Welcome to new Mexico

Hello readers, so two days have passed since I have had service. We have been in the straight up mountains for days. It has been extremely grueling, however, the views have been lovely. 

Before I get in to the logistic tecniques of bicycle touring, I would like to touch on an issue that has been bothering us for the past couple of days. When we were passing through Pima, safford and thatcher and noticed that for whatever reason, probably out of human laziness, they call burritos burros. Now maybe I have some sort of linguistic ignorance, but i have never heard anyone call a burrito a burro. We even went to a restaraunt to get some burritos and when Zach requested one by the word burrito, the waitress even corrected him. What the fuck is that? YOUR SMALL STRETCH OF TOWNS ARE WRONG!!! 

Now, back on point, yesterday we started out of safford with a goal of going 59 miles as we read that that particular stretch was the steepest and most difficult of the entire southern tier. So we headed out and the climbing basically started right away. The first 30 miles or so to three way were all up hill, but it was pretty easy. Very gradual climbing. Right outside of three way we hit a gnarly ass decline where I am proud to say I reached my top speed on a bicycle of 47.6 mph. Though it was incredible, it was also terrifying because the wind picks up on you super hard when you get up to those speeds. Tears were just streamig off of my face and at times we would get blasted with a cross wind that made me pretty scared for my life. 

After three way the climbs got really real on us. The hills got super steep and winded all around the mountains. We were doing some super steep climbs for a long long time. We climbed to I believe 6900 ft or something. The views were incredible. We even saw a cliff that looked like a phallus. 

So after reaching the top we began a super fun descent which tool us across the new Mexico border. As soon as we hit the border, once again, the scenery changed completely. We saw forests filled with trees all the way down the mountain side which lead in to rolling green pastures surrounded by mountains. This made all of the climbing totally worht it. New Mexico is straight up baller looking. Also, we were riding this last leg while the sun was setting making the landscape even more beautiful. This was another of my favorite stretches of the trip. 

We rode about 20 miles of that before hitting up buckhorn for the night. Even though the ride tha day was physically exhausting I felt really good the entire day. I was super stoked the whole time and the ride didn't seem hectic which many days it does due to long miles. We ended up doing 78 miles when all was said and done, even with all the mountains. Great day. 

Now today was a different story. We woke up this morning to about 38 degree weather. It was probably the coldest morning we have had yet. We got up and slowly got our shit together because we were sluggish and cold. We hit the road I believe around 8 am and headed toward silver city. Today's ride was also up hill alllllll day. However, today was just boring and I think we all agrees that even though none of the climbs were as severe as the ones from yesterday, something about today was just straight up exhausting. Once we rolled in to silver city we headed over to some overpriced vegetarian restaraunt. Turns out silver city is a MEGA hippie town. Though I am no hippie sympathizer, I do have many common interests with the likes of them so this town was a nice change from the red neck breeding grounds of yore. 

The orignal plan was that we were going to hang out for a bit then hit the road to get ahead of the game for the next couple of days. However, turns out we were all Spent. Then Lenora dropped the bomb that her knee is in too much pain to endure the 8000 ft climb we have in store for tomorrow. She unfortunately has decided to catch a bus to meet us in el paso. Her knee is the opposite of zachs bicep (from Zachary). 

After this Zach and I made up our minds not to continue on and just brave the night with the hippies. Luckily  while we were stopped at a bike shop a friendly wing nut started talkig to us about our ride and invited us to stay at his wing nut castle. So here we are! Amidst familiar territory among fellow biker weirdos. 

Tomorrow morning Zach and I will leave Lenora in our dust to climb Emory pass. An 8500 ft. Behemoth.