A work in the park

Nick was fast asleep when I awoke.  I knew he’d been up late on his phone, so I took pity and got dressed in the bathroom to cut down on noise.  Then I grabbed my work stuff and rode out in search of a good spot for programming. I almost left the room carrying a hotel key from the previous town, but spotted the difference at the last minute.

There was one coffee shop in town but it was closed on Sundays.  Arr!  I found a McDonald’s instead and bought a few of their sausage biscuit things.  They were terrible, but filling, and also came with a huge cup of ice water which I sipped all day.

In the late morning I got a text from Nick:  “I guess it was my turn for a pecan pie incident.”  Turns out the menudo had given him nasty indigestion and he’d been stuck in the bathroom for part of the night.  Ouch!

I worked in a park area for something like 5 hours, slowly figuring out how to implement “cut,” “copy,” and “paste” on my vessel-viewing user interface element.

After reaching a checkpoint in my code I chatted with Nick’s mom about his college application status.  He had a few things to do still.  Perhaps there would be time today, or farther ahead on the road.

On the way out of the park I discovered another flat tire, so I sat down and changed it there.  I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be getting any of these flats if I had the usual “Marathon Mondial” touring tires, but running on 100psi street tires for a tour was a worthy experiment and I was glad to be doing it anyway.

On the way back to the hotel I stopped at a store and bought more water and some chocolate, then went to the Mexican place from yesterday and got a chimichanga and a salad.

Back at the hotel Nick had the laptop open and was working on his college essays.  I shared my food with him, then encouraged him to order a pizza so we could wrap up the slices and take them along tomorrow.  It would be 58 miles of the same featureless terrain as yesterday, and I wasn’t sure we would find more food.

A pizza arrived, and after chomping it for a while we wrapped the remaining slices up.

Nick went out on a walk.  He discovered a tank sitting in a field across the road from the hotel and took a bunch of selfies inside it, which was highly amusing.

By the time he got back I was tucked into bed.

Boosted by the wind

Nick and I woke up to some extreme wind today.  Cycling would be dangerous, but it would also be a lot of fun because the wind was pushing straight at our backs, averaging almost 40mph.

We dashed across the town, pursued by tumbleweeds and litter. It was pretty thrilling.

Just as we rolled onto highway 40 my steering went wonky and I knew I had a flat tire.  By the time I stopped and texted Nick about it, he was more than half a mile ahead.  Turning around and pushing back to where I was would be dangerous for him, so he hunkered down where he was, and I launched into my usual tube-swapping procedure.

I got moving again, and caught up to Nick seconds later.  The wind pushed us both to ludicrous speeds along the shoulder of the highway.

We clocked well over 40mph without much effort pedaling.

Mid-day we got to a crowded service station and bought snacks, then hung around eating them and talking about the weather and the locals.

Nick pointed out a shiny truck with dual rear wheels and exclaimed “What does anyone need that for?  It’s obviously some kind of trophy to show he’s a man.  It looks like it hasn’t been used for anything.”

“Maybe hauling groceries,” I said.

As we talked, a man walked by us.  He proceeded over to that very truck, fired it up, and drove around the parking lot until he was facing the bench we were lounging on.  He poked a button and his window went down.  “You referring to this truck?” he said, with an aggressive tone.

I turned to Nick, extremely curious to see how he would handle the situation.

“You listening to our private conversation?” he shot back.

“I just happened to overhear.  Were you talking about this truck here?”  He patted the outside of the door.

Nick grinned at him.  “That’s none of your concern!” he said.

The man gave a blank look, as though he didn’t know how to respond.  Then he pointed at us both and said, “You know what?  Yew can go fuck yourselves.”  Then he drove away.

I couldn’t see over his window to catch a look at his wife, who was in the passenger seat, but I was willing to bet good money she was mortified, and that after about ten minutes of silent driving they were going to have an argument.

“My god he’s so sensitive!” said Nick, laughing.  “Jesus, guy, are you really going to get into a fight with a kid because I don’t like your truck?”

“Yeah, that was weird,” I said, shaking my head.

“You can tell he’s insecure about it.  If he wasn’t, he would have just gone ‘Huh, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about,’ and just ignored us.”

“Yeah.  And if he had good reasons for owning that truck and just wanted to enlighten us, like in a friendly way, he wouldn’t have started off like that.”

There was a pause, and Nick got thoughtful.  “I know it’s different out in the country.  I mean, people here have reasons for owning trucks.  But that just seemed so blatant.”

“It was pretty blatant,” I agreed.  “But on the other hand, I’m guilty of something similar.  I don’t really need five bicycles, but I’m really into bicycles, and all different shapes of them.  Somehow I ended up with five.”

“Well at least bikes are cheap!”

“Hah!  Like these ones?” I pointed at our kickstanded recumbents.  “These are worth more than about a quarter of the cars that passed us today.”

“… Okay, fair enough, but it’s still not the same thing.”

“Yeah, not the same.  But I can kinda relate.  Maybe that guy needed a new truck and he saw the ‘dually’ wheels and went ‘Whoo, I wonder what that’s like.’  And then his wife was all, ‘If that’s going to be our next truck, you better keep it spotless or I ain’t riding in it!'”

“Well it looks like he’s regretting it now, because he sure wants to defend himself.”

I snorted.  “Yep.  That’s some buyer’s remorse right there.”

We packed up and got on the road.

The shoulder of the road remained wide, but became increasingly scattered with scraps of blown-out tires, broken glass, chunks of car body, and rocks.  It would be easy sailing for ten minutes and then suddenly we’d have to stare intently down at the road and dodge around, lest we roll over something sharp.  With a heap of touring gear on 100psi tires, going 40mph and above, the risk of flats was high.

The wind remained helpful but also turned cold in the evening. We kept applying layers until we ran out of layers to apply.

Eventually we rolled into the town with our next booked hotel.  Just as I was going down the ramp I noticed that the rear tire felt mushy, and realized I was about to have another flat.

We checked into the hotel room and sure enough, by the time I had all my gear off the bike the tire was a pancake. I spent the next half an hour swapping the tube and inspecting the inside of the tire, and found some nasty bits of steel stuck in it.

With the tire fixed, I then dashed over to a Mexican restaurant and got enchiladas.  Nick ordered menudo. It was very cold out, and I was glad we were indoors and safe from the wind.

I imported the GPS track and discovered that we’d gone 80 miles and ascended 1300 feet in about five hours.

The pecan pie was cursed!

Today was a day off from moving cross-country.  I gathered my laundry for washing, then my work gear.  There were two cemeteries in the town and I was going to set up the chair and write code from one of them.  Cemeteries are always relaxing. You’d be hard-pressed to find a more relaxed crowd, metabolically speaking.

The laundromat didn’t have an ATM so I rode up the street to a Wells Fargo and accepted a three dollar fee to get some of my own dang money.  From there I zig-zagged a while and took some photos, then returned to the laundromat.

I put my laundry in two machines, for a hot and cold wash.  One machine tried to eat my quarters but the attendant came over and bludgeoned it, and it started up.

I sat at a picnic table outside and read news on my phone.  A ramblin’ man was leaned back on the long seat of his Harley nearby, napping in the sun.  In a few minutes he woke up and spotted my weird bike, unfolded himself, and rambled over to talk to me about the joys of two-wheeled travel.  He was borderline incoherent but I did manage to hear, “I rode a bicycle once, all the way down to the Grand Canyon.  Thought about doing it again but I gotta admit to myself now that I’m too old, heh heh.”

After that he rambled inside and extracted his laundry from a machine – a heavy sleeping bag – which he rolled carefully up on the floor of the laundromat and then stowed in his bike, which he then fired up.  On his first try to leave he turned a little too sharp and capsized his bike in the dust.  I helped him pull it upright since he wasn’t quite strong enough to do so.  “Dang,” I thought.  “I wonder what this guy’s story is.  How did he end up out here, with nothing but boots and a bedroll, and a bike that might crush him any day?”

I gathered my own laundry, and rode over to one of the two graveyards.  It was quaint.  The central-American influence was prominent.

I sat and worked for a couple of hours, then processed some photos and examined maps of the route ahead.  It got cold quickly again, so I rode back to the hotel.

Nick was hungry so we searched for food.  We tried to hit the same restaurant as before but they were already closed.  Their hours didn’t match what they had in Google.  How dare they, in this digital age!

Instead we got takeout at a “Chuck Wagon” place near the highway, including dessert, which for me was a slice of pecan pie in a box.  We watched the “South Park Pandemic Special” back at the hotel, and I crammed the pie into my face just before bed.

Late at night I woke up, feeling quite ill in the stomach.  I tossed for a while but couldn’t sleep.  40 minutes later I got up and barely made it over to the toilet before heaving one giant barf inside.  It was mostly liquid and some pecan pie bits, and as soon as it was out I felt immediately better, and fell back asleep easily.

That pecan pie was cursed!

A good first day on the road

I woke up with my alarm, then snuck out of the hotel as quietly as possible with a bag full of my computing gear and my folding chair.  Time for a status meeting.

I set up in a corner of the parking lot where the sun would hit me, and dialed in to the Thursday meeting.  It went well.  They asked where Nick was and I didn’t want to embarrass him by saying he’d slept through the alarm, so I just said I would “get ahold of him and check on his status.”  It was good to connect with the crew, and the meeting ran long while we wrapped up the business on the itinerary and then just hung around telling database deployment war stories.

We packed up our gear and closed the door on our keycards.  Hoping for a thematic midwest breakfast, we rolled down to the Waffle House.  Closed!

On the way out of the parking lot a woman of about 30 approached us.  She was dirty, with tangled hair and threadbare clothing, and by the goofy, detached expression on her face she also appeared to be riding the shoulder of a hard drug addiction.  I said “good morning” in a friendly manner, but took off to cross the street shortly after.  I didn’t have anything to offer except food, and I could see food piled near her possessions already.  So, people are down and out in Albuquerque too…

We crossed the street and checked out a bagel place.  Good snacks there, as well as coffee drinks and water.  We ate while standing around outside in the COVID-free air.  Nick finished his coffee while I topped off my tires, then we swapped.  It was really interesting being on a bike tour with him — it felt easy, because he was already well used to maintaining a bike, carrying gear, riding a recumbent, and navigating.  I knew the pace would probably annoy him after a while, at least when we started hitting steep hills, because he was used to an electric-assisted drivetrain.  But perhaps conversation and scenery and books would balance it out.

Only a quarter mile outside of Albuquerque we paired our headphones and started listening to The Worst Hard Time on audiobook.  We swapped the lead position a few times but usually Nick was in front, setting the pace.  He had to watch his mirror because the audio connection between his headphones and my phone would drop out if we got more than 20 yards apart.

But it was still worth it, because the book was gripping in its detailed descriptions of the dust storms, starvation, and chaos of the Dirty Thirties.  Nick and I were hooked and we listened to it for all six remaining hours of the day’s biking.

A few hours in, we took a pit stop and adjusted the seat of Nick’s bike, moving it back and making room for his knees to unfold all the way. Then he tried on the shoes with clips.  He was skeptical, but when he did a test ride he found that it was much more efficient.  He had been too cramped before to really use them.  When we took off again he was about 15% faster, and consistently tended to pull ahead of me when he was in front.

THE QUOTABLE NICK, #2

(Nick is standing by the road, regarding a row of eucalyptus trees.)

(Several minutes of horrible fake Australian accents ensue.)

A bit later we stopped to eat leftover pho, and a man came walking out of his house to chat with us.  He had the usual questions about our weird bikes and how far we were going.  We weren’t technically on his property but we were on the drive leading to it, and we were probably the most interesting thing he’d seen from his window in weeks, so I’d been expecting a visit.

It got darker and colder, and by 6:00pm it was fully dark.  We stopped to put on windbreakers, then stopped to put on gloves, then stopped to put on rain pants.  If it had gotten even colder I would have added my sweater and rain socks, but we were alright for the remaining miles to town.

THE QUOTABLE NICK, #3

We ate at Shorty’s BBQ.  The owner reassured us multiple times that we didn’t really need masks, and the place was empty of all customers, and only she was in the front area except for her daughter who delivered the food wearing a mask.  We felt safe enough, though we found all the Trump paraphernalia scattered around the restaurant a bit alarming.  It wasn’t the specific politics that were really the cause of alarm — it was the sheer intensity of it.

We told her the story of how we were riding to Shattuck to see what our recent ancestors had been living through.  She enjoyed that and wished us a safe journey.

Leftovers in hand, we biked the half mile back to the hotel and hunkered down for internet time.

Aaaaaaalbuquerque

Nick and I both had terrible sleep, despite having nine hours to collect it.  The clock claimed we had ten hours, since it was showing 10:00am, but the train had moved us into Mountain Time overnight.

THE QUOTEABLE NICK, #1

We took our time waking up, poking the internet, and watching the view evolve.

We put in a lunch order.  Nick discovered that we could also ask for breakfast items even though the window had passed, and he brought us down a tray of food.  I grumbled a lot about how the other passengers were being lax with their mask wearing, and just sitting around with the doors to their cabins open.  “What’s the point of renting a private room with four solid walls to keep viruses out, if you just leave the door open?”

Nick napped for a while, then woke up and snacked some more.  We both stared out the windows.  I worked for a few hours, then just sat there and grooved on the scenery.

Eventually the train arrived in Albuquerque and we unloaded the bikes.  I made some additional adjustments to get them road-ready, and we took off.

It was one long uphill climb to the edge of the city, headed East.  I lamented that I hadn’t filled my tires all the way to 100.  What we saw of the city was not very pretty.  A broad fractured grid of industrial chaos.  Night fell quickly, and with it came surprisingly cold air.

We got some Vietnamese food at a place three miles from the hotel, opting to eat outside rather than joining the customers within.  The waiter was very accommodating and earned his large tip.  Nick played us music, including Weird Al’s “Albuquerque”.

After that we kept riding East and uphill, to the hotel.  By the time we got there I had a full bladder.  “BOOMER KIDNEYS: ACTIVATE!” I declared, and rushed inside.

We exploded the gear all over the room, then relaxed for a while. Eventually I set out my little LED night-light in search of sleep.