Today was the last day of this tour. I couldn’t decide which would be better: a great day (and be sad it was ending), or a less pleasant one (and be glad it was ending). Well, it turned out to be mostly a great day. It had been cloudy and sometimes rainy for a few days, but the blue skies came back today. At first they were behind me, and it felt like the clouds were chasing me, but eventually it cleared up completely and the scenery was New Mexico at its absolute best.
My first big section was supposed to be on old roads, but I decided to skip it and take I-40 instead, and I am certain I made the right call (you’ll see why later). Here’s what the Adventure Cycling route had to say about this fifteen-mile section:
“CAUTION. Cuervo Rd. is washed out in some short sections and may be dusty and in poor condition; use caution when wet. The alternative is to use I-40 to Cuervo”
RideWithGPS even showed the last couple of miles as unpaved.
When I got to Cuervo, I stopped at an unexpected convenience store. The moment I walked in, a chunky Australian shepherd was standing right there in front of me, wagging his tail, so naturally I went over and pet him vigorously. I complimented him on his fine work as the store’s watchdog and said a few other kind things to him. Eventually it dawned on me that I’d greeted the dog but not his dad, the owner, so I tried to break the ice: “Is he the official greeter?”
“No,” he said.
I assumed he was joking. He was not joking. “I don’t want him to be friendly to everyone,” he went on. “Just me.”
I looked down at the dog standing happily at my side, tail going a mile a minute, and said, “Well, I think you’ve got a problem then, because he likes people.”
“Sometimes,” he said darkly.
“Well, he likes me!”
I still couldn’t tell if he was serious, right up until he ordered the poor dog to go behind the counter. A grumpy man with a happy dog, wishing that his dog were as grumpy as he was.
Back on Route 66 (which here serves as the I-40 frontage road), I was chatting with Susan, my wife, on the phone when I spotted a motorcycle lying in the road and a dazed rider standing beside it. I said a quick goodbye to Susan and went to check on him. As I got closer, I could see exactly what had happened: that same slippery clay mud had filled the road, he’d lost traction, and down he went. His previously immaculate new motorcycle, his fancy protective gear, and his helmet visor were all scuffed and damaged, but he seemed okay, and I helped him pick the bike up and wheel it to the side of the road.
There was NO WAY I was going to wade through another mud pit like I did earlier in the tour. I asked if he’d help me heave my loaded bike over the barbed wire fence, so I could walk the dry side to the far end of the mud. I stripped everything off the bike and passed it over the fence, we hoisted the bike across, and then I climbed over myself, which was genuinely hard because the fence posts were flimsy and wobbly. I put a few holes in my bibs, but no new holes in ME, so I’m counting it as a win! Then I reassembled the bike and walked along facing traffic, which felt surprisingly scary after so many miles riding the other way. When I reached the far end, I was hugely relieved to find I could rejoin Route 66 without climbing back over the fence. There was one more flooded section after that, but it was more water than mud, so I just walked through it. Clear sailing from there.
Patricia, my sister, left Albuquerque around 10:30, and I tracked her progress on Life360. If I hadn’t been held up by the motorcycle accident and the mud, I’d have arrived 10 or 15 minutes ahead of her, but as it happened we pulled in at almost exactly the same time. I stopped to take a few pictures in Tucumcari, which has the highest density of Route 66 businesses of any town on the route (a lot of them defunct, but still very much worth photographing). At the famous Blue Swallow Motel, I ran into a group of five Spanish tourists, and it was awesome to witness their sheer excitement for Route 66. They’d started in Chicago and are driving all the way to LA.
Patricia and I met at Del’s, which opened in 1956. It was the last place I ate in 2022, on my east-to-west tour, so it felt fitting for it to serve my last meal on this one too. The food was amazing, the service was amazing, and it was just a wonderful way to end the tour.
Now I’m spending a week in New Mexico. I’m going to see old friends (and reconnect with the special friend I mentioned earlier), track down some precious New Mexico delicacies like red chiles and piñon, eat lots of my favorite foods, and, I am REALLY EXCITED about this, I managed to get an Amtrak ticket from Albuquerque to Seattle with my bicycle, which is PERFECT.
I have some more thoughts about this tour and the route, and I’ll add those later.
Leave a Reply