Ridin'Ard

Miles today: 176 en moto + 1.17 walking

Hours in the saddle: 3:22

Soundtrack: sarah Brightman, Halestorm

Calories burned (allegedly): 511 en moto + 95 walking

Today we did all of the G1 Butler roads out of Cloudcroft (at 9000 ft) and it was just a super awesome day.

We started with a brisk walk in the chilly morning down the hill for bkst and then back up again. We had coffee and pastries at a bakery. We saw these elk on the way down:

And this one on the way up! Jaron counted 7 points.

The bakery bkst didn’t stick to our ribs for very long so we stopped for 2nd bkst.

We went on our first ride towards Sunspot Solar Observatory. Google Maps said it was permanently closed, which sucks, but Julie figured it would be a nice stop for pictures. We pulled up to a closed gate so meh. Onward.

It is hard to describe how awesome this ride was. I was super locked in. Beautiful mountains. Back & forth between 2nd and 3rd gear, left & right, clutch, brake & throttle. Barely any talking on comms because we were both so focused. Laaaaaa

We continued on that highway towards Weed, which did not have gas. Ok, only 82 miles on this tank. We were told the next town would have gas. If it didn’t, we have a siphon so that Jaron can share gas from his amazingly large tank. We continued on the road we’d turned on and realized it was the wrong one and needed to turn around. This is the mud Julie successfully navigated!

The next town, Pinon, did have gas from this old faithful gas pump. There is a 1,000 gallon tank behind it. Jaron had to tell the general store clerk how much to ring him up for. We had a nice break chatting with her, getting local news while sharing a diet coke and not sharing ice creams.

We decided that it would be more emotionally satisfying to complete a loop than to go back the way we came even though the roads were better that way. So we left the mountains and went through some high desert landscape before going back and having bbq for supper.

Had a nice quiet evening. Julie read for like 1.5 hours and finished a book.

Miles today: 17 en moto + 1.14 walking

Hours in the saddle:

Soundtrack: Halestorm

Calories burned (allegedly): 41 en moto + 94 walking + 74 doing laundry

Thursday ended up being a catch-up day instead of the riding day we’d planned in Ruidoso. After another brisk walk down & back up the hill for bkst, the hearing for our asshole nuisance neighbor was that morning and Jaron wanted to participate via zoom. Julie hunted down a replacement shifter backup. Then we took a nap, booked our next hotel and then went to get lunch and to do laundry at yet another general store.

While laundry was running we cleaned and lubed our chains and Julie fixed some luggage strap configurations that had gone all wonky. Jaron talked to a gentleman who was changing his transmission fluid and used some extra transmission fluid as chain lube when we ran out of WD-40. (Can you believe the general store was out of WD-40?) Once our laundry was all packed up and we were all geared up and ready to go, it was monsoon time so we waited that out for a bit. The power went out and the gentleman (who also seemed to work there) offered to make pizza, but we wanted to get back.

When we walked in to the hotel the power sure was out. We were planning to have dinner at the hotel restaurant so that wasn’t looking good. It was 5:30 and Julie said ok, at 6:30 I’m eating a dehydrated camper meal if nothing else is in the works. Jaron said maybe we should have taken the gentleman up on the pizza. (I guess it would have been baked in a gas oven?) The power came back on after about an hour total outage and we were able to get a table at the hotel restaurant without a reservation because the restaurant cancelled reservations due to the power outage and then several people didn’t want to come back. So Jaron & Julie looking like ass from the road went to the nicest restaurant in town and ordered the first and second most expensive things on the menu. Our expenses have been pretty low so far so we decided to live a little. Julie forgot to take pictures of her elk and Jaron’s steak, but here is a picture of beet salad.

On our way out a couple suggested that we ask for the key to the bell tower and go have a look. That was random. Well, we did and it was beautiful. We were both out of breath after climbing 4 narrower and narrower flights of stairs, but we got this view.

There was also this cute reading nook which Julie would have used if it had been better lit.

We finished our evening in the hot tub. After a bit a couple came out and it was the same couple who recommended that we go to the bell tower. They were from Texas. We had a good time talking with them a while and then called it a night when the rain picked up again.