“You see them long trains runnin’ / And you watch them disappear.” — The Doobie Brothers
Not one of my favorite songs, but entirely apropos for the day. I don’t think that we went more than an hour without seeing a very long (100+ cars) train heading east. Most were carrying intermodal containers, probably originating at the Port of Los Angeles, headed for some massive train-truck transfer center. The state of New Mexico definitely does not suffer from the “disappearin’ railroad blues.”
The weather pitched the curveball that I mentioned yesterday, and it was indeed high and hanging—a rare east wind, pushing us for the entire morning—so we crushed it.
We made it uphill to the Continental Divide with what felt like very little effort. We took a break there for a little food, hydration, and photography, and then knew that we would need to get onto I-40 for roughly the next 11 miles. Yesterday’s time on the interstate was uneventful; today’s was not. We had only gone a couple of miles when we hit a construction zone… except there wasn’t any construction happening, just a shift of the westbound lanes into the space formerly known as the shoulder. Jon and I were left with a narrow passage—just a couple of feet wide—between the white line on our left and a concrete Jersey barrier to our right. And this wasn’t “new” construction, either. Judging by the amount of debris piled against the barrier, those things had been there for a while.
It was terrifying to think about it, so I tried not to think about it. I just kept both hands on the grips, both eyes on the road, and both feet pedaling. Jon was in front of me, and just as he was about to clear the construction zone and emerge onto the wide open shoulder again, he rolled over a piece of shredded tire and steel belt, which immediately got entangled in his derailleur and rear cassette, and rendered him completely unable to pedal. If that had happened even 50 yards earlier, we’d be stopped dead. It was bad, but it could’ve been so much worse. It was a huge relief to be able to exit the highway in three more miles.
The remaining ride into Gallup passed quickly. We had to deal with a road closure, and a detour, and a grade crossing that was blocked by (yet another) really long train that wasn’t moving, which forced us to walk our bikes through a gap in a fence to—you guessed it—ride for a few more miles on the shoulder of I-40. Eventually, we made our way back to the original roadway and were treated to two lanes of pristine asphalt that weren’t open the public yet.
Tomorrow, we’ve decided to take a bit of a chance: it was supposed to be the first of three sub-45-mile days, but we’ll have the wind at our backs and a downhill gradient, which means that we would probably arrive at our original overnight destination, Chambers, well before noon. So… we canceled our reservation at the hotel there and decided to roll the dice. If we get to Chambers late or tired or whatever, we can probably still get the rooms we had reserved. But… if it’s early and we’re feeling good, or there’s no room at the inn, we’ll press on into Holbrook, some 45 miles farther down the road. It will end up being a 90+ mile day, with the latter half almost entirely on I-40.
We’ll see….
Rideworthy 