Today was a lot of fun! We saw
all sorts of entertaining things on the 61 mile ride from Lordsburg to Deming
and I can honestly say I loved every minute of it. It certainly didn’t hurt
that we finished in under 5 hours.
Last night when my parents were
discussing the route for today, I heard my dad explaining that, at one point,
we would be climbing over a barbed wire fence to get back onto the interstate
at the frontage road dead end. He casually described how one of us would climb
over first, then we’d “just pass the bikes through” as my mom listened in
disbelief. I was just excited to see this thing play out, assuming we’d
attempt, tear some clothes, fail, then back-track to the last entrance ramp. As
it turns out, my dad was right. The construction of those fences isn’t overly
complicated and, aside from an unfortunate run-in with an ant hill, it was
relatively easy to circumnavigate. Who knew? He told me after the successful
crossing there would be two more in the route tomorrow.
The theme of today was
grasshoppers. They were everywhere. If
you’ve read my dad’s blog, I can assure you these were larger than a medjool
date. They were the size of your thumb – the whole thumb, down to the wrist. The
guys that weren’t already dead or injured from traffic were jumping all over
the shoulder. It was a good day to wear pants.
Heading into our first rest stop
at a randomly placed southwestern gift shop, we started seeing a slew of billboards
advertising their products – handmade blankets, turquoise jewelry, Native
American pottery, girl stuff. Girl stuff?
What the hell is “girl stuff”? And what is it doing on a billboard?
When we arrived, the place was
completely empty aside from two maintenance guys at the entrance of the parking
lot. Their presence was challenging my tarantula-induced cement-only pit stop
rule, so I trudged off to find some bushes. The place was still crawling in
grasshopper monsters, though, so I came back and asked my mom to drive me to
the front of the (presumably closed) store so I could angle myself between the
store and the van for some privacy. It was only as we were pulling away that we
noticed the “yes, we’re open!” sign on the door behind me. Too bad – now there
was no way I could go in to check out their “girl stuff”.
We met another cyclist at this
same stop who had already traveled 11,000 miles (yes, thousand, not a typo), was riding alone, carrying all of his
equipment, camping at nights, and riding 100 miles a day. I felt a little bad
about our 3,000 mile, mom-supported, motel-booking trip in comparison… until I
was sitting in an air-condition car 20 miles down the road eating Cheez-Its.
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| Blurry, because I was running away, but you get the idea... monsters! |
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| Exit here for Girl Stuff |
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| This prompted a healthy brainstorming session with my mom regarding the goings on in this truck |
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