Cuba, New Mexico - Eating, Sleeping, Riding

I soon realized that sleeping directly on the ground wasn't such a good idea: I dozed on and off (mostly off) for a couple of hours, damned uncomfortable, before I had the idea of putting my inflatable mattress "inside" my sleeping bag. That way, the sleeping bag would protect the mattress. It was a bit cramped, but what a relief!

It was hard to roll over, and I kept waking up, but at least I slept.  Woke early and broke camp. The dogs that had been wandering around last night took off with Pete's subway sandwich wrapper.

The laundromat store owner came in just before 7, and I had a breakfast of a microwaved burrito and a can of vegetable juice. We were on the road by 7:40.

 

We were riding in a more easterly direction now, and the wind had changed too, so now we had either a cross wind or a head wind. Fortunately it wasn't too strong.  

We rode through rolling country, more barren scrub land. We were basically riding through a Navajo reservation, and we passed several Navajo chapter houses.

At one point, there was a sign saying "Star Lake Church Memorial Gardens" -- but the gardens looked just like the barren scrub land to either side.

We saw a snake lying on the road.   It was alive, and slowly moved across the road and into the bushes on the other side. We also saw a small rabbit, plenty of horses and a few cows.

 It was a cooler morning, only 24 degrees at 9am. It was still hard work, with the wind and the endless rollers. At 32 km, we reached another store, where I had some chocolate milk and a sandwich.

We showed the woman at the store a picture of the snake we had seen, and she identified it as a bull snake. It's poisonous, apparently, and there's a Navajo legend that if you pour water on one it will start to rain.   Later on, I saw another squirrel dashing towards a hole in the ground.

We finally reached the town of Cuba after about 77 km.

 It's a small place, and it didn't take long for us to find a motel, where we stayed for the night.
I got to enjoy the local fare: a burger, fries, corn on the cob, and a "chunky monkey" milkshake made with crushed Oreos and bananas. Delicious!

We then went back to the motel, where I slept for a couple of hours until dinner time.  We then wandered over to a nearby cafe for dinner. I didn't think I'd be hungry but I ate a large "Navajo Taco" made with frybread, green chili and cheese sauce, ground beef and salad. 

The frybread didn't taste like anything because of all the sauce, but I still finished the whole plate full.

We then wandered down to Subway to buy a sandwich for lunch tomorrow and also picked up some supplies for the trail. It feels like our whole life is focused on eating, sleeping and riding.

Tomorrow the ride gets serious. We climb up to 11,000 feet and have two day's riding with no sources of food or water. Apparently elk, deer and black bears are common in the area we'll be traveling through, and the final section is described by racers as the toughest hill on the entire route. Fortunately, we'll be riding down it rather than up (most racers ride north-to-south rather than south-to-north) but it'll still be a challenge -- and the climb we're doing first off looks even steeper.