NOB HILL—Today was the first day that I woke up and my legs felt tired. I believe it must have been that really difficult morning yesterday with the wind and hills. But all in all, I had expected to feel much worse at this point. We had been on the road for four days and I generally felt great!
Mike and I left Grants and headed east on the old Route 66. We hadn’t gone three miles when I saw something dark far ahead on the shoulder of the road. As we got closer it turned out to be three more CD hikers. We slapped hands as we rode by.
That made a total of ten Continental Divide hikers we had met in the last 12 hours. And then there was the Swede in the next room who was mountain biking from Mexico to Seattle.
The reason I mention this is the huge number of hiker/biker types traveling through New Mexico. Yet signs that welcome these kinds of travelers are rare, very rare.
However, the local people we met today were extremely friendly. Most people waved to us as they passed. In some cases, the whole car waved with hands and arms coming out of every window.
We ran into several sets of tourists driving old Route 66 between Grants and Laguna Pueblo. One couple was from Manchester, England. We talked to more at Villa de Cubero. One couple was towing a trailer and on the trailer was a model of the car that was doing the towing. It turned out the model car opened up and a wheel chair was stored inside.
This part of Route 66 still has many of the buildings that served travelers back in the Route’s heyday. Some are in decay, but that doesn’t hurt their appeal. Even the bridges have importance to many. Two bridges I saw today dated from 1936.
This was our longest ride so far on this trip: 60 miles. We stopped often to take pictures and talk to strangers. Stories even ooze from the buildings themselves. Like the Ernest Hemingway story at Villa de Cubero.
It seems that somehow Hemingway found himself in one of the motel rooms in back of the store. He spent his time writing and drinking. He did his eating across the street at the cafe which, though vacant, is still standing. He didn’t seem to take very good care of his appearance. Also, he kept throwing his empty bottles out the rear window of his room.
One day, upon Hemingway entering the cafe, the woman who owned the place muttered something about “el diablo puerco.” She was saying something like, “Here comes that dirty devil!” Of course Ernest Hemingway, who had lived in both Spain and Cuba, understood the woman very well, but he said nothing.
Some time later Hemingway’s friend Vivian Vance, who had a ranch in the Cubero area,
went into the restaurant and gave the owner a copy of “The Old Man and the Sea” inscribed “El Diablo Puerco” by Hemingway himself.
Such is the story. Just another tale from Route 66.
The ride today included riding on I-40 for about 30 miles. It’s not that pleasant. Not only does a cyclist have to worry about cars, he has to keep dodging the cause of many of the toughest tire problems: shredded steel-belted tires. Those little pieces of steel wire get into your tires and you can’t find them. But they sure show up next time you go riding! It happened to me today.
The end of today’s ride was in front of the Route 66 Casino at the eastern edge of the Laguna Reservation. That’s about 25 miles from my home in Albuquerque’s Nob Hill. My tire went flat in the parking lot! However, we had options…and one of them was to call up my wife MaryAnn and ask her to pick us up and please bring the bike rack.
That is exactly what we did. So tonight I’m at home and will be here tomorrow as well. Then we’ll be back on the road, traveling by train to Santa Fe and riding east from there to Pecos. So long for now.
