Day 43: 20 Feb, 62.6 miles today, 2,246.8 miles total, Caballo, NM
When we were planning this trip, the single most important concern was how completely out of shape we felt. Worried that we might be too bloated and top heavy to make it over the mountains in the west without ending up rolling backwards, we decided that we absolutely had to start on the Atlantic coast and work our way toward the Pacific. That way, we could get ourselves I shape riding the flatter, more forgiving terrain out east, and so be ready to tackle the mountains by the time we finally came to them. A detail we came across several times, but chose steadfastly to ignore was this: the prevailing winds across the southwest blow from west to east. A seemingly trivial point we decided to interpret as translating in the physical world as a couple of difficult days is, instead, going to be a defining characteristic of the entire trip—maybe the defining characteristic of this second half. And god help us for that, because now that we’re running up against the date of Sean Meadow’s brother’s wedding and time has really become a factor in a way it wasn’t before, and now that we’re finally headed directly into the mountains of New Mexico and finally facing the long, steep climbs we put off for so long, we’re looking at several days of intense wind blowing in pretty much exactly the wrong direction.
We got a small taste of it today, when the wind picked up shortly before the town we stopped in to eat lunch. It didn’t happen gradually or gently, but rather slapped us all at once and took away every bit of momentum we’d had. We ate on a bench across the street from the small municipal administration building, and pretty much everything we set down blew away.
The wind dogged us for the rest of the day, sometimes pushing at our backs and sometimes across our front—a result of the stepwise path taken by today’s route. But tomorrow we head pretty much due west, directly into the wind.
It’s frustrating how much energy the wind sucks up. Not only is it physically draining, but it’s distracting, as well. We rode through some really pretty countryside this afternoon, but I didn’t notice much of it because I when I wasn’t focused on today’s wind, I was thinking about tomorrow’s. And while it’s helpful to plan out a few alternatives depending how badly the weather could derail you, it’s hard to stop at the point where such thinking is useful. I’ve been stewing, which isn’t fun for anyone. Even now, I’m writing about my concerns for the coming day’s conditions, staring at my brightly lit phone instead of the panoply of stars that have come out in the remote desert sky. I think maybe I need to talk a walk and just be here for a while, now that the wind has stilled for a few hours.
Day 44: 21 Feb, 70.9 miles today, 2,317.7 miles total, Silver City, NM
Today was completely fucking miserable.
Day 45: 22 Feb, 48.5 miles today, 2,366.2 miles total, Lordsburg, NM
To elaborate on yesterday’s entry: we knew at least since the day we left Van Horn that more windy days were coming this week, but as any distance we could physically make it before that time would still be inside the affected area, there was nothing to do but keep pushing forward. That left us yesterday with a fairly crappy choice: stop in Kingston after an unpleasant 26 mile climb into the foothills of the Black Range Mountains against a moderate headwind, or push across the mountains to Silver City—some 70+ miles from our camp at Caballo Lake, with over 8,000’ of elevation gain, and into a steadily increasing wind that would top out somewhere around 30mph. We chose the latter.
The thinking was that since the conditions would be shitty and windy over the next few days anyway, we might as well get the 40-something mile stretch to Silver City—including the longest sustained climb and the high point of the entire trip—over with in one, concentrated suffer-fest, rather than drag it out over multiple days. I do not think I would make this choice again.
The push to Emory Pass proved to me that our reasoning for biking east to west had indeed been flawed, at least for me. While Sean Meadow sailed up the mountains with the relative ease of someone who’d actually gotten in better shape over 2,200 miles, I still had to stop every five minutes to catch my breath. I’d been feeling pretty good about myself leaving El Paso; that built-up confidence was shattered completely in one torturous climb. I even managed to get blown off the road by a single unexpected gust of wind, though thankfully not toward the side that ended in a steep drop with no guardrail.
The west side of the pass was freezing, and an unanticipated difficulty we discovered was how to manipulate the brakes when our hands were being turned into stone claws by the cold—and this with gloves and mittens. It was a relatively short-lived problem, however, as by the time we’d descended into the basin at the far side of the mountains, we were back to being baked by the unrelenting desert sun, even as we were being constantly buffeted by the wind.
That wind was a real motherfucker. Repeatedly over the last twenty miles, while being blown the wrong way on yet another steep climb, we were forced to admit that walking would be faster, so we found ourselves dismounting again and again. This cycle continued as the sun set, darkness flowing into the valley as we finally created the last climb and looked down onto Silver City. We’d started at dawn, and still had a mile to go in the increasingly cold wind. I couldn’t ride another foot. My shoulder had been killing me the entire day, but butt was sore and my legs were jelly. I was sick of fighting to keep my balance, of having to pedal on the steep downhills just to keep rolling. I was cold and hungry and I didn’t care about anything but not being on the misery machine for one second more. So I walked my bike the last mile into town.
Today was much shorter, and with substantially less uphill, but the wind was no less gnarly than it had been the day before, and I found myself dragging ass before we’d even made it out of Silver City. I was just about to pull over for a drink and to massage the pain in my shoulder when Sean Meadow got my attention. “You have a flat,” she said.
It wasn’t a true flat, as it turned out. The tubeless system worked as design, and by the time we were both stopped and I was inspecting my rear tire, the hole had been sealed. It wasn’t even that flat, but it was a little low on air. As I was pumping it back up, a woman pulled up to offer help. We let her know we were fine, but I think mostly she just wanted to talk at us. She tried to convince us to avoid going to Lordsburg tonight—which, well, there was definitely something to her reservations about this town, as it’s got a distinctly seedy vibe. She complained vociferously about Texas, decrying them as racists—which, well, there was definitely something to that, too, as we warned repeatedly by seemingly well-meaning white people that folks west of Van Horn were not nearly as friendly and were not to be trusted. As it turned out, they’ve been, if anything, nicer; but also generally multilingual and frequently browner than the Texans who had warned us against them. The woman also claimed there was at least on serial killer at large in the area that was targeting Native Americans. I really wanted to dismiss her as your run of the mill chatty crazy person, on this last point especially. But her statement that while the entire country would drop everything in the search for cute blonde Gabby Petito, nobody would lift a finger to protect the darker-hued people in her community was too painfully and obviously true to dismiss.
She wished us well and drove on, after several sudden stops on the way out to yell another last-minute thought out the window at us. Then we just had to bike 40 more miles through the wind.
It was fairly awful from start to finish, even as we passed both the continental divide and the Continental Divide Trail—two milestones I’d been looking forward to for at least a few days. In the last 15 miles, we dropped out of the high desert, descending some 2,500’ to wide open valley floor. The wind was so ridiculously intense that If we stopped peddling and tried to coast while riding down this steep section we would eventually be brought to a stop. It would have been funny if we hadn’t had to keep riding in it.
So the ride was grueling, but the scenery was spectacular, with the raw earth-brown mountains standing guard to the south of the expansive desert floor. I was hit repeatedly by tumble weeds as I pedaled toward Lordsburg—a town to which we’d return to start the CDT in only a couple of months. It was hard to believe we’d be walking through this landscape the next time we saw it.
We checked into a cheap motel, regretting our decisions when we got a good look at the sorrowful state of our room. Grimy as I was, I passed on using the grimy shower. Sean Meadow went to the front desk to ask if we could have some replacement light bulbs for all the burnt-out ones in our fixtures. Neither of us was particularly comfortable walking on the carpet barefoot—and we aren’t exactly the most discerning of patrons. The guy who held our door open for us as we wheeled in our bikes while creepily making note of our room number didn’t help. I don’t often deadbolt the door, but this place just feels off, in a lot of really specific, easy to identify ways.
The weather outlook for tomorrow is even worse, with a wind advisory in effect for the entire area. Our hope is to get the fuck out of this place and make it to the next town before things get too crazy, and just cross our fingers that reports of scorpions under the bed in the only motel in that place were seriously overblown.
Day 46: 23 Feb, 36.5 miles today, 2,402.7 miles total, Duncan, AZ
Pretty short day today. Pretty early, too, as we were on the road before 0730hrs trying to stay ahead of the afternoon’s wind and dust. As a result, we’d made it to Duncan by 1030hrs—about 20 minutes from the time we hit the New Mexico/Arizona border and the wind stopped playing gently at our backs, shifting direction and intensity so that I had to lean hard to my left while riding to keep my bike from toppling over like an absurdly overpriced tumbleweed.
When we pulled up in front of the Chaparral Mini Mart Motel (really), we had a discussion that really kinda highlighted the differences in our respective levels of physical fitness. Essentially, Sean Meadow was ready to push on to the next town—some 41 miles farther on—in the hopes of getting somewhere with more options than this tiny desert hamlet before the worst of the dust storm hit, and I was not. I have no doubt that on her own, she could have done it. Except for those moments when her performance is constrained by physical pain, she is consistently much faster than I am. She rides a bike like she’s leading the pack in a world-class cycling race, as I dwindle into the distance with all the speed and grace of a fat kid trying to steal a shopping cart.
It was also just too soon after that terrible day into Silver City, which had involved a very similar discussion at around the same time of day. And while Sean Meadow was right that if we went for the 70+ miles again today we would at least have much less climbing to do than last time (having to go over only one mountain to the town of Safford instead of many), the wind—and with it the dust—were forecast to be worse than the already nasty elements we’d had to ride through on that day. I hadn’t slept particularly well since that day, and I didn’t feel up to this race against nature, either physically or mentally. I felt guilty about cutting our mileage short, but when the decision was left to me, I opted to stay where we were. We’d already made it nearly 40 miles; if I could use the remainder of our time in Duncan as a rest day, with any luck I’d be able to find the drive that had gotten me as far as New Mexico and use it to get through to Phoenix and beyond.
Sean Meadow didn’t bat an eye, but embraced the time off the bike once the choice had been made. Our room at the hotel was actually quite clean and cute—the very opposite of the kaleidoscopically-stained dump we’d left behind this morning. Once showered, she set out to explore the town while I laid on the bed and dozed off listening to the wind whine as it beat on the windows and the doors. We’d be back at it tomorrow, with another long day planned across this hard, beautiful country; but for now, it was a beautiful day to be indoors.
Day 47: 24 Feb, 73.5 miles today, 2,476.2 miles total, Bylas, AZ
The Chaparral Mini Mart Motel in Duncan, with all its well-ordered and spotlessly-clean charm, was one of my favorite places we stayed—despite the unexpected profusion of dance music that started playing in the parking lot around 0600hrs. It didn’t much matter, as we had to get up, anyway. We have learned through hard experience that 70+ miles will not ride themselves. When I popped into the mini mart to turn in our room key to the cashier, she said to my back as I was walking out the door, “try to stay warm!” “We’ll do our best!” I said, and then I didn’t give it a second thought.
It was chilly as we left town, but it was also shortly after dawn, so we didn’t pay it much mind. An hour later, however, when we were riding through the mountains, past rolling fields dusted with freshly fallen snow, we were freezing. Even without the wind blowing in our faces—ever our constant companion—we wouldn’t have made very good time, as we kept stopping to add or change layers. It was impossible to find the right mix of clothes that would keep out the chill without then making us sweat as we pedaled along, getting drenched in freezing sweat being both the least desirable and most common state of being for most of the morning.
And yet it was most beautiful day we’d yet witnessed, the mountains stark and russet from the flat green ocean of the scrubland valley floor. It was breathtaking, it was unexpected, and it felt like walking into the sunshine after days and days of rain. But it was also still really goddamned cold.
When we made it to Safford, we rode through town until we hit the strip of fast food joints we felt would give the fewest shits about whether we brought our bikes inside with us. This is how we ended up spending an hour at Arby’s. The food was forgettable, but at least we were warm.
The rest of the day is largely a blur, which is usually the case for the 70+ mile days. We did stop at some combination general store/diner/bakery where I got ice cream, but mostly the afternoon is a haze of aches and pains, which seemed to drag on and on indefinitely. It was such a relief to reach the town of Blyas in the San Carlos Apache Reservation, dismount the Misery Machine, and start searching for the warm showers house we were staying for the night, it didn’t matter much that the directions we were given by a local were to clamber through a hole in a chain-link fence to get there. We had another grueling day to look forward to in the morning. A warm bed would be welcome, whatever we had to climb through to get there.
Day 48: 25 Feb, 69.0 miles today, 2,545.2 miles total, Superior, AZ
Our host in Bylas had been incredibly kind and generous, springing a frozen pizza on us when we just going to use her kitchen to make ramen. As, basically, a Lutheran missionary in sovereign Apache territory, she had witnessed first-hand examples of the desperate poverty and widespread substance abuse that plague residents of the reservation. Setting aside the thorny questions central to the issue of white saviors living in Native lands, she was at least motivated by a desire to do good, and the stories she told were equal parts heart-warming and heartbreaking. It was hard for me to follow the conversation, however, since by that point I was struggling just to stay awake.
I can’t remember the last time I slept that soundly. Passing out almost the moment my head hit the pillow, I was dead to the world until it was time to get up in the morning. After a breakfast of fresh eggs, eaten to the tune of our host’s rooster’s continual crowing, we continued biking through this section of tribal territory, my mind turning over questions of stolen land and the privilege of white Americans who are able to take for granted their ability to pass unquestioned even through what is ostensibly a sovereign nation distinct from the United States—until I had to focus on the terrible shoulder, which had become soft and overgrown with and endless series of thorn bushes. The riding quickly became stressful and aggravating, but when I got sick of dodging both spines and traffic pulled over in a fit of irritation, I was elated to see my very first saguaro. The giant cacti had captured my imagination ever since I was child, but I’d never before had the change to see one in the green, spiny flesh. Suddenly, I was confronted with an entire hillside filled with them. It was awe-inspiring to see these looming sentinels of the desert standing heavy and silent and tall. It was magical. Not that it made the riding conditions any better.
Taking a break at a gas station in the reservation town of Peridot, we were struck by the fact that not one person disputed, thwarted, or complained about the convenience store’s mask requirement. I can’t even speculate what the tribal authority’s position on Covid protective measures might be, but as in Mexico and New Zealand, it was interesting/informative to see what a pandemic looks like when a nation’s population don’t behave like spoiled three-year-olds.
We got to the small city of Globe in the early afternoon, where we took a break at the Sonic and tried to mentally prepare for the last stretch of the day. We were taking something of a gamble: in order to cut some 60 miles off of the ride and save a day or so at the end, we were going to part ways with the official Adventure Cycling Association map, opting instead to use a road that had previously been a part of the route, but which ACA had abandoned because of safety concerns.
Let me say that again: to save time, we intentionally set out on a section of road considered too dangerous by the bicycle-hating ACA, an organization that in our experience had never passed up any opportunity to put a cyclist’s health and safety in jeopardy. That this was a horrible idea seems so incredibly obvious in retrospect.
The stretch of US Hwy 60 that runs for 21 miles between Globe, AZ and Superior, AZ is every bit the windy mountain road you could possibly ask for, full of steep climbs and stomach-turning descents, constantly turning around protruding cliff faces that obscure whatever may be just on the other side. The traffic moves very, very fast, and the impatient drivers frequently don’t bother to give struggling cyclists more than a few inches of clearance even when there is an extra lane provided for passing slower vehicles. There is also often no extra lane, no shoulder, and no room anywhere on the side of the road to walk a bike.
There is also a tunnel.
To make matters all the more, um, exciting, a minor injury somewhere on my left Achilles that I’d noticed coming into Globe was substantially aggravated by desperately peddling uphill in front of impatient Arizonans flying up the mountains in their over-built death machines. By the time we were halfway through this nightmare of a section, I found myself limping any time we were reduced to walking our bikes through the shrub grass to the side of the road. I couldn’t ride the last climb of the day at all—though thankfully for once the highway had both a passing lane and a shoulder, so I could limp my way to the top in relative safety.
It’s hard enough to overcome the mental block that screams in idiotic terror when I take the full lane on a road in town with multiple lanes and a reasonable speed limit; doing so when there is no other lane, no way out, and with the cars coming up behind you moving at highway speed is absolutely fucking terrifying. Some vehicles just went ahead a passed us, veering across the double yellow line on blind corners at 70mph. But our break came when a white sedan slowed and just followed patiently behind us as traffic built and built and built behind them. When we pulled into a turnoff to let them pass, the line of vehicles we’d backed up took several long minutes to pass.
My worst personal moment came fairly early on, when we were lumbering up our first long incline of the section, trying to take up the slow lane while being passed too close over and over again. Looking behind, I saw a massive white pickup come up fast, with no indication that the driver had any intention of moving over for us at all. With no shoulder, we had nowhere to go. The driver passed dangerously, unnecessarily close—but before he did, I was convinced completely that the last thing I was ever going to see was Sean Meadow being run over, immediately before the same thing happened to me.
I will say that that stretch of Hwy 60 has some of the prettiest mountain scenery I’ve ever seen—almost stereotypically Arizonan, with cacti and beautiful and strange rock formations. But I didn’t have a chance to take any of it in. The ACA lamented in their notes that in rerouting this section they were losing some of the most breathtaking landscapes in the states, but riding it demands your full and undivided attention. There’s nowhere to pause and take it all in. It’s a beautiful area, to be sure, but biking it only ensures that you’ll miss it.
We made it into Superior with the wide-eyed exhaustion of accident survivors who still can’t quite figure how exactly they’re still alive. After settling in with a warm showers host who unexpectedly charged us $40 to spend the night (and who was also surprised we’d made it, since “most of my bikers have me pick them up in Globe”), we went out for dinner. I normally wouldn’t have gotten a burger for dinner, since I’d already had one for lunch, but after the ride into town, I found that I just couldn’t give a fuck.
Day 49: 26 Feb, 64.0 miles today (+6 bonus miles), 2,609.2 miles total (bonus miles not included), Chandler, AZ
As we were starting the day in Superior and heading to Sean Meadow’s friend’s mother’s house in Chandler—two towns not on the ACA’s current Southern Tier route—we were completely on our own, navigationally. Our experience with Google Maps cycling directions (free) had so far been on par with the ACA guide ($60+), so we didn’t really think twice about putting in the address and heading on our way. It did seem odd that we’d been routed onto an unpaved US Forest Service road to get through the mountains and into the Salt River Valley (home to the greater Phoenix metro area), but after the day before I was so happy to avoid US Hwy 60 that I wasn’t going to question it.
The results were mixed: the rough road was fun to ride on. It was the first time we’d really gotten to ride our gravel bikes on actual gravel, and the scenery couldn’t have been better. We were surrounded by mountain and saguaros in every direction, and as we wove over the hills and through the small drainage basins it felt for the first time like we were in the landscape instead of merely riding by it. And then the road ended.
Well, to be clear, the road itself kept going, presumably all the way into the valley, as Google had predicted. The problem was that after three miles it became a private road, with an impressively beefy (and locked) gate the only way to pass through an impressively beefy fence. It had been a really cool diversion, but in the end there was nothing for it but to turn around and head back to Hwy 60.
As it turned out, my concerns about getting back onto Hwy 60 and heading into another crop of mountains were completely unfounded. The stretch of that road that runs from Superior, over Gonzales Pass, and into the so-called “valley of the sun” is about as cush as road riding gets, with a huge, flat, clean shoulder and an easy grade grade running in both directions. And the vantage from the highway was actually pretty spectacular, with brick red mountains rising sharply from a dense green carpet. The Sonoran Desert is amazingly lush, in its own way. In contrast to the yellows and browns of the not-technically-desert “semi-arid climates” of Western Texas and Southern New Mexico, it seems counterintuitive that this true desert—the hottest in both the US and Mexico—should be so richly green. I can only suppose that it has something to do with the local vegetation having adapted to ever harsher conditions. The shrubs of New Mexico get more water in the fall, so they don’t have to try as hard. Whatever the reason, it’s the plant life that really makes the Arizona countryside the wonder that it is to behold.
Phoenix metro, on the other hand, is the same bland suburban purgatory you’ll find in every populated region of the United States. Google lead us into it through a series of highways with increasingly narrow shoulders, until we found ourselves riding for an hour down a busy two-laner with no shoulder at all. After we came down from the mountains, the long rest of the day was spend in the close company of an ever-increasing stream of automotive traffic. At least there were bike lanes. For once.
The upside to coming back to the mini-mall landscape was that it was at least easy to find a drug store. By the time we’d gone 50 or so miles (including the morning detour) my weird calf injury, which had been muted and easy to ignore for most of the day, had become painful and was increasingly slowing me down. Thankfully, I was able to run into a Walgreens and pick up an ace bandage so I could finish out the last 20 miles to our destination. I’m becoming increasingly worried that I’m fucking something up in my leg that will seriously impact my ability to hike in April. Clearly what it needs is rest and the time to heal. But right now, I need to finish this ride. Here’s hoping the last 500 miles don’t finally destroy me.
