Aug 19, Day 55 - Jay's Bar

Cuba, NM to Jay’s Bar

Distance 104 miles; Av speed 10.3 mph

We meet the newest member of our team, Phil at McDonalds as planned, at 6.30am. Phil, thankfully is now looking a lot better. Phil is from near Toledo, Ohio and is 65, so an inspiration to us all. After picking up our foot long sandwiches from Subway, we are on the road by 7.15am and cranking out the miles. We have to take the paved alternate to Grants, since the main route runs over private land, and the owner has since denied access to cyclists crossing his land.

By 9.30am we have already done 30 miles, and it feels like we could easily cover the 120 miles to Grants in one day…. However, by 10am, our old friend Mr Headwind has woken up and our average speed degenerates quickly so that we are lucky to reach the grocery store at mile 53 by 1pm. We sit outside the store, drinking Gatorade and munching our sandwiches, hoping that the crosswind that we will have for the remainder of the day is not too bad. Phil is just chatting to Numbstuff, when he breaks off and says uh-oh… we follow his gaze to NumbStuff’s front tire which is as flat as a pancake. This time, it is easy to spot what is wrong, there is a staple embedded in the tire. We perform our quickest tire change to date, and swap out the old tube for one of the new self sealing tubes, which hopefully, should last us all the way to the border.

Even though we changed the tube quicker than normal, it has still take 20-30 mins out of our travelling time, so we hop back on the bikes and motor on. The route starts to climb up through colorful canyons and we start to feel the heat of the desert sun. The wind at least helps to cool us, but we still drink 4-5 liters each, including Gatorade.

Eventually, we have a glorious descent in the evening sun down to the junction where there is supposed to be a bar that has a campsite. Just before the bar, lies an enormous rattlesnake – dead fortunately, but it is Dirtbaby’s first sight of a rattlesnake and she is rather alarmed! We have cycled 104 miles, our first century this trip!

It is just gone 7pm by the time we hit the bar and the next decision is whether to continue the last 18 miles to Grants and hope we make it before dark, or stay at the bar, which just about looks like it is open. Given the state of the road and the speed of the cars, we decide to go into the bar and see if we can camp.

The barmaid, Jessie is friendly, and says we can camp on the porch once the bar has closed for the night at 8pm. How much closer to a bar can we get? We managed to squeeze 3 beers in before she closes, and also check our lottery tickets to find we have won the princely sum of $1!