Route 66, Day 9
by Bryan Patterson



June 15, 2015 - This was the day we had been waiting for, a chance to ride 80 miles on Route 66. We had camped in Grants and were very keen to get on the way. The tent was packed up quickly and the van filled with all our bags etc., then a quick breakfast was gotten and eaten with gusto but we still had to find a bike repair shop for Mark’s bike and the puncture on Sidd’s. It seems that Grants was a town that didn’t really cater for bike repairs, but we did find an auto welding shop that cut the axel cut out of Mark’s bike, but no puncture repair!  So we still only had three rideable bikes. So the decision was taken to do a relay with the three bikes, and adult rider and two kids – lucky kids what! We also decided to change every 5 miles, which was a smart thing to do given the heat during the day. BP, Giselle and Sidd were the first bikers and keen to get riding. Off we set, and really 5 miles came up pretty quickly!  Sidd has really come out of his shell since the start when he really wasn’t prepared for this adventure. But now he had miles under his legs and really wanted to push it. Giselle is a very good rider and has surprised all of us on this ride. She is actually great up hills and can leave us all standing – Go Giselle.

With 5 miles up it was Mark, Jeremy and Cristian to get up and go, which they dually did. Mark was still reeling from the fact that his bike had not been repaired yet but was determined and once again very fast over the 5 miles. Not that this was a race! I am trying to make sure that the cyclists appreciate that as a team and group we should try to ride together, but let’s be honest that’s not about to happen, so I was always left at the back being the slowest rider!

It was always good to see the van in the distance and know that you’d nearly done your 5 miles and were about to get a water and food break. Seeing the other riders with the drinks and waiting to change was a welcome site, although at times riders wanted to ride on, but we were making sure that this didn’t happen as we didn’t want anyone to become heat exhausted and then not be able to ride.

The scenery was beautiful, with far off plateaus and canyons to our left and then on the right more rolling hills with more vegetation, although still the site of sand and gravel along the way. One part of the ride took us through a canyon with incredibly steep sides and a gully one side. Still many Wash dips, which I would have loved to see flooded! We didn’t see much of highway 40 but there was off course the railroad tracks, which seemed to follow us most of the way! These track always seemed to run though the towns that we camped in, which meant that we got the hooting of the engine at night! Seems like these guys work all hours.

The weather was good but again very hot during the mid-day rides, so a high sun lotion factor was the order of the day. We could see areas that seemed to be having rain, in the distance, and hoped that we might get some rain on this ride.

We were aiming for Los Lunas which was the 80 mile mark, then we would not be too far from Albuquerque where the next camp site was.

This Route 66 was a wonderful ride, mainly on rough gravel road, but good enough to bike on and to have the van drive along too, which was a great, as without the van we would not have been able to make this 80 miles possible. At Los Lumas we were all pretty beat up and tired, so the van was packed and we made the camp site and set up tent. We had to get the two bikes fixed the next day and as we were near Albuquerque we looked up bike shops that we could get to. Fingers X’d that the bike would be sorted.