Training exercise

Day Fourteen - 5/06/2003

Lavender colored fields

Tom riding with the wild horses

Traffic-stopping bike parade in Winslow, AZ

Grants,NM to Albuquerque,NM 108 miles. Today's route is mostly down hill from 6450 feet to 5000 feet.

Lava flow east of Grants, New Mexico

ERIC:

Day 14 - (5/6/03) Today was another wonderful day.  For the last few days, we have been on our old friend Route 66.  It has had great scenery that we would have missed if we stayed on I-40.  New Mexico has been my least favorite state for bike riding, but one of my favorites for landscapes.  There are a lot of signs on the freeway saying "bicycles prohibited".  At one point yesterday we had no choice but to take I-40 even though bikes were not allowed.  We had no other option.  In New Mexico I-40 does not have a shoulder like in Arizona.  Today we stayed on Route 66 for a while.  Since we rode over 100 miles today we had a lot of different experiences and saw changing views.  We had a dog incident during the morning where we were chased down the road for a little while.  We forgot our Scoopy Snacks to give to the dogs so we had to pedal very fast.  The dog was barking at our feet.  The movement of the bicycle really gets dogs excited.  We had our adrenaline pumping for a few miles which helped our speed a bit.  We went down Route 66 and forgot to make the left turn before Albuquerque and ended up on the scenic route.  It made the trip about 10 miles longer than expected.  The views were well worth the extra miles.  We went through an Indian reservation that was very litter free.  We saw very few cars.  We also saw several military helicopters and airplanes. My favorite part of the day was seeing all the different colored wildflowers and riding next to some wild horses.  It is remarkable watching wild horses running over the fields.  Absolutely breathtaking.  Everything was great until about mile 96.  Then we reached Albuquerque, the least bike-friendly city yet.  At first, I didn't like New Mexico's roads for bikes.  Now I strongly dislike Albuquerque.  The first thing that bothered me was that bikes do not seem to be allowed on the most convenient roads.  We reached the first bike lane as we entered the city.  It didn't have many options of where to go.  It turned and went a different direction than we wanted to go.  Dad got off the bike lane and went on the dirt path to the street for maybe 20 feet and ended up with two flat tires.  We have yet to add up the holes in the tubes but there are probably 15 holes in each tire.  It took us about an hour to get all the thorns out of the tires.  I think it was a booby trap for bicycles.  After we fixed the tires we rode for a little longer and I noticed how the drivers in Albuquerque don't care much for bikers.  When we reached the second bike lane it was great for a little while.  It ended up taking us directly to Kirtland AFB where we were not allowed to enter and had to turn around.  This blocked the most direct route.  This was the second bike booby trap in this city.  The last few miles of the day were the worse.  We went on a 6 lane road that had no shoulder.  The sidewalk was no better to ride on.  It was very up and down and at some corners had a large curb.  I don't think this city would be very accessible with a wheelchair.  The drivers were rude and we had at least a dozen drivers mad at us.  They have no smog control it seems as we were in a cloud of black smoke for most of the trip thru the city.  There were two experiences that stood out the most.  One was a car I watched in my mirror that moved from the middle lane into the lane we were in just as it passed us.  It moved back to the middle lane right after it tried to see how close it could get to us as it passed.  The other memorable moment was a somewhat large lady who blew on her horn and tried to get as close to us as possible as she passed.  I guess we irritated her.  Maybe she didn't have her donuts for the day.  What I didn't understand was that we were behind a bus that stopped during each block and so did she.  She must have wanted to stop as much as the bus did.  If she moved over to the middle lane she would have had no issue with the polluting bus or us obnoxious bikers.  Oh well!  Maybe I would be irritated also living in a city full of pollution.  Tomorrow will be a rest day.  Perhaps I will like Albuquerque better as a pedestrian.

Many different colored wildflowers

Red rock cliffs

TOM:

Day 14 – Grants. NM to Albuquerque, NM was 108 miles. The route was mostly down hill from 6450 feet to 5000 feet.  We covered this distance in 7 hours and 16 minutes with an average speed of 14.8 mph.  The weather was great today, no wind in the morning and not too much in the afternoon.  The start of the trip seemed to be slow. It was uphill with what we thought was a slight wind in the face. We stopped after 30 minutes to take pictures of  the lava flows from 400 to 2000 years ago.  When we stopped there was no wind.  We realized that this is the first day with no wind on the trip. The wind for the past few days has been from behind and you hardly feel the wind. Therefore the slight wind was created by our motion.  We saw many beautiful and unusual things today starting with lava flows. The lava flows had many different plants growing out of the crevices. We also saw creeks with water flowing for the first time since Pacheco Pass. Most of the trip was on Route 66  and other less traveled roads. We had one 10 mile stretch of road with no cars, only wild horses. The horses were beautiful running across the field.  We did make one wrong turn that took us 18 miles south of Albuquerque.  This was a very smooth road that had some more great scenery and little traffic.  It turned out to be a fun mistake.  We had one dog incident today, the first in several days.  It did prove that you can always go faster when the need arises!  Toward the end of the day I had two flat tires at the same time.  The flats were caused by many thorns puncturing the tubes, exact number yet to be determined.  The extra miles and flat tires caused the total time for our trip today to be 9 hours and 10 minutes.  In spite of the few problems it was a great day.  Tomorrow we are taking a rest day. 

Lucille:

May 6 - Tuesday - Today's sightseeing experience was so interesting.  I loved it.  When I left Grants, 50-60 miles west of Albuquerque I exited I-40 and took a 13-mile drive on an Indian road on the Acoma reservation to Acoma Pueblo, known as Sky City because it is located on a high mesa.  I was nervous because it was such desolate country.  The road was paved and there were signs, but being alone with no cell phone reception without meeting another car heading in the same direction and seeing no houses, I must admit I was uneasy.  Finally I arrived at the visitor center at the base of the mesa where I signed up for their guided tour and bought the required camera permit.  The pueblo of Acoma claims to be the oldest continuously inhabited city in the U.S.  A bus drove us to the pueblo.  Our tour guide is one of only 30 people who now live in the pueblo year-round.  Of these 30, 11 are children.  There are a few artisans who come to the pueblo during the day to sell their crafts.  There are 2 or 3 feast days during the year when hundreds of Acoma people come to the pueblo from other villages on the Acoma reservation. The largest building at Acoma is San Esteban del Rey Mission, a Spanish mission that was completed in 1640.  No pictures were  allowed in the church and cemetery. Symbols in the church represented a merging of the Catholic and Native American religions.  Our guide told us that 98% of the Acomas are Catholic, and 100% of the Acomas practice their Native American traditions.  Paintings in the church from the 1600's were painted on buffalo hide.  Hilary Clinton visited this site 5 years ago and since her visit  she donated $900,000 for restoration of the church, which has been started.  The mesa is considered a sacred area.  The large wooden beams for the church were carried from an area 30 miles away and were not allowed to touch the ground during the transport.  If one did, it was abandoned on the spot and not taken to the sacred site of the church.  Beams touching the ground from non-sacred land would taint the sacred site.  The cemetery contained 5 layers of people, one on top of the other due to limited space.  A person was not buried next to a family member but wherever there was space.  Today it is difficult to know the names of the people who were buried in the lower layers because as each new layer of soil was added, the tomb markers were also covered.  Our guide told us that some of her ancestors are buried in the walls of the church.  The Acomas are a matriarchal society.  Women make all the important decisions for the tribe.  The men must get permission from the women for various matters related to land, marriage, etc.  The small homes on the pueblo are flat-topped rectangular buildings made of sandstone covered with a mixture of clay and straw.  The 2-story buildings have ladders outside for reaching the upper floor.  The vertical parts of the ladder have holes where the horizontal rungs are placed to form a ladder.  If a family is going to be away for long, for security purposes, they simply remove the horizontal pieces and put them away and the vertical parts are left on the ground.  As our walking tour proceeded through the streets there were several artisans selling their wares.  The pottery was very pretty.  The view from the mesa was spectacular.  The rock formations are amazing.  Our guide had so many interesting things to tell us about the Acoma culture.  On the 13 mile drive (a road farther east than the road I took to get here)  through the reservation,  I saw cattle and wild horses near the road.  I reached I-40 and drove to Albuquerque.  We're staying in a Comfort Inn on the east part of town for 2 nights.  Tomorrow will be a day of rest from biking. We will not be doing a journal entry tomorrow. 

Total Trip Distance: 1226.79

We had this road to ourselves.

Spectacular yellow wildflowers

The end is in sight.  Albuquerque is in the distance.