And now we skip ahead a little...

Okay - I am a week behind, and can't bring myself to sit down and try and think of everything that happened - so skipping to yesterday and we will backfill later.

We are in New Mexico now... and yesterday was my birthday. A great day of riding from Grants (which is a dump) to Pie Town. A nice arch along the way...

We had a rest day in Grants and the only thing to do was visit El Malpais Monument - which was pretty cool. We rode our bikes up to the Ice Caves and Caldera - a round trip of 50 miles or so.

The night before, we went to the dirt track races, slamming beers in the van and whooping it up with the rednecks. We left when we ran out of beer and the exhaust fumes almost killed us. Giddyup! We hit a great little Mexican bar on the way back, shot some pool, then midnight breakfast at the local Denny's. Almost like a night in Durango.

Anyway - on to Pie Town. There are 2 places there that serve pie. One was closed Mondays, and the other shut down at 4. So Vinnie and I did an afternoon time trial, riding hard and making it there with 30 minutes to spare. Our reward? A sweet chunk of Blackberry Pie, a la mode. Happy Birthday to me!

The campground was a dirt and weed field. In fact it was full of cockleburrs, which are also known as goat heads. Instant flats for many of us and we spent the next hour repairing them while we waited for dinner. Joy.

Today we headed to Reserve. A short stage, but we added some mileage in order to cut down on the slog that we have tomorrow. We were finally stopped by a closed road, where the van picked us up and shuttled us to yet another shitty camp. We have 100+ miles to ride tomorrow, after we suffer the hour+ shuttle back to where we left off today.

Gonna be a long day in the saddle.