LAS VEGAS, NM—It was still raining in Pecos when we awoke at the monastery. The Benedictine brothers had prepared a nice breakfast of some kind of egg and spinach casserole and melon slices. Mike and I ate with a couple of nuns visiting from Texas.
Everybody knew the weather was bad. The Abbey’s cook came over to tell us that if we waited to leave we could eat lunch with them. She said it would be hamburgers and fries. One of the brothers said we were welcome to remain for another day. A woman who was a guest there said she had prayed for the two of us and our safety.
But Mike and I, ever optimistic about the weather, left as soon as we were able and headed south towards I-25 and the old Route 66 frontage road that we would be following. Briefly, the sun shone on us as we left the Abbey. Three miles later the sleet was biting off parts of our faces as we twisted our heads to avoid the pain. “Biting sleet” should be added to a weather reporter’s vocabulary.
Nine miles into our trip we were both soaked…especially our hands and feet. Mike stopped riding, took off his freezing gloves, and stuffed his hands inside his pants trying to warm them up. But it was Mike’s feet that were the real problem, painfully cold with sleet pounding the sandals he was wearing. Lamely, I suggested that there was a store 10 miles off and maybe we could dry them off and get plastic bags to tie over them.
Then it quit raining. The sun played peek-a-boo. And at times, the wet pavement looked like it was about to start steaming. Mike rode on at a furious pace, trying to warm up. I fell behind, eventually stopping at a place where the grass was long and just a little damp. There was a view of I-25 below, and it was peaceful.
One of the biggest problems with riding in horrible weather is the stress it puts on the rider, both mentally and on the body. It is exhausting. But here above the freeway, laying down in the long grass eating peanut butter and jelly on tortillas, I was so relaxed I started thinking of my childhood…how I remember a scene somewhat like this in my book of camp craft, a boy eating by himself on a peaceful hillside while the world drove down the highway beneath him.
I finally caught up with Mike at the Giant station. He had been fixing another flat. One thing I know from all the bicycle touring I have done is that fully 90% of all bike problems have to do with the wheels: flat tires, blown tube stems, broken spokes, rim problems. So, if touring, try to get the best tires and rims you can.
We made it to Las Vegas by about 5:30. We had called ahead at our favorite place to spend the night: the historic Plaza Hotel.
Frankly, we were exhausted. Mike took a nap while I went off to take a few pictures. Oh, I noticed the new plantings in containers around the plaza and down Bridge St. They’re nice. They show people care.
I also notice something I had never seen before. In a vacant lot between two buildings they had constructed what looked like a storefront with a roof over it. But the thing is, it was open at both ends. It offered access to the street for people using the parking lots behind the buildings. Called the Bridge Street Breezeway, it seemed like a wonderfully imaginative way to deal with a vacant lot. It looked like another storefront, not a hole in the urban landscape.
But it there was one other thing that made me stop and take notice, it was what appeared to be a tombstone in a small traffic triangle in front of the Plaza Hotel. Basically, it was in the middle of the street. The side facing traffic said, “LOPEZ.” The back side said it was a memorial to Don Jesus and Mama Lucy Lopez and their extraordinarily generous spirit.
I had heard of the “Mama Lucy Gang.” However, I didn’t know anything about them except that from the sound of the “Gang” part they must be pretty bad. It turned out that Mama Lucy Lopez had a restaurant right here in the Plaza Hotel. At the time, Highlands University used part of the hotel as a dormitory. Mama Lucy offered meal tickets to the students for $30/month. This included lunch and dinner.
She turned nobody away. She fed everybody who was hungry and always found a way for them to work it out or give them credit. It might have been bad business, but it got quite a few kids through college…and many of them later became politicians. The Mama Lucy Gang were liberals of both parties who emulated the same kind of caring spirit that Mama Lucy showed. Mama Lucy Lopez was never a politician; she was a generous, caring person who influenced a generation of New Mexico’s political leaders…and her name, as well as her husband’s, is now memorialized on a tombstone in a traffic triangle in Las Vegas, New Mexico.
Tomorrow: A 67 mile ride to Santa Rosa. Here’s hoping there is no headwind. We’re tired tonight.
By the way, have you checked out the other sections in Off the Road in NM? They’re at the very bottom of the page. Click on the Glossary section. Scroll down through the towns, to the architectural styles. Interesting.
