette. He posts pictures daily.