Sunday, March 22, 2009

Day 17

Off to El Paso! We were incredibly fortunate today and had a beautiful ride. The weather was once again perfect. We got off early, and I was wanting to move as quickly as possible. I had two reasons. One was that Michelle our leader had let us know that traffic in El Paso, could be significant, in particular in the neighborhood of a mall. The other was that after the long hours on the bike yesterday, I was a little sore, and so wanted to minimize time in the saddle. I rode with two other women who were similarly motivated. We got off just after seven AM, and headed by the old section of Las Cruces. We were quickly out of town and riding through groves of pecans. The trees have not leafed out, and they are in perfect rows making for a lovely park like setting. We went through miles and miles of these groves, and with that and a perfect sunrise at out beginning, it was a peaceful Sunday morning.

After twenty miles or so we got into some horse country, with a polo field on one side, and farms with thoroughbreds left and right. We passed one farm, where a horse in his pen trotted up when cyclists came in the opposite direction. He moved away from the road and then as we drew close again trotted up, as if to say, "I want to run with your herd!". All these horses were clean and well groomed. The homes in this area were large. The architecture was all southwestern.

We slowly headed into the city with suburbs and then a horse track. There again were a lot of horses and these were being exercised. They were all so beautiful...Can you tell that horses are one of my favorite animals? Coming into town, we were early enough to miss the mall traffic (yeah). Around the mall, there were some hills, and soon we came into the old town of El Paso.

From here we had the last miles of our trip on a highway and so we stayed carefully in the shoulder. The most we had to deal with was a few rough spots and some junk, but all in all with a strong tailwind, we cruised along.

We were on a roll, and so didn't stop for lunch. We got in, took care of getting laundry done, as well as bike maintainence, and then went to a Mexican restaurant next to the hotel. It was packed with Latinos and we thought we had probably made a great choice. It was!

The day was really so beautiful. The thing that I loved the most (besides the horses) was all the pecan trees...

Mileage today 66.13 almost all flat and fun.

No comments:

Post a Comment