May 29, 2023
first day
Kirks to mesa lake
Yesterday around 4, we arrived at Kirk's house and began our unpacking/packing. Some of these things have never been packed before, so it was bound to take alot of time. We started slowly pulling things out of the car, laying them out on the porch, and putting them some place or another in the bike bags. At some point I realized that my pedal was part way off. The pedal was separating from where the bearings sit, and I had never seen a pedal that worked like this. With no allen key spot on the outside of the pedal, I had to drive back into town to find a crescent wrench. The only place that was open on the Sunday before Memorial day was walmart. I returned with the wrench about an hour later and luckily put the pedals back together. Hopefully this doesnt happen on the road, but I did have a small tube of loctite, so that should help. We went to sleep with only 30% of the stuff packed, but it was already late. We would have to finish in the morning.
The sun came up early and we got to work eating, packing the tent, and packing the rest of our belongings. It was still slow and I think we finally left the house around 10 am. I was still coughing alot, so we stopped at the DG on the way out of town for some suppresant. The road out of town invevitably went up. We pedaled up the hill to Pino Alto, about 8 miles away. It was really hard riding and I thought the muscle I pulled from coughing was causing my pain. It felt like a cramp, so I took some salt tabs. The town was odd and we tried not to stay long. We stopped and had lunch in front of the closed saloon.
I soon realized that my cramps were gas related, and had a productive lunch. We did fill up our bottles though, since we didnt know when we would see water next. I have the ability to carry 5 liters, I think Mary can cary 6. We planned to take the CDT alternate, which is 7 miles shorter, but takes a singletrack route, but as soon as we saw the start of it, we decided to take the pavement. It was steep and very washed out. I didnt know if we could make it on something that difficult this early on and Mary's new front bag was dangerously close to her front wheel. We pedaled the extra mileage and passed the small town of Lake Roberts. Notthing was open, but it didnt matter since we packed at least 5 days worth of food (in our defense, it looks like we wont see a grocery store until Grants, NM about 200 miles away at the time).
At around 40 miles, we found a campsite called Mesa, overlooking the lake. We were pretty gassed at this point and were afraid we over did it on our first day.
We couldnt get to the lake, but there was water there so we took nice Nalgene baths and ate dinner at a picnic table (the excellence of picnic tables cannot be overstated). I took my front rack off and put it onto Mary's (since I didnt realllly need it) bike and all was well until I discovered what had been biting me. I initially thought that there were no-see-ums, but never saw any. I figured I was having a brain issue from the altitude (~7000) and the long term use of Delsym, but I eventually saw very small worms. Like, half a mm size worm. And they were on EVERYTHING. They were raining from the half dead tree above our site. We decided to move sites. I thought the stuff in the tent would be safe, but they had made it through the mesh! We didnt have the rain fly on, since its super dry, so we had to take everything out, wipe it off or shake it,, and walk it to the next site over. This sucked and it was getting late, but it had to be done.
Mileage:38
Up:3563
Down:3661
Ride time:7
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