Springer to Las Vegas: The Longest Day

11-9-07: Springer to Vegas (70 miles)....today was the longest (though not in miles) and hardest and slowest day yet. We left Springer at about 8:45am. It's about the second earliest that we have started. We had a restful night inside a local motel. The only campground was five miles north and right next to a prison. So, we stayed inside. After a good rest and an early rise and we were ready to head to Las Vegas.

I watched the news at 6:30am and found that there was a slight breeze from the north. "Yeah", I thought, "we're heading south. Looks like an easy day". I could not have been more wrong. The day started out easy enough. There was a slight breeze from the north, the sun was shining and we were ready to ride.

Approximately six miles later we had changed our tune. The first five miles were easy. All were down hill. The trouble is that every time that you go down a hill, you must now ride uphill. And Las Vegas is 600 feet above Springer in elevation. Ah, joy. So, after about a 300 or 400 feet drop, we began our climb into Las Vegas....at eight miles an hour. We were very fortunate in that we had a tailwind for about five miles. We were unfortunate in that our tailwind became a strong front wind at about the same time as our downhill became an uphill.

About 27 miles later we stopped in Wagon Mound, a little town that is named for a beautiful landmark that looks (if only vaguely) like a covered wagon. We stopped at a c-store and ate snickers bars, salt and vinegar chips, burritos and PB&J. After about 6000 calories we were off. And things got worse.

The climbing intensified. As did the wind. Nevertheless, we continued into the foray and bravely pushed forward. The rolling hills continued upward, and the wind continued to push us back. A continued eight miles an hour saw us up many a hill, and the wind pushed so hard that our downhills didn't feel like downhills. Push, push and more pushing.

We ran out of back roads after about 47 miles or so, and had to join the interstate. That's I-25 folks, and filled with hundreds and thousands of cars. In the first 45 miles we saw 23 cars. We didn't even try to count the cars on I-25. We spent about 1o miles on I-25 before the sun went down. At this point we yielded to reality and called Uncle Bob to come and pick us up. So, we had a car ride for about 16 miles...really not so bad considering that we had ridden 800+ miles so far.

So this is the hardest day that we had so far, and it will probably be the most rewarding we have.

Matthew