March 24, 2013
Day 30: Capitan, NM to Roswell, NM
I check the weather when I wake up at 8:00: 15 degrees.
Not a fucking chance.
I wake up again an hour later: 22 degrees.
Keep trying.
I sleep, write, pack, and then grab breakfast at Capitan's only restaurant, which takes up another two hours. And still when I leave town it's only in the 30s. I bundle up and get ready for a long day of cold-ass riding.
From the start the road rises and falls and twists and turns — always easy, but never flat or straight. At times it runs through ranches or the open fields of federal land, and then just as soon it rounds a corner and takes me into a rocky canyon and past small, old, run-down homes where the people inside seem to be just scraping by. All the way the wind blows cold and more or less straight into my face.
Where I'm from, trucks are something people use to haul around bicycles or furniture or a couple of hockey bags. Sometimes they'll tow a boat or haul away a trailer full of garbage, but that's as serious as it gets. Out here the trucks that howl past me are the real deal: huge tires, massive brush guards, winches, fat and loud exhaust pipes. Half of them have custom-welded bumpers or lifts or entire beds that look strong enough to stand up to a mortar strike.
About 25 miles in, the two-lane rural road of the morning ends and the four-lane divided highway that will take me to Roswell begins. That adds to the headwind the challenge of more traffic, semi-trucks, and shoulders with rumble strips and drain covers and chunks of metal to dodge. Along the way I pass through towns like Hondo and Tinnie and Picacho, all of which are tiny collections of houses and a few storefronts that haven't been alive in at least a decade. In between, deer drink in the streams just out of view of traffic, and black hawks with white showing on the undersides of their enormous wings hook left and right in uneven swings on the building breeze up high.
The farther east I ride within the low of the Hondo River valley, the more the landscape begins to take on a different character. The tall and distant mountains I've looked out on for more than a week are gone, replaced by smooth little hills that rise only a few hundred feet above. And the dark greens of the high country fade away in favor of the browns and yellows and oranges that suggest the dry, near-featureless plains are almost here.
Mostly I just ride. With little to stop for or take pictures of, and not a bench or a chair anywhere along the way on which to sit, I pedal and pedal and then pedal some more. When the wind's in my face it's tougher, and when it's at my side it's easier, but even though I drop 2,000 feet over the course of the day there aren't many relaxed miles.
I have elevation profiles stored on my phone for my route each day when I'm in areas with hills or mountains. It's a good way to avoid the shock of planning for an easy ride only to find myself climbing over a pass instead. (This has happened.) It's a small but important way to keep me from going crazy. But today the system fails. What looks like a steady downhill to end the day turns out to be a series of low, rolling hills with bowl-shaped dips in between. The problem is that the downhill part passes in a few seconds, while the flats and uphills each take minutes in the gusting winds. So instead of the smooth drop I was banking on, I spend most of the next several hours cranking up at eight miles per hour while fighting a huge sidewind that blasts with a cold rage. With nowhere to stop and nothing to look at, I keep my head down and bust out mile after mile of uninspired cranking. Outside I look calm, but in the darkness of my mind I scream at the wind and the hills and the emptiness. The will to keep going fades hard and fast.
Cold and tired and hungry, I make it to the home of my hosts for the night. With Peggy, her husband Rick, and her son Mark I share in meat and potatoes and veggies cooked in a crock pot, and later caramel apple pie. The conversation over dinner is kind of intense, and it's an interesting break from the liberal bubble I live in back home. In about an hour we managed to talk about sequestration, the effect it might have on the next round of elections, the insanity of health insurance costs in America, the implications of the Affordable Care Act, Texas seceding from the union, liberalism versus conservatism, and what it all means for the future of this country. I'm sorry to report that we still don't have it all figured out.
After dinner we watch the Batman movie The Dark Knight Rises. About halfway through I get a text message from Desiree that ends with, "So how was your day?" I text back the short and sweet summary: "Crazy long day. Tough day. Another one coming up tomorrow." Strictly speaking it's true. But it feels like a lie because of what I don't say. What I really want to write is: "I'm staying with a really nice family, but the rest of the day was an awful grind. Now that I'm out of the mountains there's nothing to look at, but the towns are still far apart and the wind is still insane — and it could be like this for weeks. I'm tired all the time, I'm lonely and I miss you, and if I could quit and go home right now I'd probably do it. I don't want to fail and come home, to admit defeat, to toss aside memorable experiences that might be waiting for me in the Midwest or the Northeast. I've said I'm going to ride across the country and I want to make good on that goal and that promise, but I don't know how much longer I can crank out the will to go on."
That of course is too much for a text message, so instead I roll it through my head over and over and over again. Here's the thing: this trip has been difficult and frustrating and challenging almost non-stop, to a degree far beyond what I expected from what promised to be a tough ride. Every time an obstacle stands in my way I have two options: let it bother me and drag me down, or choose to ignore it and pedal on. I've been good at going with the latter, because I know that the most arduous journeys tend to turn out as the most interesting and most rewarding when I see them through to the finish. But each tough day carries with it the risk that it will push me to the point where all the positive self-talk and all the drive to overcome adversity can't keep the aggravation and hardship in check. Then, all of a sudden, the dam breaks and everything that's been shoved deep inside for so long comes rushing out in one overwhelming torrent.
There's been a lot to battle through the last few weeks, and today turned out to be the day that brought down the house.
I figure I'll get over it at some point, but I head to bed so far down I don't want morning to come.
Today's ride: 65 miles (105 km)
Total: 1,363 miles (2,194 km)
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