Limping along New Mexico - Border/Deming/Hurley

Pancakes for breakfast, and then off to the Mexican border.

Rode to the border and.... got 2 flats from the "Texas tacks" -- big thorns. Ouch! I'll have to be careful not to ride too close to the edge of the road, and I may buy new tyres in Silver City.  Greg and Peter Gilbert stayed behind to wait for Pete's bag to arrive by courier.  The airline forgot it.

2 cm long thorns

Got more flats, limped into Deming, pumping tyres every few kms.  I had managed to get another thorn in my tyre, but it sort of held air so I just stopped every 4-5 km to pump it back up. The temperatures were around 25 degrees.  I was nervous about changing tyres, but now I am an expert!

We reached Deming after about 50 km and found a bike shop, where I bought some ultra strong inner tubes. They weigh about a kilo each, and came in boxes about half the size of a shoebox! They're made of really strong and thick rubber, which is supposed to be thorn-resistant.
The tubes had the wrong sort of valve, so I got them to drill out the hole in my wheels so the tubes would fit. It took about 45 minutes, but it worked and I had no more flats (so far). Whew!

We then had lunch at a fast-food place, and waited for Greg and Pete to arrive.

 By then it was about 4 o'clock and we decided it was too late to reach Silver City, but there was a small town called Hurley about 20 km earlier, so we booked motel rooms there and began to ride.

The problem was that the air had gotten a lot hotter -- up to around 40 degrees -- and we really struggled.  Greg was having trouble, cramping and getting dizzy, and he and Pete ended up stopping and camping at a rest area, while the rest of us headed on into the night.

The ride was brutal -- we were just riding on the shoulder of the road but it seemed to go on forever.

At one point, we thought we could see the lights of the town, but with the road straight and flat it was about 20 km until we reached it...only to discover that it was the entrance to a mining facility and the town was still about 10 km further on.

We made it in the end, very tired, sunburned and sore, arriving around 10:20 at night.

The motel's restaurant had closed of course, so we ate a meal of beef jerky, salmon, tortillas, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Not a great meal, but we were too tired to care.  I found I still had two lollies from my Air New Zealand flight to San Francisco in my jacket pocket, so I had one for dessert. Luxury!

So that was our first day on the Tour Divide. We had ridden from 9 in the morning until after 10
at night, covered over 125 km on fully-laden touring bikes, sorted out Pete's missing bag and my too-soft tyres, and survived. What a day!

Left at the Mexican Border at 9am, and got into Hurley 10.20pm.  Covered about 120kms.