We left Deming on a cold sunny morning. The temp almost reached 40 degrees. But it could be worse it could be snowing! We rode out of Deming on a road paralleling Interstate 10. It was nice to be away from the traffic. There wasn't much scenery. But I think we are getting used to that. There are more scrubby bushes instead of cactus. I suppose that counts as a scenery change in this part of the world. We had a slight tailwind for much of the day. Eventually we had to ride on the interstate again. We stopped just outside of Las Cruces at a truck stop for Subway. There was an old bicycle with a sleeping bag perched on the top of it outside of the truck stop. When we went inside, Hap met another one of his old friends. I guess I would describe this one as a homeless guy. He and Hap had quite a conversation about where he had been and we had been. He had several maps with him and showed Hap how we should go through Florida. Florida? That's three months away! How about where are we going to stay tonight! We ate our subs and headed out. I asked one of the workers if the side road we saw coming in went all the way into Las Cruces. Sure he said. That's the best way to go on a bicycle. So off we went down the side road.....and then we saw the sign that said "Pavement ends". Mmmm.....maybe HE rides his bike that way but we couldn't. So we turned around to get back onto the interstate. That's when we heard THE sound. THE sound is THE sound of dragging the trailer because the back wheel was flat. We stopped to fix it. Since it had "slime" in it. That's the tire sealant that is inside of the tire, Hap just put air int the tire and it held. So now we get onto the interstate. There was some road construction and a big downhill into Las Cruces. The mountains sure were pretty in the background. I hope you can see that from one of the pictures above. The excitement started as we got to the Las Cruces exits. Traffic picked up. The real excitement was when there was an exit and we didn't have to exit there. Just picture riding a bicycle with traffic all around, they want to get off the interstate, we don't want to, and others are coming onto the interstate. Talk about being a lookout. We found our exit and stopped at the hotel we had picked out. We had a discount coupon but when we went in she said, oh no we don't take that one anymore. We just went to a gas station and started calling hotels. We found one not too far away and headed toward it. While we were riding, we had two cars cut right into our lane to make a right hand turn. Thank you very much. We got to the Teakwood Inn finally. While we were checking in Hap said "So what's your best rate for two very tired bikers from Ohio?" The manager answered "You rode from Ohio to here?" "Not directly, we went to up to Washington, down to San Diego and then rode to here". She gave us a great rate! Maybe we need to try that more often. They even gave us a huge room. The hotel had an indoor pool so we headed to the pool for some laps. It sure felt good to swim again.
The next morning we planned to ride to El Paso to pick up our mail. But when we called the post office they said it wasn't there. We decided since we had a nice place to stay we would just stay in Las Cruces again and then ride to El Paso tomorrow. I checked to see what we could do and found that there was an "old town called La Mesilla" that had shops, etc. We didn't want to take the bike because we didn't want to leave it outside alone. It gets lonely sometimes! We opted to take a bus. We called the bus station to find out where the bus stop was. There was one just outside of the hotel. Neither of us have ridden on a bus for awhile. As it turns out it is a cheap way to see a city. .50 for me and .25 cents for the old guy! We finally got to La Mesilla and walked around for awhile. There was a neat old church there but other than that it wasn't that great. We ate lunch at a mexican restaurant and then decided to just walk back instead of waiting on the bus. It didn't take that long. We stopped at a Hollywood Video store for a movie. I wanted to see the new movie "Bourne Ultimatum". They didn't have it so we rented the new Bruce Willis movie. For dinner we stopped at Whataburger. Then we tried to watch our movie. We had gotten one of the Blueray type movies. It wouldn't work in our computer. Oh well.
This morning we ate breakfast in the hotel. It was sunny and alittle warmer today, in the 50's. We took the movie back and when I told her it wouldn't work. She said do you have the special player for a blueray movie?? Ohhhhh..... It would've been nice if they had mentioned THAT when we got it. She gave us a credit and we headed out. Today's ride to El Paso was really nice. It was great being off of the interstate. We were on Rt 28 most of the day. We rode through alot of pecan farms and some vineyard/wineries. Once we got into El Paso the traffic really picked up. Coming into town we had a huge hill to climb. The hill wasn't so bad, it was the bumper to bumper three lane each direction traffic that made it really special. We stopped and called the post office and our mail still wasn't there. She is going to call us in the morning and tell us if it made it. We had planned to ride close to the airport where the post office was and find a hotel and pick up our mail. What we didn't know was that the airport is about 10-15 miles from where we were. And now that we are not sure if we are even going to have mail to pick up, we weren't sure if we needed to go out of our way. We were in the middle of town by now. We stopped at the first hotel. Traffic was still very heavy and now it was getting pretty late. I'll never understand why someone will drive right up behind us, and not pass us when there are THREE lanes with no one beside them. I just don't understand! We checked in and of course they didn't have a ground floor room. We were on the fifth floor. The picture above is of us carrying the tandem up the stairs. It wouldn't fit in the elevator. We finally got the bike, all the bags and the trailer into the room. Whew! A long day but a good day of riding. Now all we need is our mail to show up tomorrow. Until next time!
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