Day 4 Deming to Silver City: Wicked Winds

May 30, 2022

“The wind is mocking us today,” Patrick says. “It’s in our faces, then, when we stand here, it seems to disappear,” he continues as we are taking a break at 24 miles. We have started cycling very early at 5:15am, trying to beat the wind and the heat. And now the wind has been picking up. Later we find out there were 20mph winds mostly from the West…the direction of the road is NW.

Starting out in the dark, we have our headlights on, Rachel for the front, and Patrick on the back of the bike for the traffic behind. The sun rises over a mountain in the distance. The shoulder in places is a step up from dirt, wide with rumble strips just on the edge of the white line. Crossing into Grant County the shoulder becomes a little better. The landscape looks flat, but we are slowly gaining elevation.

As the wind gets stronger, we ride one mile marker at a time and finally reach Hurley’s Gas station. There is a restaurant and a motel that we didn’t know about. Had we known we may have considered riding to here yesterday making a short day into Silver City. We stop and have an ice cream and ice cold lemonade with 15 miles to go. The past 7 miles the road turned so we have some relief from the wind. After Hurley the road turns more westerly we expect the wind to be against us. It’s time to catch a ride.

We start riding, and Patrick throws his thumb up to get a ride. A truck pulling a flatbed trailer stops.

Sam is a mechanical/electical engineer who lives in Las Cruces and is driving to pick up his daughter’s car to help in her move to El Paso. Sam is a native to New Mexico. As we drive through the next town Bayard, he points out the bike path that goes to the next town of Santa Clara. The lights lining the path had been a project of his. The path was built to make it safer for the kids to go to a pond.

The road starts to be a deep rolling hills going into Silver City. Rachel says, “at this point, I would have cried.” Sam drops us off at the Albertson’s market just to the east of Silver City. We pick up a few things we will need for the next section to Pie Town and make our way to the Murray Hotel in the Historic District of Silver City. It’s 13:15, we are too early to check into a room. We are expecting our first box of supplies to be at the desk but it’s not there. Patrick sends a text to Dave, the WS host who we’d mailed the box to; when he could no longer host us, Dave was going to leave the box here at the hotel. We wait in the lobby for a while then decide to go for something to eat.

We walk a few blocks to a Mexican truck and have two Pork burritos. We get a text from Dave that he will be here in a 15 minutes. After finishing eating, we head back to the hotel and wait in the lobby. Dave arrives and we have a very nice visit and express our appreciation of him bringing us our box. By the time the visit is over, we can move into our room. We clean up, rest and later go to the Little Toad Brewery and Distillery a block away.

Sam delivers us to the Albertson's parking lot

Today's ride: 42 miles (68 km)
Total: 115 miles (185 km)

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