May Day! May Day!

First I want to thank Jim for doing the guest blog yesterday. It was great to get another perspective.

Today was suppose to be an uneventful ride – 70 miles with a lot of rolling hills (about 3500 feet of climb) from Santa Fe, NM to Las Vegas, NM. We started the ride on the old Santa Fe trail which is paved over by I-25 for about 20 miles North of Santa Fe. As we got on the highway, there was some construction where the guys were filling cracks in the pavement with tar. I was riding with Lon and he pointed in the distance and said “That does not look good”. We got near the construction and were waved by the guys yelling “Hot! Hot!” but were able to get by the construction without any issue. At one point I whistled to get one of the guy with a blower (I think he was blowing sand from the road) out of out way. About a mile down the road, near an exit we saw the support van parked on an exit with Jim checking things out…Apparently he was following a few riders who rode ride through some of the tar and splattered some of the hot tar on his forearm. There was also a lot of tar on his frame and rear wheel. After taking count of body and bicycle parts, he rode on to the first rest stop a few miles away where he changed his tires that had tar on it. Further down the road, he bought some baby oil and was successfully able to remove the tar (along with some skin) from his arm. I helped Jim bandage the wound and we got on. I hope he will heal soon.

The rest of the ride was more rollers, we stopped at small village of San Jose, which has an old Rt. 66 bridge and looks like a peaceful community.

Postscript for yesterday’s ride – La Bajada hill. I rode up with Lon, Susan, Elenore and David Bell. We took a different path (pre 1920s) which was never paved and has old rocks lined surface. We had to hike more than the rest of the folks who took the path that was built later. I realized this morning that a different set of muscles were soar from the hiking. Here are couple of my pictures from the ride yesterday. Note Lon gearing down his “single speed” bicycle. We know there is trouble ahead.

Tomorrow there is forecast for rain so I am prepared with rain gear.