The stars at night, are big and bright

I've forgotten some of the details, so these posts will be a little shorter. We're back in the desert, so I'm finding less interesting stuff to take pictures of. Let's see what's knocking around the ol' tinker.

Day double 2:
We left Las Cruces after waking up slow. The night before we got two pizzas from a pizza place next to our hotel, one of the pizzas was missing the sausage so they made an entire extra one for free for us. It was hard to get up from that food coma. But, we said our prayers to Mormon Jesus and hit the road.

Jerome likes to finish his prayers with a high pitched "YEYEYEYE".

We had a little trouble navigating through Las Cruces, but after riding through their college campus, we finally made it out of the city.

I have no idea what the fuck I was trying to take a picture of here. Maybe a football field?

After getting out of town, we found ourselves surrounded by farms once again. It was shocking how many pecan groves there were out there.

Yes, mom, I'm riding down the middle of the road. Somehow I've survived long enough to see adulthood.

We stopped at a small restaurant for late breakfast and were surprised to find an extremely nice guy named Scott that we ran into two days earlier. We caught up for a little bit, then he went on his way. When we asked for our check, we were told that it had already been payed for. Scott took care of it without saying a word. Jerome almost shed a tear. We vowed to pay it forward, so if you're reading this, come find us and we'll buy you breakfast. Once we got back on the road, we were greeted by a refreshing view.

Fucking nothing.

Before we knew it, we were getting close to El Paso. I was going a little too fast, so Jerome had me swap out bikes.

Did you laugh at that? Yeah, me neither.

As we rolled into El Paso, we were reminded of the hills we would have to climb the next day.

Once you get past the nothing, there's some pretty hills out there.

We finished off the day in the nicest hotel we'd stayed in yet. Got a taste of how the other half lives, and it was kind of boring.

Day 23:
For some ungodly reason our route sent us through the middle of El Paso. We found ourselves floundering through traffic for the first hour of the day. I thought it was fun, Jerome almost had a stroke (kidding, mom, he's fine). Once we made it to the downtown area, things started calming down.

Well I've neva! Tall buildings

We skirted our way through the suburbs of El Paso and saw some more skeletons of the past.

Drive in theater lives matter!

Back into some farm land and I finally realized that we were in Texas.

"One nation, under God," with liberty and justice for some.

Things were getting pretty barren, but we inched closer to our destination, Fort Hancock (my 5 year old humor makes me giggle every time).

Someone needs to see a doctor about low T.

We got to the only motel in town and settled in for the night. When we turned the lights out, I started feeling bugs crawl all over me.

Day 24:
We woke up, opened the curtains and were greeted with a window infested with nats and other small insects.

We intruded on their home. For that, I am sorry.

Needless to say, I might have gotten four hours of sleep that night. We got the fuck out of that motel and hit the road. On the way out of town, I started realizing everything was a little shitty.

Welcome to the set of Dawn of the Dead.

We've been noticing this with a lot of these small towns. All of the jobs are slowly disappearing and all of the kids are migrating to the bigger cities. They sort of just slowly dry up and die. Hopefully the motels stay open for those poor bugs. But there are still people living the dream out there!

Had to restrain myself from jumping the electric fence to pet the goats.

After a few desolate miles, we rolled into one of those ghost towns named Esperanza.

My ex named her new road bike Sex Machine. I told her to google 'sex machine', she immediately changed it to Esperanza.

After that town, it was a long slog before anything interesting popped up. But looky here what I found!

Texas's state bird: the elusive diamondback rattler

After that treat, we glided into the town of the night; Sierra Blanca. Once again, plenty of extremely nice people in this town, but not much as far as businesses go. There were a couple more fossils of better days.

I'm getting the uck out of here.

We met four more cyclists doing the same route as us that night, all gentlemen and scholars. Once we found the motel du jour, we did a quick bug check and crawled in bed for the night.

Day 25:
We jumped out of bed for breakfast in town with the other cyclists. Once we sat down, we started noticing it getting a little dark out. Before we knew it, we were in the middle of a downpour.

No, this isn't Jerome's doing

We decided to hunker down and wait for it to blow over. After a couple hours of waiting, I decided to hit the road. It had pretty much dissipated by then, didn't really even get wet. Not a lot happened on the ride, it was only a 35 mile day. Probably the coolest thing was having a train fly by.

Every time I want to give them the honking motion, but then I remind myself of how fucking loud the horn is.

We sailed in to Van Horn to crash for the night. For dinner we grabbed some BBQ. For some reason, Jerome decided to chip his tooth on a rib bone. It was like a quarter of his tooth. God I can't even think about it without cringing. But he's not in any pain and we've got a dentist down the road. Tomorrow is a big day of Texas riding, so I'm turning out the lights and hitting the hay.

Quit pecan at their nuts

Somewhere along the road this ride got less stressful and more fun. Things are getting easier and I think we're finally learning how to really relax. This is a snap shot of the last couple days.

Day 20:
Woah. 20 days. Time is flying. Today we left Silver City. Contrary to popular belief, the city is not made of silver. Jerome was feeling nervous about how much climbing we were going to have to do, luckily his hitch hiking thumb was strong today. But first we had to make it to the base of the climb. This was a cool day for me because I've raced through the same roads that we were taking at the tour of the Gila. Along the way we found some evidence of the race.

1300 watts to go 16mph. Sprint game is on fleek.

After going over a bunch of steep rollers on the way out of town, we took a little break at an overlook of an active mine.

Jerome almost filled the mine with pee

They also had a giant tire at the resting area  with the bottom 1/4 cemented into the ground. It made me think of when I was a kid, we had a smaller version in our back play area. We used to just piss all over the inside of that thing instead of going back in the house to use the bathroom. I'm pretty sure my neighbor even took a dump in there once. Moral of the story; I wasn't going anywhere near the inside of the tire, BUT

Rules are made to be broken.

Once again, the views were amazing as we were starting to head up the big climb of the day.

What you don't see here is me drooling all over myself

At some point I had taken off to get the climb over with and, sure enough, once again I find myself getting honked and yelled at by a big ol' truck. It pulls over and there's Jerome with his bike in the back. So of course, I unload my bags and continue towards the Gila National Forest.

If you look close, you can just barely make out a signature Jerome peace sign coming from the back seat

Once again, I suffered up the climb while Jerome sat at the top. The climb up Emery's pass was worth it, though.

While you're suffering, why don't you go ahead and break your neck trying to look at everything.

When I finally got to the top, there was Jerome patiently waiting. He made some new friends and got to take a little nap. To that I responded:

Fuck you.

We rode another 200 meters to the very top and were rewarded with a wicked sweet view of everything below.

Signature Jerome peace signs. He promptly turned around and pissed off the edge.

The ride down the hill was perfect. Maybe 17 miles of downhill, I'll save you the boring details and give you the pics.

This

Ride

Was

Sick

We finished off the day in the town of Caballo. We were planning on staying at the state park, but after shooting the shit with an RV park owner, he offered us a small cabin for $25. Fuck yes, we'll take it.

Jerome pissed off the balcony as soon as it got dark out

We dined on cold canned soup and corn chips, couldn't be happier.

Day 21:
We took our time leaving the cabin, it was fun just hanging out there.

I sure hope these weren't some sort of prostitution love shacks.

As we were gearing up to leave, we talked to a guy named Joe Ellis who had a lot of interesting stories and a dog named "little dog". One of his most interesting was about how he built his own motorcycle (machined everything himself) and pushed it to 198mph on the salt flats. To prove it, he showed us a newspaper clip with him on the front page. My life will never be as impressive as 72 year old Joe's.
The day wasn't a very eventful one, we rode through plenty of farms, though!

Veal farm! Each pen had a small fence in front of it with a calf hanging out. I bet they're all on their way to leading long fulfilling lives.

The whole day we followed the Rio Grande River, made for a fun windy road.

I wonder how much veal blood gets washed into that river?

We went through a very small town, and Jerome got really excited about this

What's JT stand for, Jumbo Tits? Oh, right, Jerome Tempel.

One of the coolest things about today's ride was how many different types of farms rode through. Cotton, corn, more cotton. One of the coolest was the pecan tree farms.

Each tree strategically placed for optimal growth

As we got closer to Hatch, we noticed more and more pepper farms. They're known for their peppers/chiles. If you've ever had hatch chiles, they're from Hatch, NM.

Jerome contemplating pissing on some chiles.

A few more miles and we made our way to Las Cruces.  There are lots of nice people here, comfy bed, and toilets to piss in. Good night, and next time I write, we'll be in Texas. Hook 'em horns!

Jerome: "I think I'll rename you Beastmaster."

I love camping, but I'm starting to really appreciate a comfy bed. After a couple days in the wilderness and my first poop in a toilet with running water, it's time to catch up.

Day 17:
Where did we leave off? Ah, yes, Safford. Our destination for today was an almost non existent town called Three Way, so of course we dubbed today sexual innuendo day. If you're easily offended by that kind of stuff, you may want to skip this day. Mom, sorry, you have to suffer through this one.

The morning greeted us with some beautiful weather and great views of the mountains surrounding us. We rolled down the highway, I can't honestly remember if it was good or bad, it's been a couple big days, so I'll just say it was a good ride. Not far outside of town we ran into a couple of horses having some "fun".

A couple of horses getting dangerously close to 69ing. I wasn't going to stick around to find out.

Not much further down the road I noticed that we were passing an important land mark.

State prison, we all know what goes on there. I'm not going to touch that with a bar of dropped soap.

Eventually we turned off onto a quieter road and noticed right away that the road went straight towards the mountains. The road went basically straight up, but nothing unmanageable. It was almost intimidating watching this wall of impending doom coming straight at you, but good lord was it beautiful. It's probably boring reading me say that everything is beautiful out here, but there's really no other word i can use to describe it.

Impending doom? More like climb like Froome. What's up rap career

The climb was actually really fun. The road was straight for the first half, but when it started getting curvy (tee hee) things really started getting interesting.

And to your left, you'll notice Thumb Butte. Yeah, that's actually it's name.

And the climb just kept getting cooler and cooler.

Around every corner was a new voluptuous butte to look at.

A few scenic views later and I was over the pass. Thankfully, there was one of these before the descent.

"Safety pullout," you can't make this shit up.

A huge 8 mile descent later and I finally rolled into Three Way. The view from the top was crazy.

I think I got over 50mph on this one. Gotta love those speed wobbles.

There was a small ranger station at the bottom that had a special campground specifically for cyclists. We had to get the ranger to turn the sprinkler off so we didn't get wet at 6am (these innuendos are too easy).

Grabbing some much needed water and shade.

We set up camp for the night and hung out while enjoying the wide open starry night sky.

Day 18:
Today was a big climbing day. Jerome was very apprehensive after looking at the topographic map. Lots of switchbacks usually means pretty steep grades. Jerome had a plan that I'm surprised worked, but I'll get in to that later. First we packed up and hit the road, saying goodbye to the great camping spot.

Weird deceased drive in theater next to our camp.

The clouds were looking a little rainy that morning, but nothing precipitated. Made for some cool views though.

Cyclists love winding roads. Roadkill does not.

I usually take off on the climbs and wait for Jerome at the top or turn around and ride back up with him. I was expecting to not see him for a long time due to the steepness and length of the climb. Not far into the climb, I hear a car honking behind me with someone yelling at me. Sure enough, it was Jerome hitchhiking a ride to the top in a pick up!

God damn cheating bastard.

Well, if he was going to cheat, so was I. We unloaded all of my bags into the back with Jerome's bike. As soon as I stepped back on the pedals it felt like the bike was going to shoot out from underneath me. The rest of the climb was much faster and easier without all the baggage. On the way up, it kicked up real step for the last 3 miles. Half way up the steep stretch I saw a guy on the side of the road carrying a 16 foot cross. Jesus (literally)! I stopped and asked if he needed food or water, he rejected politely and "god blessed" me. I took off like a bat out of hell (seems like an appropriate analogy).

Crossed over into Apache national Forest at some point.

I hit the top and had to snap a picture. As per usual, the view was breathtaking.

Started from the bottom now we're here

I found Jerome in a campground at the top, to which his response was something like "how the fuck did you get up here so fast? I'm going to rename you Beastmaster." It was pretty cool how these huge pine trees popped up out of nowhere. I'm always shocked how quick the plant life changes.

Muscle man for my nephews Eli and Ryan

Once we ate some lunch (getting pretty  fucking sick of peanut butter and bread) we started descending and heading towards the state line! Fuck yes, two states down, 5 to go.

Goodbye Arizona, don't bother writing.

Me: "when's this ride going to start getting hard?"

Jerome: "fuck you!"

Only a few feet from the state line we crossed into the Gila National Forest. This place is so cool. I've done the race out here a couple times, and I've always hated how fucking hard it is. Getting a chance to really pay attention to my surroundings this time around makes me appreciate it in a whole new light. The forest is magical. We had two adult and a baby javelinas skitter across our path. A deer almost committed suicide. Seeing life again is  refreshing. Unfortunately we had to leave, but we came across a farmer's market in another one of those, almost extinct small towns; Mule Creek.

Old one room schoolhouse. Jerome is bragging about how good he is at hitchhiking.

We sat around for 30-45 minutes just shooting the shit with the locals. They were extremely nice and generous. It was really fun just to have company with some really good salt of the earth people. Again, we had to say goodbye and continue on our pilgrimage. The beautiful grass land made for some more great riding.

There's a lot of landscape pictures. Fucking deal with it.

We found a small restaurant in the town of Cliff, had a great meal and flapped gums with the owner for a while. They let us steal two and a half gallons of their water, and we headed to our campsite. The site was well of the beaten path with a big climb up to the reservoir. Jerome begrudgingly made it up the climb and we set up camp. For some reason we decided to just split a loaf of bread for dinner. Not enough food after the big day. Luckily, an extremely generous family offered us a burger after hearing us tell someone else we were riding across the country. We probably talked with them for an hour and a half about everything in life. Again, my faith in humanity is never lost, but renewed. I tucked Jerome in and we called it a night.

Day 19:
Phone was dead today, but there wasn't much to take pictures of. We climbed all day, again. Crossed over the continental divide, which was kind of cool. The descent into Silver City felt good to be done with the day. I got some bike work done the bike shop in town, and then we just sort of hung out for the rest of the day. Huh, I guess I could just be boring and sum up days like this, pretty easy.