Day 16 Sept 30, 2008

From Super 8 in Dalhart to Nara Visa, NM. I got up at 5:30 am and prepared myself for today. This Super 8 did not deserve the name it bears. The room did not have a refrigerator or microwave, which every other Super 8 we have stayed at, and the TV reception was a mess. Their “breakfast” did not include bananas and the apple juice and orange juice were watered down. I sat around the breakfast lounge waiting for the dawn. It was still very dark at 7:30 am. A few more customers arrived and satisfied their needs, consuming coffee and sugared baked delicacies. Fresh fruit was visibly absent. Perhaps the service reflects the nees of its regular customers.

The weather report indicated that the breeze (wind currents) would be quite calm. (That is subject to debate.) A few blocks away from the motel I discovered my back wheel need inflating. Instead of returning, I got off the bike and walked a very short distance away to a tire repair shop where I was assisted. I checked the fron tire which needed no air (my assumption.) Thirty-five miles away I was the fron tire responding awkwardly to the bumps on the road. I called pam. Half an hour later she arrived. I pumped up the tire and once more I was on my way.

The wind picked up measurably, my speed limit decreased from 12.2 mph to 9.3 mph. Highway 54 does not reflect the kind of luck I had yesterday on my way from Guymon to Dalhart. The wind found the better part of my back and made the ride a very pleasant one.

Highway 54 in New Mexico cuts through a terrain, which reminds me of Zane Grey, an American novelist. His writings piqued my interest in the Old West at a young boy. The Second World War was in effect when I was reading his novels, and American soldiers were training at Green Hill, a few miles from my home. Whenever I would take the uniforms my mother had washed and pressed for a few of the soldiers, I would sometimes ask the soldiers for any books they didn’t want anymore or I would dig in the trash can find some very exciting novels.

As I ride through those soft red clay hills and see the surroundings spread out before me, the short green trees in the midst of thick brown grass and flowering vegetation, I’m reminded of the cowboys who acted as scouts for the generation of Americans moving westward. The slow pace of their horses on a windy day, such as today, their heads bent forward to keep their broad hats from being blown away, at the same time keeping their eyes peeled for any Indian surprises. His books were so graphic. Some of them were made into movies.

I ride the roller coaster road and do battle with the 30 mph wind. I wish I were back in Kansas. My odometer would read a much better progress to my ride. But as luck would have it, I saw a beautiful flower growing at the shoulder. I stopped and sat down to get a close up. I did not realize it at the time; it was only when I got up I felt a sting on my rear. I reached and the pain transferred to my fingers. My shoes, my socks, my shorts were entirely decorated with those prickly stock-ons.

A little further, on the top of a little rising, I saw a green patch, bordered by grazing cows in the meadow that interrupted their grazing to look at me. The green area was totally Irish green. It stretched for almost a quarter of a mile. The beauty of it all is the contrasting colors, with flowering shrubs under a blue, hazy, sunny sky. I stopped to take a photograph. On the opposite side of the road, in the distance, a train with lights on, weaving its way on its rails through the hillside of patchy brown and green foliage.

Perhaps this is what the pioneers saw, a dream to be realized, a Hope to become a reality. I felt refreshed from my soliloquy. I had to move on. The wind was still there as busy as ever. I traveled along at my slow pace, but down the road apiece, (a term I remember from my gardening parents who walked long miles to bring home the food.) my front tire went flat. I called Pam. She came for me.

Tonight I’ll sleep in Nara Visa at the Western Stars Motel, the only place still inhabited in Nara Visa, and a left over from the heyday of Historic Rte. 66. Tomorrow I will ride to Tucumcari, a town that is a memorial to the days of Historic Rte. 66. Get your kicks on Route 66!