March 25, 2013
Day 31: Roswell, NM to Tatum, NM
Peggy's a teacher and her son a high school student, so they're up and out of the house early. That puts me back on the road at 7:15, cranking straight into the sun on a 26-degree morning. I'm able to bundle up everything but my hands, which even in gloves freeze in about 17 seconds.
I stock up for another long, empty stretch of highway at the first mini-mart I see. It's packed with people buying breakfast and drinks and gas to keep their mornings going. Also, at 7:30 sharp, one of the employees pulls off the thick chain that's been locking the doors to the beer section of the wall of refrigerators. I've never seen something so harsh to keep people from buying alcohol overnight. It's kind of sad. Although not as sad as the skinny woman with the wet hair who waits eagerly for the chain to fall so that she can buy a half rack of Keystone Light, which she then cuts in line to pay for.
I pass through the center of Roswell, which has about the number of banks and municipal offices and five-story buildings you'd expect in a city of 50,000 people. After a couple more miles of modest homes I turn back onto the highway that runs dead straight to the east. I ride by a few farmhouses, some fields of dark green sod, and corrals of horses who stare at me with a mix of concern and curiosity.
Then I climb a long hill and return to the nothing of yesterday. There are no mountains, no hawks, no winding creek beds, no friendly small towns. It's barbed wire fences, telephone poles, a few cows, some short and squat water towers, and the occasional twirl bob and twirl of an oil derrick at work. Aside from a couple of pronghorn antelope that watch me from beyond the fence line, the most notable thing about the morning is that the yellow and turquoise license plates of New Mexico are now outnumbered about ten to one by the red, white, and blue of Texas. Still, it's not bad riding at all. The surface is good, traffic light, and the wind reasonable. And even though I'm always climbing steadily up, the rise is almost imperceptible.
But.
An asterisk hangs in my head all the way. I know the wind is coming. It always is out here. It's just a question of when and how strong. The feeling of impending doom reminds me of my last trip in Western Kentucky and Illinois and Kansas, where in May and June I hustled to pack up and hit the road before the first light of day because I knew temperatures of more than a hundred degrees were on their way — and that it was only a matter of time until they turned my life into a sweating, swearing, disgusting furnace.
It's a little different with the wind, because it tends not to build and build and build throughout the day. Out here at least, it stays calm all morning and then, right around mid-day, someone plugs in the giant fan in the sky and things stay more or less crazy until just before dark. With that thought in the back of my mind, I pedal with diligence and purpose and try to put as much distance between Roswell and me as I can before the show begins.
Along the way I approach from half a dozen angles some of life's most serious and significant topics: politics, faith and religion, and the collected works of Phil Collins.
Today I get lucky: the winds stay on the low end of things and keep more at the side than the front. The gusts still slow me down, but I know it could be so much worse. The farther east I go, the landscape somehow manages to turn even more featureless. The hills go away, the cars go away, and the alive-looking plants go away. Oil derricks and storage tanks, all rusted, are just about the only thing to look at. Houses pop up well back from the road every few miles, but for long stretches it's nothing but yellow grass and the corpses of dead brown bushes all the way to the horizon.
Not far from Tatum, the town sends out a welcoming committee. A herd of six antelope watch me pedal and then roll to a stop. As soon as I start to move again, they begin to trot and then run to try and match my speed. When I stop in a tenth of a mile, they stop and then start to walk closer to the fence that separates us. When I pedal some more, they take off in stride with me, kicking up clouds of dust with their 24 hooves while casting long shadows in the setting sun. It goes on like this for three or four more rounds until at last they break for the north and I continue on to the east alone.
Just up the road, more than 75 miles after leaving Roswell, I head through Tatum, a place with 650 people that's the first town I've seen since early this morning. After gorging myself on a giant plate of Mexican food, I wobble over to the town park, where I set up the tent and dive inside right away to protect myself from cold and wind that cut deep. In the glow of the moonlight and the community center across the way, I think about how tough today could have been — and how decent it turned out instead. New Mexico looked out for me. I also think about the last two days, and how strange it's been to ride across vast expanses of almost nothing, with no towns or parks or often even homes to break the pattern.
But here's the thing about riding across America: to do it, you have to ride across all of America — even the dull and repetitive spans of emptiness that take days or even weeks to cross. These places aren't the most exciting or the most memorable or the most photogenic, but they're still an important and undeniable part of the American experience.
The forecast calls for the coldest night I've spent outside so far: 25 degrees. I keep on the three layers I've worn all day, then throw on rain pants over two sets of shorts. To keep my feet warm, I put on socks and then wrap everything below my ankles in my rain jacket. After that I cocoon myself in a fleece blanket and wedge the whole package into the sleeping bag. With the bag zipped tight and its hood covering my head, I feel prepared for the freeze that's on its way.
Today's ride: 82 miles (132 km)
Total: 1,445 miles (2,326 km)
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