June 8, 2007

We're east of Las Vegas, NM. We found that we had trouble looking behind so I got a mirror to attach to my helmet. It was the last one in town, and we hope to get one for Ted before too long.
So far, so very good!

June 7, 2007

We rode with tailwinds all day today. Crossed 40 miles of dirt road, sometimes rough, for a total of 61 miles. We're camped along the Pecos River at a state park near the village of Villa Nueva. We're happy and healthy.

We passed through a lot of beautiful, empty country. We saw, maybe, two cars in four hours.

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.

Off

2:35 pm and we are out of the door. New brakes and shifter all on and working.

Bad components and late departures

Ted and I had everything loaded before dark. We had plenty of room for stuff in the bags and room for more if I put the tent on top of the back rack. This may be what I need to do if we need to carry extra water at some point. A loaded touring bike is quite different than an unloaded bike because it weighs a lot. We have maybe 5o pounds of gear on each bike and they are ponderous. My steel frame is particularly flexible to the point where I thought I might have low tires (I didn't) because it was so cushy. When you wiggle the handlebars while you are riding the whole bike seems to bend. Ted's Klein, being aluminum, is stiffer but still can be wiggled a little. I read that moving more weight to the front can be helpful so I can experiment tomorrow.

Still, everything went well until my right shifter stopped working. Since I got the Bianci in the winter I have been watching this shifter because it was sometimes stiff and slow to shift. I lubricated it and that seemed to help but it comes down to the set of shifters are just old and of only medium quality. An STI shifter is a complicated thing as it contains a brake lever and indexed shifters in one compact component. Most say you can't work on them and, having tried to do so, I concur. Mine did their job passably well for probably 600 miles around town up until I took the maiden loaded ride this evening and the ratcheting mechanism just ceased working -- bad timing in the small picture, excellent timing in the big picture.

Fortunately Albuquerque has a lot of excellent bike shops and I will be able to purchase what I need tomorrow morning when the shops open at 9 or 10 am. Because I don't trust the STI setup at this point I am going to purchase simple bar end shifters. These are found on many high-end touring bikes for for same reason -- when you are 100 miles from a bike shop with a broken shifter it stinks. This entails taking off the handlebar tape, removing the old brake lever-shifters, cutting and removing the 4 cables for the brakes and shifters and reassembling everything with new cable housing and cables. Fortunately I just did this last month when I built the Klein so I won't be going through a process of discovery and it should only take an hour or two.

At this point it looks like we won't have an early morning departure. There is a funny part to this story. As I was tearing off the handlebar tape (in a great state of frustration) I realized that I actually had 22 days for this trip instead of the 21 days I thought I had so I haven't really lost a day.

buzzed

Ted here, these past few days were hair days. Dad buzzed his hair very short last night...as in shorter than usual, which is saying something, and today, I hacked off all my beautiful golden locks in favor of a buzz cut. Ha, hair, who needs hair??

Everything should fit...

Three days before we leave and I realize that I have had this nagging doubt about being able to fit everything on the bikes. Last night I convince Ted to come into the garage and pack up some of the bigger things we have to carry like the tent, sleeping bags ,sleeping pads, cooking gear, tools and spare parts. To my great surprise we look like we'll have plenty of room for everything else. It's funny how it's so hard to see that ahead of time. At this point our gear is a pile of stuff on the garage floor. We'll pack up tomorrow after we get the food bought and the clothes washed.

Oh, the Tour of Albuquerque Century ride went fine. We ended up riding about 113 miles in a little under 7 hours. From the ride we learned to put sunscreen on everywhere or you get burned in funny places like the inside of the elbows.

Here are some pictures of the bikes before being loaded.