Day 11 Holbrook, AZ to Gallup, NM
86.3 miles
5:19 time,
3,421 feet of climbing
We started out this morning from Holbrook, AZ (elevation 5,000 feet) where the temperature was in the low 40’s. This means leg warmers, arm warmers and jackets. The 35 gusting to 45 mph winds from the south had died down. The winds were now coming from the Northeast, the exact direction we were headed, since we were now headed to New Mexico. Hmmmm!. The wind gods are against us for sure. Ok, enough I’ll put the whine (wine) back in the bottle.
It was just a breeze of 5 mph or so, but given that we would be climbing most of the way to Gallup this is not what we wanted. It was a real working man’s day. The kind you just kind of grunt through and hope for something better the next day. My knee was a little stiff from yesterday. It started out cold with the breeze making it colder. I think I once read something about chill factor or something. This made me a grumpy old man that would qualify me for a bit part as Walter Mathau’s son in Grumpy Old Men III. At about noon the wind shifted favorably and became a tail wind. We started to make much better time and the sun started to warm. We entered Navajo lands, although you wouldn’t know by the businesses. Instead of tacky tourist shops owned by Caucasians, we now had tacky tourist shops owned by Indians, the American kind that is.
The terrain did start to change as we got out of the painted desert or at least that’s what desert I think we were in. We have certainly seen a lot of desert and I tend to lose track of which one we are in, but by early a.m. we saw the last of the desert we will see unless you count Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas as desert. I probably shouldn’t publish this until we get out of those states. Remember most of these people have gun racks in their pickup trucks.
Neuro Jim caught up to us at a little Navajo café/tricket shop/sportsbar/hangout complete with the representative wooden Indian. The gods punished him for not riding with me today and he picked up four flats. He would much rather me ride in front and make sure any wire or debris go into my tires. I only had one flat and we changed it in an expeditious manner.
Well, we are now sitting around at the Travel Lodge. Most of our accommodations are pretty good. The meals are good for the most part and the hotels are clean and have actually surprised to the positive. Well time to go have my 400 calorie chocolate milk now.
Signing off……
