Carrizozo, NM

7.7.2010

Today’s ride was just frustrating. When we woke up this morning we were expecting an easy ride after yesterday’s marathon. What we found is that we had the hardest rack point we’ve had the whole trip. Our goal was to make 57 of the 80 miles by 10:00 AM. Also, today was my turn to be sweeper, which meant I had to be the last man in. This meant that for me to make the rack point, every single other person also had to make the rack point. James Lawrence, the other sweeper, and I left the parking lot at 6:45AM, which meant we had to keep an average pace of 19 to 20 mph the whole day in order to make the rack point … as would everyone else.

We were doing well for a little bit, and we came up on the first group with a flat just as they were getting it fixed up. Fortunately we didn’t lose very much time here. The next flat we came across we were stopped for a little longer, and our hopes of making the rack point were jeopardized. After they got fixed up we started out again, pushing a pretty good pace. Then we caught up with one of the slower pace lines. James and I had to stay with them, but the two guys we were with were able to continue on ahead. We were cruising on at about 13 miles per hour, and it became pretty clear that we were going to get racked. When Nick’s van pulled up, all we could do was get in and hope that at least some of the guys had pushed it to mile 57 fast enough.

As it turned out, nobody was able to make rack point. When we staged up for arrival, everyone was pretty bummed. There was talk about how we should have woken up earlier, how we should have distributed the people in pace lines, and the general crappiness of the demanding rack point. The arrival into town was my least favorite for that reason, but soon we arrived at our Friendship visit and things started looking up.

They had piles of food waiting for us. There was roast beef, sausage, pork, baked beans, pasta salad, watermelon, cantaloupe, pineapple and all sorts of goodies. I was talking with a woman named Joy who had just got back from placing 3rd at the Albuquerque Special Olympics in golf. She was bragging about how she even beat all of the boys. After lunch, the residents went about their normal business (Joy was going to get her hair cut), and we went to the back room to relax. There they had a bunch of postage paid postcards where we could write to our families, some stand up comedy playing on the television, and FOOT AND BACK MASSAGES. The line for the back massage was pretty long, but I was able to get a foot rub in before we had to head to lodging.

When we started to walk the block and a half to the local high school, we were met with the first rain of the trip. It was sort of refreshing in the heat of the afternoon, and reminded me a bit of Ithaca. I’m lying inside now on my warm air mattress after having showered up, and we’re getting ready to head to dinner. Hopefully tomorrow won’t be quite as harsh as today was.

Just got back from dinner. A woman brought over her domesticated skunks for us to pet. That is all.