New Mexico-Day 1 Confirmed, I Am Not a Mtn Biker!

We finished our packing up this morning, ate hotel breakfast, stashed our box/case with the hotel staff, and managed to get on the road by 9:15ish. I had Garmin navigate us to the start of the route. It was all pavement until we reached the Sierra Vista Trailhead Parking. 

Bikes are looking much more ready. 

Outside the hotel 

Selfie time!

This was at the Heritage Farm and Museum not too far out of Las Cruces. 

Las Cruces in the way back. 

Cool rocks at the turn for the Sierra Vista Trail. 

Once we started on the singletrack of the Sierra Vista Trail all hell broke loose (okay, maybe not ALL, but definitely some). Bags started shifting, causing mucho heel strike. The trail was pretty rocky in many places, and lined with all things pokie. I kept having to adjust the bags on the rear rack. Finally, I realized I needed to move the cradles up higher. Well, that took a fair minute! Then Bethany, who had forgotten to fill her water bag…but a nice woman from Animal Control gave her three bottles of water…kept losing a bottle, decided it would be better to dump the bottled water into her water bag. That was a great idea, but it kept coming loose and falling out. 

Billy ready to rumble on the SVT

There goes Bethany. The trail started out nice. 

Barrel cactus…poke you. 

More cactus…also poke you. 

Don’t be landing on these!

Or these. 

We walked that which was scary (some up, some down). Every so often we would get a good stretch where we could ride, albeit slow, but consistent. We spent more time adjusting bags. Bethany, who is more brave than I am, crashed a couple of times. She has some bruises, but is mostly okay. Things were going along pretty good. We had stopped for some lunch. 

Bethany taking a photo of me taking a photo of her. 

My lunch. Nut butter and a That’s It bar on a tortilla. 

It looked like we didn’t have but maybe 5 or 6 more miles to go. I was coming down a wash, and through it to go up, when my rear wheel came to a screeching halt. I thought I had picked something up. The wheel wouldn’t budge, but there was not any branch or rock. Then I looked at the disc rotor and brake caliper. One of the Voile straps had been sucked into the caliper beside the rotor. It would not come out. Meanwhile, Bethany had walked back to see what was wrong. I took the thru axle out to take the wheel off, but it still wouldn’t budge. Finally, I unbolted the brake caliper and pulled it off the rotor. The Voile strap then came out. Got the wheel back on (brake functioning fine), and we took off again. 

The trail became a lot more of up and down through washes. Some we rode, some we walked. We were getting tired, even though we hadn’t come that many miles. Fortunately, today was a relatively short one to where we would camp. 

The camp spot is called Playa Con Dios. It’s a spot where there is sand/dirt and flat ground. We were home for the night!

Hallelujah says Bethany!

Little tents on the Playa. 

The wind made tent construction a little tricky, but we got them up. As the sun started going down, it got considerably colder. We have eaten dinner, and retreated to our tents. It’s now 7:05pm. Gonna be a long night in the tent. 

We did about 19 miles today, and the first, probably 8 or 9 were on pavement. We did spend a lot of time fixing bags. Once we stopped for the day, I did a whole rearrange of the rear rack cradles. Hopefully, it will prevent the heel strike, and things will stay in place better. Tomorrow, we have a whole lot more miles, but we should be done with the singletrack soon. After today, I can continue to confirm that I am NOT a Mtn Biker!