Day #32 - 4/13/2011 - Las Cruces, NM to Deming, NM - 54 miles

You can see our route from Las Cruces, NM to Deming, NM HERE.

Windows open overnight, the temperature quickly dropped in our KOA cabin to the 50s…great for sleeping.  

50°F?  Of course I'm fully dressed...it's as cold in here as it was outside.  Otherwise, it's oatmeal as usual on the butane.

We stepped out our KOA cabin into the brisk air with the dawn just beyond the Mesilla Valley mountains.

I love sunrises and sunsets (who doesn't?), but photographing them is a challenge because the luminance dynamic range is so extreme.  I usually carry a 4x graduated neutral density filter, but left mine at home.  Without the filter, you have to chose between properly exposing the sky or the foreground.  Here, the sky dominates at the expense of detail in the foreground.  Oh well.

Leaving the campground, we faced a short, steep climb out of the Mesilla Valley to I-10.  This was going to be our first segment on an interstate.

Lani had called the New Mexico Department of Transportation and confirmed that biking on the interstate was legal in remote areas where there was no other option.

Having lived in Santa Monica, CA for 14 years where I-10 is known as the Santa Monica Freeway, I-10 has a special place in my heart.  I also know I-10 where it meets the Atlantic Coast in Florida.  I was sorta excited to hop on in the middle of the country.

The 54 miles from Las Cruces to Deming would be along the I-10 shoulder.  In spite of the traffic zipping by at 70+ miles per hour, I felt pretty safe; the shoulder was wide and most of the vehicles shifted to the inside lane as they passed us.  The quality of the shoulder, unfortunately, sucked and slowed us down.  What was really cool was when a big rig passed us at high speed right along the shoulder and you could draft.

Even though the adjacent traffic was zipping along the wide shoulder gave us a nice safety margin.  Unfortunately, the quality of the shoulder sucked.  Drafting in the slipstream of passing trucks helped.

Exits on this segment of I-10 were far and few, but they would announce themselves with a marketing vengeance.

Hillbilly figurines?  Are you joking me?  And you "gots bears, & elephants too", as well as the inability to punctuate?  Was I missing a hot collectible?  If it does not have its own Wikipedia entry, you know it's esoteric.

 The marketing onslaught intensified as the exit neared.

In many areas, there was a feeder road paralleling the interstate.  They were often in a great shape, turn to gravel, or disappear at which point you'd have to return to the interstate.  So, we just stayed on the interstate.

Biking through the miles of nowhere I would often think "this would be a great place for a maximum security prison."  The state of New Mexico thought likewise.

There were these guys in orange jump suits trying to hitch a ride and I was going to stop and let one sit on each of my panniers..good thing I saw this sign.

The winds were light and even though the shoulder was in poor shape, it should have been a completely uneventful 54 miles to Deming.  Should have.  

I had been biking behind Lani for nearly 1600 miles and had observed that she biked with her head down, like she was fixated on a spot just feet in front of her.  I'd occasionally shout out "Hey...look around...check out the scenery."  That would last for a few seconds, then she'd look down again. 

We approached a Border InspectionStation with some construction along the way.  During the approach, large barrels were situated in our path to mark some construction.  Lani, biking with her head down, did not appear to see them; I called out to her “Heads up!”  She said “thanks” and we biked around them until we took our place in the traffic line at the inspection station.  No big deal.  We were waved through the inspection station.

Leaving the inspection station, we returned to the shoulder where more of the orange barrels were situated in our path.  Lani deliberately moved right and biked around the first few and then, head down, she aimed dead on into a barrel.  She collided with the barrel and went down pretty hard.  I barely avoided her before I went down, but not as hard.  Her left arm was bloodied and she was shaken.  My flag pole snapped.

The collision re-set the tone for the day.

I can't recall the last time I really raised my voice at Lani, let alone swear at her...maybe never (I'm not much of a swearer), but this could have been horrendous and it was totally stupid and avoidable.  

Eventually, we got back on our bikes, but this set the tone for the rest of the day.  The winds worsened and Lani’s progress (and, therefore, mine) dropped to a relative crawl.  To make matters even worse, she had another near mishap where the shoulder meets the dirt…we had our first all-out shouting match with each other as tempers flared.

Even though he was talking about baseball, Yogi Berra nailed it when he said "Ninety percent of this game is half-mental."(You should really read the Wiki piece about Yogi...he was a great player.)

I apologized to Lani for shouting at her (as well as for the profanity) and we returned to our usual daughter-father relationship.  I took a look at her arm.

It could have been a lot worse.  This is why I always travel with Ibuprofen in the industrially-sized 800mg size.

 I never appreciated how the railroads were such a part of the Southern corridor.  Watching the parallel rails meet at infinite, I thought of the summer job my Mom had landed me in 1975, taking apart railroad track with a long crowbar, pulling out the spikes.  I made $5/hr, netting $161 and change for the week.

The passing loops on each track allows for one train to "park" and another to pass.

Finally arriving in Deming, picking up some fresh produce at the Walmart and sandwiches at Subway, we reverted to normal in the motel room.  The windy conditions had clearly changed the experience for Lani and what was once fun was no longer…she was prepared to change the nature of this portion of our sojourn from a bike trip to a road trip, resuming the biking from Washington State.

I’m not sure how I feel about that…actually, I do…I’m disinclined.  It changes the nature of my self-proclaimed unequivocal experience, it makes the title Doctor Bob’s Bike Blog inaccurate and it feels a bit like cheating.  Actually, a lot like cheating.  

And, what about the exercise?  I needed the exercise...badly.  I had been counting on the 6-8 hours of daily biking to help me with the sucky weight gain that had accompanied the past year of androgen deprivation therapy.  What now? 

Anyway...
I had proposed a day off, renting a car to head to Silver City and the cliff dwellings as the wind forecast for tomorrow were even worse than today…