Day 16: Las Cruces NM to El Paso TX (East El Paso)

When I turned 50 years old, I road 50 miles on my birthday.  I thought that was cool and said, I will ride my age every year until I can not do it anymore.   Time has passed and lots of things have gotten in the way of that goal.  Today I turned 59 and I road my age.  Maybe this time I can keep it up and see how many years I can go before it gets to hard.  

When I woke up today, I had the two best birthday gifts anyone can get.  My beautiful wife was next to me in the back of our SUV and there will be a tail wind all day.  Now all of you are saying, I bet my favorite was the tailwind.  Not at all, if it was not for Sandy supporting this crazy adventure, I would never have experienced the tailwind.  Thanks, Sandy, for a great ride.

There are two of us doing this ride...
Your fantastic and this would not be happening without you.

Last night the winds picked up quite a bit so sleeping was a bit tough.  The winds were not as bad as day one Santa Ana winds but enough to make you wonder about the tent.  We woke up this morning and I had to collect clothing from the ground that we left out to dry.

Aside from a very relaxing ride today there were a few very neat things I want to pass on.  The entire area around Las Cruces is Pecan growing area.  There were thousands (millions) of acres of trees and they all were perfect.  The picture below is typical of all the groves.  I also passed by a pecan processing facility and the sign says it all, they take their pecan seriously.

Amazingly well kept...

Don't mess with the Pecan's

Later in the day, I cross the Rio Grande river.  You would think that this would be spectacular.  Well, there was no water in the Rio Grande.  

Not much of a river this time of year...

Today we entered Texas.  This sounds great and we have 990 miles behind us with 43,000 ft of climbing…  to cross Texas we have 1,035 miles to go with 36,000 ft of climbing.    

We have come so far...
But so far to go!!!

Other beautiful views...



Today’s ride stats:

Start Time:  8:47 AM Mountain Time      Finish Time: 3:23 PM Mountain Time    

Elapse Time:  6 Hr.36 Min.                       Ride Time: 4 Hr. 39 Min.

Distance:   75.3 Miles                                Average Speed: 16.2 mph

Climbing/Descent: 1371/1558 Ft.             TSS:  109

Average Power: 135 Watts                        Normalized Power:  153 Watts

Calories:  2261                                            Ave/Max HR: 109/131 bpm

Very Close to Mexico

For food today, I had on Cliff Bar, my daily ham sandwich, and a banana and two packets of Oreos for my Birthday.  I drank a Gatorade at lunch and about 2 water bottles.   

I was out there a long time today, but it did not seem that way.  I did have one flat that took forever to change and a nice lunch with Sandy.  Not sure that this really added up to two hours, but it did.  Overall, the ride was easy today. 

Tomorrows destination is still unknown.  We want to go about 60~70 miles but there does not seam to be much on the map at that distance.  We will see what happens.

Comments

  1. Ertle the Sr TurtleMarch 5, 2021 at 2:41 AM

    And on the 16 th day he rested ? Happy Birthday bro! Don’t stick around there too long, one look at your cardboard sign and the tent car and those Texans will ship you back to California where the rest of the vagrants are!!!!

    ReplyDelete

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