Wednesday, June 6, 2007

A Blustery Day

After the late start Ted and I climbed out of the Rio Grande Valley, through the city, through Tijeras Pass and into the high plains. We joked, as we rose over the last hill that it is downhill from here on and, in fact, it is. The eastern horizon looks like pretty open, empty and flat.

We are staying at the house and farm of Jim and Cynthia Daly along with their children, alpacas, llamas and goats. We got to see how to milk goats and afterwards enjoyed the milk. Jim teaches at Bosque School with me. They have been very kind to us and we are quite appreciative.

The total mileage today was 39 miles. We climbed about 16oo feet and had a strong tailwind pushing us up the hills. Out here it is blowing a lot and we gladly accepted the living room floor over outside in the lee of the house. Jim said that I-40 was closed because several trucks blew over. It's windy but not a problem as a tailwind. Coming to Jim's house we had to ride a mile into it and it was ghastly. Shortly before that we had been cruising at 30 mph down the road. With heavy bikes the hills are hard going up and fast going down. Top speed today was 48 mph on a straight relatively gentle hill with a 40 mph tailwind. I was too busy driving to notice except the speedometer noted the max speed. I would have guess far lower.

We've had a good start.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

By far my favorite pictures are: Ted in creek and Ted with metal coffe mug.

He looks as if he is conducting a lecture on proper camping ettiquite

Looks amazing wish I was along for the ride, maybe next year eh?

Peace,
Joe