Sunday April 5, 2015

We were awake at 7:00 this morning and got ready to leave. It was a little chilly, Ralf wore his hat and leggings and I had to put another jacket on over my wind breaker as it was cool. As soon as the sun came a little higher in the sky it warmed up and by the time we had eaten breakfast, put the tent away it was warmer. We kept our light windbreakers on for about an hour, but it was good cycling temperature.

As we cycled this morning the song that ran through my head was “I can see for miles and miles ….” I sang it for Ralf and he replied with “I can see clearly now the rain has gone”. Later as we cycled into the headwind, the lyrics popped into my head “Against the wind….”

The first part of our ride was undulating, we had a slight headwind but nothing too bad. We made the left turn towards Arizona and had some climbing to do.

Ralf noticed that a roadie was following us and we expected him/her to catch up with us pretty quickly as we were going up and down hills and it was windy. We passed through, Mule Creek – the only thing Mule Creek has is a post office and a little store, blink and you really would miss Mule Creek.

Shortly after Mule Creek we stopped for our hourly break and that is when the roadie caught up with us. “You guys really move” Then she looked at our bikes and her face dropped, “How much weight are you carrying?” We told her and she was most impressed with our strength. She should have seen us two days ago cycling into Silver City she wouldn’t have been that impressed with us.

She told us about the “big drop” and said she wasn’t going to cycle down it today. I asked her how many ks she did on average and she nonchalantly said it depends – 45 miles, 60 miles or a century (100 miles) depends how I feel. Pretty impressive.

We didn’t really know what the big drop was, but we knew when we got to it.

Farewell New Mexico, we didn\’t get a photo of the Welcome to New Mexico when we entered, so we took a photo when we left.

We are in Arizona and what an incredibly beautiful State it is.

We crossed into Arizona and while we were taking photos of the sign, a couple on a motorbike chatted to a Ralf and a lady chatted to me. Divide and conquer, answer all the questions and ask a few in return. Ralf’s motor-bikers were from Vancouver. My lady was from Phoenix and taking the scenic route home. She was asking a lot of questions about the gear as she and a friend were hoping to do a ride this summer. Probably the Pacific Coast ride from north to south.

The “Big Drop” bought us down from about 1,865 metres to 1,110 metres in Three Way. The scenery was awesome. We stopped lots of times to take photos.

I am ahead, while Ralf is taking photos.

The roadside flowers were beautiful. Little yellow buttercups nodding their heads as we cycled past, larger yellow flowers that smiled at us and purple flowers similar to lupins but not as big all welcomed us into Arizona.

We gained an hour again, Arizona does not recognize daylight savings – what a very intelligent state, as soon as we crossed the State line the garmins corrected the time.

As we came into Three Way, both of our heart rate monitors went berserk. We were coming down a hill hardly peddling and Ralf’s HR went up to 192 bpm and mine registered 204 bpm, then I asked Ralf what his was and it was exactly the same as mine for about five minutes riding our heart rates were exactly the same, that is very odd. We arrived in Three Way at about 1:30 and had sandwiches and chocolate milk for lunch.

Why is Three Way called Three Way because there are three roads intersecting here, very simple.

We found our home for the night, which is the front lawn of the ranger station. It has a long drop toilet and a water tap. Very basic, but adequate. Unfortunately, we can see the road we have to take tomorrow – straight up again.