It gets better

Surprisingly I manage to catch a good nights sleep while sleeping beside the fairly busy Route 550. I woke up a few times from hearing some odd noises, smiled and went back to sleep as my guess was right – It was raining out, and I figured it would be a good idea to put all of my electronics inside the panniers for the night and pull out my tent fly, something that hadn’t been used in 2 months. With the lightning off in the distance it was only a matter of time before it came to me. It wasn’t much rain however, but certainly enough to make the ground even softer and tough to get my bicycle out of the deep sand trenches it had built. I made sure to shake as much as I could from the tent, groundsheet and fly off before putting it in my bag, as that stuff gets everywhere.

Riding down the road with one bottle of water, and a full cup of coffee the sun was shining, and a bit of gusty wind was trying to decide where it actually wanted to come from. I was still making reasonable time at 18km/hr. as I headed Northwest to the next town, Cuba. 30km into the 40km ride I felt a bit of spongy suspension and realized that my tire was indeed going flat again, not entirely but still had lost a significant amount of air based on my finger squeeze test. I didn’t bother pumping it back up and decided to slog it to the next town, wanting to get a charge of some of my components, a rest before getting all grimy again. I hung around the inside of a McDonalds for 2 hours before making moves to repair the flat, of course a huge raincloud had appeared within the next 2 minutes and it started coming down in buckets, so I sat outside with my back to the wall and talked to strangers that walked by with their attempts at making friendly conversation to the guy on a bike. I’m not feeling too talkative lately so keeping the chatting to bare minimum while still answering a lot of the peoples questions and then carrying on in my own head for the time being. Once the rain stopped I headed out to find a gas station that offered Free Air, I knew there was one in the city based on conversations with locals and I searched for it while the rain couldn’t really decide if it was done with or not.

I found the gas station, parked in front of the air pump and went to work, this time tipping my bike over on its side with the panniers still on, pulling the wheel off and using the air pump as a work area so I wouldn’t have to crouch. I couldn’t find the puncture (I gave up on this tube as I couldn’t find it the other day while getting lost in the desert) and resorted to putting it inside of a mud puddle in hopes of finding any air bubbles. No such luck so had to keep licking the tube and hope that I could feel the minute about of resistance in my mouth. It’s kind of gross having to get all the dirt and mud in my mouth, but with little else option I can deal with it and wash it down later with a soft drink or something. Throughout the time I offered my pressure gauge to other cars who appeared looking to inflate their tires and made some light conversation with them. I’ve gotta say the residents of Cuba, NM sure are friendly, more so than other parts of the state, with many others coming by to make sure I was able to find the puncture and ask if I needed help – I had eventually found the leak by sticking the tube under a water faucet on the side of the building and was well in the process of repairing it – fingers crossed this was going to be the end of the punctures as I was out of patches.

I was just finishing up when a man who I don’t recall talking much to said goodbye and wished me good luck on my travels before going into his car and coming back to give me a handful of dollar bills letting me know that he hoped I could use this to buy another tube down the road. I thanked him for his generosity, gave him a card as a keepsake in hopes he’d find me on the internet one day and he went off on his way. I made sure there was nothing in the rim, tire, or tube and put everything back together tightening up the rear wheel onto the frame and spun the rear wheel – pedals were moving again while the wheel rotated, something that has resurfaced only in the past 2 weeks or so, and I noticed that my rear rim was rubbing against the brake pads on one side – probably accounting for why I’m feeling a slight bump when riding in the hot weather.

You’ve got to realize I spent an awful lot of time in front of a computer and when I bought my bicycle to go touring I checked out a few books from the library on basic maintenance and repair, read through them multiple times, performed some cursory reading on Sheldon Brown’s pocket of knowledge and hoped that I’d be able to keep the knowledge in my head. As you may know the best way to get experience with things is by actually doing it, so I went ahead and used the little bit I knew about checking for loose spokes, with the goal of truing the wheel so that it was in balance. Sure enough I located a few spokes that were awfully loose – before I l left Newfoundland I thought it would be neat to buy a light that sat in between 3 of the spokes – you simply press the a button on the light and it either turns a solid red or flashes, useful for cars to see you, that is if they are coming directly at the side of your bike – otherwise its useless just like any other reflector on your wheel. I’ve used it once in 4 months and took it off giving it to the first kid I saw who passed me – maybe they’d get better use of it and wouldn’t be carrying quite as big a load on the rear wheel as I am where I need all the spoke tension and stability I can get.  I tried to perform some basic truing and set off on the road feeling a large bump every revolution of the tire but pedaled on forward, stopping every 3-4 minutes to adjust the spokes by a quarter turn either making it worse or lightening the wobble but certainly not making it go away. I decided that I was going to push forward to meet my 100km target while I still had lots of daylight and use the leftover moments to true it properly with all the bags off and it flipped upside down. Stopping at a Casino along the way I refilled my water bottles and water bladder not sure what would be coming in the next 70 miles to Farmington, NM.

I cranked the tunes and rode hard thanks to a little tailwind up many hills hitting 7000ft again before spotting a gas station on a hill way up in the distance. Out of breath I arrived and chatted with the cashier a bit not quite able to form sentences properly and feeling like I was going to lose balance every 2 seconds with my body still recovering from the frequent bumps and wobbles. I bought an ice cream sandwich and asked her where a good place to setup camp was, knowing that I probably looked like shit and making her feel uncomfortable. She told me there was a place down the road which I couldn’t understand, making her repeat it a few times and I still couldn’t get what she was saying, finally she said there was a school up ahead too. I hung around a bit after a customer left and noticed she was answering me pretty sharply and I figured it was time to go, feeling frustrated that I wasn’t getting proper attention to the questions that I asked. Still, as I rode off I realized she did help me in the first place, and that I was not seeing the fact of the matter. Down the hill as she promised I found a medical clinic, however next to a scenic rock bluff, however there was a gate locking access to the road – 1km in the distance on the other side of the road I noticed a large building and decided to try my luck at that. Spotting a yellow sign that said Bus Stop I knew this was the school she was talking about and was just about to cross the road when I saw a man standing at the side of the road beside his car and decided that I should stop and ask him if he needed any help. I rode closer and he started walking towards me with a small bag with contents inside and asked me how I was doing.

Larry, was from Farmington just up the road and was coming back home from Indiana (how he got to be there I’m not sure as its way out of the way, but I didn’t question it). He said he was glad to have intercepted me, and often makes a point to stop any cyclist he sees to give him a care package, telling me about the first time he met a Japanese cyclist in southern Colorado who had frostbite on his ears, fingers, hands and was in rough shape. He handed me the bag with a fresh pair of socks, deodorant, mouthwash, and gold bond lotion, which I had to restrain myself from rubbing it on my sore ass in front of him. He also handed me a map of the local area, some tourist guides of Farmington and area and told me about the history of the 100 mile radius. He said he didn’t follow much of technology other than had a cellular phone and gave me his number if I ran into problems and I thanked him repeatedly, letting him know that he was one of the finer kindred spirits I’ve yet to meet on my journey. He had also told me he ran into another cyclist earlier on that day, who posts at Crazyguyonabike.com yet I never caught his name, I’d love to find out who it was and run into them on the road. He asked  me to make sure I put his name on the internet so that people knew to watch out for an older gentleman (65?) who stopped cyclists along the way. Good on you Larry Wilson!

With a huge grin on my face I crossed the road, finding a locked gate at the elementary school but put my bike on its side and dragged it underneath cycling behind the school into a beautiful courtyard that offered a covered area with a picnic table and set to work truing my wheel properly. I did the best I could while the wind started whipping and thunder in the distance became louder, setting up my tent actually moving it beside the school walls after spying a working power plug. Bonus to that, my external USB wireless card was able to pick up the schools Wi-Fi network and I set to work uploading photos of days past, catching up on emails, and fixing some nagging issues with the website (the maps weren’t displaying properly, and the front page slideshow of recent posts/images were showing black screens for some posts). I went to sleep at 12 waking up a few times hearing hard rain hit the metal rooftop above me, however I still stayed dry. I was on the road by 9am with a few short climbs as I passed many natural gas refineries and a few gas stations. I stopped at the biggest one and hung out watching many weekend trippers stop in to fill up on snacks, and gas including many men on motorcycles.  I wasn’t quite in the mood to be my usual chatty self and let them all go on their way before getting on the bike again still not having licked the wheel wobble. I’ve since accepted the fact that I’ll have to stop at a bicycle shop and have the pro’s deal with the issue, likely my spokes are out of tension and the whole wheel needs worked on. It’ll take 15 minutes or less for them to do and I’ll make sure I hang around asking questions and watching how they do it and maybe if I’m feeling really rambunctious in September I’ll go and get a couple of bent way out of shape wheels and practice my skills – there won’t be any bike shops every 100km in Africa I can tell you that! It’s frustrating when bicycle problems occur because I don’t have all the necessary knowledge to troubleshoot and repair the problems, but I’m glad that they are happening to be able to do so next time. Really – they aren’t complicated pieces of machinery, I’m more than capable of figuring it out.

The gas station was obviously the top of the hill – and for the next 50 kilometres I did nothing else but hold on for dear life, and dropped a serious amount of elevation in fairly short order, passing many scenic viewpoints of miles of miles of rockwork but avoided it and barrelled on down at 60km/h. I made it into Farmington, NM in less than 4 hours – that’s 100km, I haven’t traveled this fast since June 19, heading into Yellowknife NWT when I was getting chased by hornets for 30km. I’m glad the downhill was there as I just couldn’t muster up much energy today for riding and the hills would have knocked me down harder than I was already and after a brief stop at the grocery store (My route skipped all of the areas I actually wanted to go, so I traveled 15km extra overall in the day to get what I needed to get done and met a man who offered up his place for me to stay at, also pointing me in the direction of the closest bike shop, of course closed for the weekend. I thought about heading over to his house afterwards but realized I’m just not in the correct headspace to exert an awful lot of energy telling people about my travels at this stage and spent the rest of the day in a coffee shop before being kicked out and looking for a safe place to stay. A church overlooked the city on top of a mountain and I made my way over to it getting lost in the process but ending up in a small park where many people were enjoying the last few minutes of sunset. A perfect opportunity for me to setup tent in peace in the treed area and cook a quick dinner. The park shuts down at 10pm, and while I’ve been sitting here under the lit area with a picnic bench an employee of the city has come by to check on a car still in the parking lot, shined his light into the woods looking for people causing trouble, but missed the sight of me – likely due to light trickery. The car left about 20 minutes ago, and the city vehicle just returned circling through the parking lot, and I still managed to evade being caught, the truck now long gone on its way to another park. At 10am the bicycle shop opens up and I hope to be on the road by 11 likely calling it my last day in New Mexico – we’ll see!

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