I’d departed northern New Mexico in earnest, because I’d been exposed to all the cold I cared to deal with… Those forecasted low temps of the low teens had turned out to be just a tease… after arrival, they’d dipped into the single digits! No ice or frozen precip, mercifully, save for some frost on ALI’s cover, and no ‘road treatments’ to threaten the ‘health’ of ‘our girl’s’ undercarriage.
“A man has to know his limitations,” it’s been said, and to that I would add, it also helps if he knows the limitations of his gear, too, including Gerbings, chaps and the like… This ride had proven to be ‘educational’, indeed!
I freely admit to being a bit sentimental regarding certain things. The ‘Gremlin bell’ protecting ALI and me, for instance, was a gift from Roger, RDAbull, the Corbin floorboards I got from Sam, the turn signal grills came from ‘Moses’, and the oil filter cover came from Terry, Thunderbolt. That gorgeous tank bib came from Terry, T-man403, when he reunited our girl and me in Asheville, NC. All treasures that I cannot bring myself to ever consider getting rid of.
My helmet, for another example, was a gift from my dear friend Howard, Clyde, and I’ve been wearing it exclusively since it appeared on the front porch of the house I was renting at the time, about thirteen years ago. It has served me quite well, and it reminds me of a special time and place in our big adventure…
It is also a ‘half-helmet’, which means there are significant ‘gaps’ in its coverage, including the absence of any face-shield… In case you’re wondering, YES! that is a rather noticeable missing feature when riding in below freezing temperatures! And, yes again, it will give one a whole new perspective on the effects of ‘wind chill’, especially when cruising at highway speeds…
The smart play would have been to patiently await Spring… That being a couple of months off still, I quickly discounted and dismissed that possibility. I made the call, bit the bullet, and pulled the trigger… It was a predictably unpleasant ride… but not totally devoid of pleasure entirely.
Even in bad circumstances, riding is fun… Yeah, being teeth-chattering cold ain’t something I would recommend to anyone as a ‘good riding condition’, but I’m still glad we made the ride. Ever notice how all hardships become oft-talked about, treasured memories… once they’ve faded away in the mirrors?
I granted myself leave to call it a day earlier than usual and did precisely that! We’d made it to Socorro, NM, and to a motel I’ve stayed at before… We did our arrival rituals, including setting the temp on the room heater to full-on thermal output, and then we settled in. We spent two nights there, as a warming trend had been in the forecast. That decision did not disappoint!
Balmy seeming temps that final morning… mid-thirties, as I recall, and all seemed well with the cosmos. A short jog of ten miles or so down the super-slab, near San Antonio, NM, then the remainder of the day would be spent almost entirely on two-lane roads… ideal for cruising and reflecting and… stuff…
Smack in the middle of San Antonio is a grill and bar that boasts a wonderful hamburger. I’d stopped there a couple of times in years past for just such a burger, and I found them to be great! No stop this day, however, as the road was calling, and I’d already had my fill of people fuel at the motel breakfast bar.
Once across the broad Rio Grande River valley, then up a long easy grade, and over a low pass, we made the decent into the Valley of Fire… An area like a couple of others out there, that had ancient lava flows well-up through cracks in the earth’s crust and spread out, rather than shoot up narrow corridors forming the more typical conical shapes of mountains we usually associate with that phenomena.
Just beyond the lava fields is the hamlet of Carrizozo, NM. Another place I’ve stopped over the years, even spent a night or two there on previous treks through… I stopped at a familiar convenience store for a potty break and for fuel since I needed to stop anyway…
My priorities were such that I went inside first, and… there was a line for the men’s room! Four adult males and one small child were patiently waiting their turn, and I could tell the wait would likely exceed my bladder capacity, so… I remounted our girl and rode across the road to another station!
No wait there! I then got a cup of hot chocolate, having already had my fill of coffee, and I decided to splurge and have a Honey Bun also… The very nice lady at the counter was obviously no spring chicken, but still she was rather attractive, I thought… And, there were no jewelry indicators of matrimonial impairment either!
Hmmm, and she was really friendly and quite willing to chat with his biker gypsy… no other customers were present at the moment… I was tempted to see where that might go, but… Nah… she probably had way too much class to be interested in this worn-out rider… And besides, I had miles to go before I slept… I did make a mental note of this, though… I passed on topping-off the tank after all.
We cruised into Capitan and rode right by the ‘Billy the Kid’ museum to another convenience store familiar to us. We were in the famous Lincoln County north of Ruidoso. I did need fuel this time, so… I pulled onto the lot and noticed every pump had a vehicle parked at it. I turned off our girl and patiently waited… and waited.
At the first pump, two guys were chatting… they were finished fueling but obviously in no hurry. At the second pump, a lady finished pumping her gas… then went inside the store… leaving her car at the pump unattended. At the third pump, a LEO was fooling around with stuff inside his SUV, and in no hurry at all. He eventually did begin to pump his gas. At the remaining pump was an empty car, but the driver did emerge from the store in a while.
In the meantime, two other vehicles had pulled onto the lot and began to wait. The lady at the last pumped pulled away from the pump but towards me, so I had to wait for her to move on… A pick-up with several passengers had been the last to arrive, but the driver pulled in behind the vehicle that was finally moving… and he parked. A lady exited the passenger side of the pick-up and went inside the store… the driver remained seated, as did the kids in the backseat… I was starting to become irritated.
Finally, the LEO finished and got inside his vehicle… He fooled around with some papers, but he did eventually pull away! As I dismounted ALI, the lady from the pick-up came back out with a sack full of stuff she’d purchased, and only then did the driver exit the pick-up and begin to fuel his truck. Nothing had changed at the first two pumps. I was full-fledged annoyed by then! It was a good thing I’d taken that potty break back in Carrizozo, as this otherwise could likely have produced an official encounter with that LEO who’d just departed!
“You need to take a chill pill,” inconsiderate people often say… as though the person they have annoyed is somehow to blame for the situation, and not the annoying person! You can’t change people, and there is no law requiring folks to be courteous to their fellow travelers…
To cope, I’ve adopted the ‘fifty-mile rule’. I seem to need to vent sometimes, so I will allow myself up to fifty miles to fret and stew and otherwise blow-off steam, but no more. I will not allow people like that to spoil any more of my day than that…
On to Roswell, NM, and yet another stop. I didn’t really need any petrol, but I was unsure of the distance to the next fuel oasis. I also knew a full tank here would get us to our planned stopping point for the night… And, there was that other thing… Mercifully, no line there either! Once again, we rode through Roswell and made no UFO sightings… A bird, however, an IFO I suppose, did try to strafe us, but thankfully he missed…
Brownfield, TX, was our stop place for the night… MitchO and I had stayed in that town once upon a time on our way to Meers, OK, for one of their famous hamburgers, but I didn’t see that motel on this ride through… I stayed at a rather nice Best Western instead, and dined at the Pizza Hut next door… It was rather chilly the following morning, but nothing like what I’d recently experienced, so… no complaints!
DDT
