Great Divide Mountain Bike Route Update #4

Del Norte, Colorado

The hell with Beowulf.

Here I sit in Del Norte, Colorado. Named after the first white settler in the region, Del and his wife Gwyneth McHitchen Norte became famous, if not wealthy, by establishing a trade route through the southern Colorado mountains for the fur trappers and native tribes in the region. Legend has it that Del met an untimely death when he was unable to dislodge himself from a large mud pit en route to Wyoming during an unseasonably wet June. Starved to death while shaking his fists at the heavens. And if you believe that crap, have I got a great used mountain bike to sell you.

Anybody a Star Trek fan out there? Not Galaxy #736 or the X Generation, but the great ones where Kirk and Sulu lean hard left during turbulence on the Enterprise? Yeah, I thought so. So this update is subtitled "I Mudd". Classic episode, good fun. Less fun was my personal I Mudd experience in northern New Mexico.

Allow me to elaborate.

Leaving the clay soils behind, I ventured into some of the first truly challenging terrain of the trip so far. Steep climbs on rough roads featuring their own micro-topography. Troughs, ruts, erosion channels, blah blahs and hoo hoos (just checking to see if you're paying attention). Tough riding like nobody's business (I adore that saying, so shut up.).

My first day in this terrain was hard. I think that was Monday. Sixty five miles with over a vertical mile of tough climbing (masochism is my middle name). Towards the end of the day that silly rain set in, slowly, teasing. Just enough to make the roads spongy but not soupy. Kinda like riding a bike over a large partially-inflated balloon (use your imagination here). Tuesday...a mix of balloon and stew as the moisture (moystyah for those of you in Jersey) drained from the heavens above. It took all I could muster (mister) to crawl 50 miles through this malarky. Was the worst over? Could it get worse? Gotta know, gotta know.....ahhhh....what happened?

Rain.....all night long, ya bastard. The following morning, like chocolate pudding (think Bill Cosby here), the dirt roads clogged and bogged and sucked my bike in like nobody's business(2 times....oh yeah). Now what you need to do is wade back up to the surface of this posting and check out the photos from the bottom up (sorry, but this weird blog makes it hard to format photo positioning. yeah yeah).

The bottom photo is without a doubt the last cool shot of me ever (again, shut it. gimme a break, i'm alone out here). Second up is the chocolate pudding and what it looks like after I wove my 2 wheeled teenager through. #3 is what a front fork looks like when it doesn't allow a wheel to rotate anymore. And the top one, of course, is what's left of the last fellow who rode through. Luckily I was able to scavenge some parts from his bike.

Through an act of divine intervention, I still managed to ride 55 miles in the rain that day (roads did get better), and even crossed the border into Colorado (theme song to "Greatest American Hero" playing in your head right now). That was wednesday. Rained all night again (sopping wet everything at this point), and I had one 17 mile climb and then a 24 mile, 4000 ft decent into Del Norte. On the way down I crossed paths with the leader of a race that is ridden North to South on the same route I'm on. These folks are total animals. The leader is doing over 150 miles/day, solo, unsupported on roads of mud and soup and yuckity yuck. Truly amazing, if not a bit mental (as they say in Yorkshire).

Anyway, like Pie Town, Del Norte is a place of magic. You wouldn't understand, so don't ask. So I took the rest of Thursday off here, staying with a couple who put up Great Divide cyclists passing through town (these folks are known as trail angels, and somewhere in heaven there are really comfy sofas and hot cocoa waiting for them).

And today I decided to take a rest day. After 14 straight days of riding the trail, I thought it was both deserved and necessary. What did I do on my rest day, you ask. I went mountain biking of course. Look, smarty pants, two local women/goddess/mountain-bikers asked me to join the on some of the best single track trails in the country. What would you do? Yeah, but you're both lazy and in the closet, so gimme a break. Indeed, the riding was outrageous. Super technical cycling through crazy canyons and goblin-rock formations. Stunning country. Wow.

So tonight, for the icing on my vacation from my vacation cake, we're gonna have a little cook out and camp fire up at some property my hosts have up in the mountains. I plan on bingeing hard, sleeping harder, then pointing my bike North in the morning and turning my legs around and around for the next month or so. The weather forecast is not sounding too good. Wish me luck and sun.

Until next time, Kirk out.

Great Divide Mountain Bike Route Update #3

Still hanging onto your seats waiting to find out whether I made it or not? Weirdo! Ok, I did....sorta. The 1st day out of Grants was glorious. Cloudy, but no rain. No water either! All the reliable water sources were either dry or gone completely. After 70 miles of super eroded trails through a fantastic desert landscape, I had to climb over a 10" tall barbed wire fence to get to a pump in the middle of nowhere (don't ask) . Theif!!!!

So after a splendid sunset at camp that night, the rain came. Drat! It continued through the next morning while I rode the last 30 miles of clay soiled roads into the town of Cuba. The moist clay shot up off my tires like pellets, sticking to everthing, and in particular to my drive train, rendering it semi-functional.

So my bike and I limped into Cuba and got a motel room for the night. Let me tell you a little about Cuba, NM. A seedy highway stop between Albuquerque and nowhere, this town boasts several flea bag motels, some gas stations, lots of nothing, and a restauant famous the state over for the best New Mexican food around. Strange, yet true. So I checked into my motel room. Let's be honest. I stunk. The room smelled worse. There was a bed (luckily), a semi-sanitary bathroom with a heavily leaking shower, a tv that got zero channels, and two books on a table. The books included the ubiquitous Gideon's Bible, and the equally ubiquitous Hmong-English-Hmong dictionary. As most of you know, I am not Christian and am perfectly fluent in Hmong. So, alas, I had no use for either.

I went to the restaurant, El Bruno, for lunch. I ordered the "Fiesta Platter For Two". I ate the "Fiesta Platter For Two". Later I did a #2 with the "Fiesta Platter For Two", then went about town serching for a book to read, as I finished my last one. There was this variety store, which sold everything from 90's hip hop cd's to glass smokin pipes to oil of oley. They had a small bookshelf of books for $1. And what a selection it was. I passed up on "Combines: The How to Guide", "How to Fix Your Marriage In 90 Days" and "Classic Fords: 1979-1986" and chose a biography of Mikhail Gorbochev, that was apparently written for and by a 7 year old. Ah well.

So on from Cuba, yesterday I rode 65 miles and learned all about Mikhail Gorbochev. The first 45 miles were up hill, and the last 20 were down a seriously rugged 4 wheel drive track. My poor bike was bounced around like...like... (sorry, if anyone has a good analogy, please insert it here)....like something that really get's bounced around. Boy.

Last night after another gorgeous sunset, the skies yet again opened and let the good lord pee on me and my fabulous tent. But hey, no more clay soils....hoorah.

So here I sit in the library in El Rito, NM. For those of you who don't speak Spanish as well as I do, El Rito loosely translates as "The Rito".

OK, enough of this nonsense. Oooh, by the way, as I blog, I try to write in the style of the book I currently am reading. Last book was Kurt Vonnegut's "Breakfast of Champions" (ahhhh, now I see why you're such a schmuck, says the reader). Next up: Beowulf.

Colorado in 2 days. BOOM.

Great Divide Mountain Bike Route Update #2

Grants NM.

Life is like a bucket filled with an mysterious liquid. Could be good. The above photo of the camera-shy cows was taken exactly .87 seconds before they charged me. Like linebackers, cows have large bodies, small brains, and short tempers. Unlike linebackers, some of them have horns. My escape was notable. Less so when the half dozen ranch dogs came after me a few days before. Riding uphill against the wind with 2 mongrels frothings and nashing on each side, my escape was nothing short of god-sent. The bastards.

But that's another story altogether.

The liquid in this bucket for the most part has been sweet. I have ridden just under 300 miles to date, much of which through glorious high desert.

Let me tell you about the wind here in NM. At around 2 in the afternoon, like an in-law on a Vespa, the wind comes shooting through life. Generally it points NE (unlike many in-laws and Vespas). The afternoon the dogs attacked me, my bike and I were staggering SW. The wind on it's vespa was not. Ouch.

Earlier that day, I discovered that the route was closed due to fires in the Gila National Forest. My options were: #1: to backtrack 40 miles, then ride a 150+ mile paved route around the forest to rejoin the route. #2: accept a ride in the back of a forest service pick up filled with friendly forest service employees for the 35 miles the route was closed, then keep riding. Uh, hello? Took the ride. So here it is. I did not ride every mile from Mexico to Canada. And quite frankly, I'm quite ok with that. This experience is just that. With the idiocy of fundamentalism released, I can have fun with the process. And the process has been swell.

Then I came upon my 1st resupply: Pie Town, NM. I could tell you all about Pie Town, but I won't. Or I can't. Or something.

The other thing I should mention is the summer monsoons that come up from Mexico. They deliver sudden volumes of water from the sky with the temperment of a cow on a vespa (ok, not really). Anyway, the problem for me is not the rain or the wind. The issue is that much of the route is on clay-soil forest roads that turn to pecan pie when wet. Who here has every ridden through pecan pie? Anyone? No, me either, and I have little intention of finding out. I squeezed through the 1st sections of clay roads with little rain, and have one more big stretch coming up today and tomorrow. The wisping clouds have returned, which means storms on the way. Yikes.

Time for me to stop blogging and check the weather.

Stay tuned next week to find out if I made it.

Great Divide Mountain Bike Route Update #1

Hi. Sitting in an internet cafe in the quaint town of Silver City in southern NM. Here is a brief update of my life since flying out of Portland on Thursday morning.

I flew into Tucson. The southwestern desert landscape is amazing from above. Flying over Arizona and landing in Tucson seems to me like how a fly would feel landing on a starving man's belly. The topography of every rib exposed, every joint detailed. Parched and undernourished, this land has nothing to hide. A the plane approached the tarmac, I noticed a small green pool. Fetid. Yucky. Probably not so different than any tarmac, just better visibility. Next I spied a huge sajuero cactus standing upright, proud. Like it could be posted at an arid 10 Downing Street.

Pulled my bike from it's box and reassembled it no problem. Rode to my hotel, then to get some stove fuel (in a strip mall camping store). Then for some Mexican food (strip mall). Then a grocery store (uh huh). Weird.

Cought a shuttle to the border of Mexico/New Mexico in a van that brings immigrants back and forth from Chiuhuahua visiting family. Me and 15 others packed into a van going 85 down the interstate. Not too scared until the driver started texting. Hmmm.

At the border, I did my last few odds and ends, had the customs agent take a ceremonial photo of me, and started to peddle North. Landed up riding 47 miles that afternoon to the "town" of Hatchita. Not much to speak of, but killer sunsets.

That was Friday. Yesterday I rode 62 miles through the arid desert landscape of NM. Got lost, Saw my 1st snake, pulled water from a windmill meant for cows. You know, the usual. Did I mention I'm tired?

Today will be a short day. Rode 23 miles into Silver City, will screw around here for a few hours, and ride 20 or so to camp.....up hill. So far I've been blessed with highly unusually cool weather for this time of year in NM. Hope the good fortune continues.

peace