Aug 24, Day 60 - Buckhorn

Reserve, NM to Buckhorn, NM

Distance - 62.7 miles, Av speed - 10.9 mph

Dirtbaby wakes up and decides to go across the street to pick up lattes. Upon opening the door, she is greeted by a fountain that was not there last night. Looks like the construction workers have ruptured the water pipe – uh oh. We have to flush the toilet by filling the bin with hot water from the bath tub!

Again, the day starts off with blue skies which slowly cloud over – we are starting to see the pattern.

We stop in Glenwood which seems to have lots of restaurants, but every single one is closed! Out with the jet boil and we have a Mountain house lunch. When packing up his BOB trailer, Numb Stuff notices his trailer has a flat – the first on this trip! We find a thorn has made a small hole – must have happened when we rode through the mowing clippings earlier that day. We replace the tube and head off again.

By 2pm, thunder is rumbling and lightening is starting to flash all around us. It looks like we are going up into the storm, but Numb Stuff works out if we can just get to the top, the road swings round to the right and we should miss the lightening. As always, Numb Stuff is right, and we just have the rain and the wind to cope with.

While riding in the rain, a couple stop and offer first Numb Stuff a ride, which he refuses, and then when Dirtbaby catches up, they offer her one too.  The thought flashes through Dirtbaby’s mind, wouldn’t it be fun to take the ride and wave at Numb Stuff as we pass him on the way to Silver City! But you wouldn’t desert your mates like that, and besides the rain is not cold, so she politely refuses too.

She is surprised to finally catch up with Numb Stuff a few miles later, maybe, just maybe, she is getting fitter! But no, on closer inspection, she sees that his BOB trailer has another flat and waves to him to stop. However, Numb Stuff already knows he has a flat, he just doesn’t want to stop in the rain to change his tire! He cycles the last 14 miles with the flat, luckily the tire isn’t shredded!

We find the RV park in Buckhorn, Dirtbaby stayed here in December 2007 when cycling the Southern Tier with her husband so it has some happy memories for her, albeit ones of waking up with ice in her hair! They even have a shelter for us to camp underneath, which we take full advantage of! On the way to the RV park, we passed what we think is a bar in Buckhorn so go back there for a pint and food – however, it is actually a liquor store that also serves pizza. We order their home made pizza which is great, then take a 6 pack of beer to drink back at camp before flaking out in our tents.