Sara: Day 10

I cannot believe we’ve been at this for 10 consecutive days! Aside from two numb fingers on my left hand and sun poisoning covering both legs (seriously, you should see this rash…), I feel pretty good! Exhausted, but good.

Today’s ride from Thatcher to Lordsburg (welcome to New Mexico!) was our longest yet at 81 miles. I was worried this ride would mimic yesterday’s, but it was quite possibly our best day. We didn’t get the tailwind I was promised this morning until about mile 40, but when it showed up, it really showed up. I had actually written us off when we were flagging down my mom at mile 15 – there was no way we were going to finish the ride if we already needed to refuel. But somehow, somewhere, things turned around and we finished really strong.

Leaving Thatcher this morning we came across our most interesting piece of roadkill yet – a mountain lion cub. Ok, ok, it could have been a house cat, sure. But it would be the biggest, girthiest house cat I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen a lot of house cats. So we’ll call it a mountain lion cub, which is very sad, but gives me more to think about than the spiders and snakes I’ve been looking at for days. I was disappointed not to find it pictured on the GoPro so I could investigate further.

Lordsburg is a desolate, empty feeling town – “like a movie set with no actors” as my mom put it. Coming into town, I noticed signs threatening “Operation D.W.I” and how the “checkpoints are everywhere”. If the glass bottles still littering the highway are any indication, they need more checkpoints. Seriously, the amount of bottles along the side of the road the last 150 miles was astounding.

At the grocery store this afternoon, a little girl came eagerly running up to me, tapped me, said “I love your ripped pants”, and ran off. When I heard “I love your ripped…”, I thought to myself “… legs? Abs? Finally, someone is noticing and this trip is paying off”. Nope, just my pants. It’s shocking to me that anything in the carry-on suitcase I packed for this 6-week trip could garner compliments, but I’ll take it – even from a 5 year old. 

Random shot captured on the GoPro - father and daughter hard at work

Headed into Duncan, halfway into our ride