Big NM ride, parte uno de dos

When one lives in New Mexico, recreation plans are very rarely contingent on weather, so it’s generally not considered. Ryan and I had talked about doing the big ABQLASF loop before Jill and I left for greener flatter pastures. The date that best fit our schedules was Sat, Apr 11, 2009. As the day approached, it became clear that Sat would be the worst weather of the previous month, and the forecast grew grimmer with each passing day. As a weather optimist, I assumed that the rain would come in brief showers that would give way to pleasant sunshine, making for an overall not-too-unpleasant day.

The full loop is about 200 miles, and I would estimate somewhere around 8000 ft of climbing. Based on my 93 and Ryan’s 140+ mile rides, we thought it would take 14 hours with reasonable weather conditions. Ryan’s friend Eli, a stronger rider than either of us, agreed to ride with us. My friend Kyle and his brother planned to join us on the leg from Los Alamos to Santa Fe.
I woke up at 4:30am on Sat and noticed that the ground was wet though it wasn’t raining at the time. The radar showed large and many showers to the southwest. I called Ryan at 4:50 to see if he was still willing to do the ride. He was, but Eli had not shown up to his house yet.

One big lesson from this ride is that when a group of men get together, very often the most risky or exciting viewpoint carries the day. Certainly this was true of our group, and I imagine this is a leading cause of gang violence, church splits, and reality tv shows. I fancy myself a rational thinker, but perhaps I’m more swayed to extremes than I know.

At 5:20 with still no rain falling, Ryan called to say they were ready, and I was off. It was really dark and moderately chilly. A few flashes of lightning appeared to the west. The wind was blowing pretty hard from the south.

Since we had already started to pack for our move to IL, some of my better winter clothes were in boxes. But I felt pretty good about what I had and was wearing. Here’s what I had for the ride.
feet: thick wool socks, mtb shoes, neoprene booties
legs: bike shorts, tights, rain pants
torso: LS wool shirt, LS nylon shirt, LS bike jersey, rain jacket
head: winter wool hat knitted by Jill
hands: fingerless bike gloves, wool mittens
food: small bag of Jelly Bellies, two pb sandwiches, orange
water: two large water bottles

Since the plan was for only 2 hours of riding in the dark, I brought small, battery powered LED lights rather than my generator lighting system. With the fancy tires borrowed from Ryan, my bike was as light and fast as possible.

The three of us met up along the North Diversion channel trail and cruised along happily but took note of the lightning flashing ahead on our route. At Paseo del Norte, the bike trail was blocked with multiple signs saying that the path was closed. That was inconvenient, so we stayed on the trail. Eli joked that those signs are simply invitations to mountain bikers like him. All was fine until just before we wanted to exit at Alameda where the pavement was removed and a fence blocked the exit. I though about carrying my bike over the muddy path but chose to drag it instead. After hopping the fence, I noted that my rear tire was flat, bummer.

The second and third flats happened just south of Bernalillo, at the same time. This time, there was some daylight, so that was nice. Also, since I had brought a spare tire, I replaced the rear Challenge tire with a Pro2 Race.

Shortly after we passed through Bernalillo, a moderate rain started to fall. We were riding along the shoulder of 550 with a slight but gusty tailwind. However, it was tough riding. Water was beginning to pool on the road, so I could either draft the guy in front of me and get a stream of gritty water spraying my face or back off and work harder. I tried both, and neither was pleasant. We all had fenders, but as NM residents we had no experience riding with others in the rain. Additional mud flaps would have prevented the spray onto following riders.

About 5 miles from San Ysidro, my front Challenge tire flatted again. Our routine was getting pretty good by this time. I would get the tools and remove the tire, Ryan would patch the tube, and Eli would pump. After pumping the tire back up, the first patch didn’t hold, so we did it all over again. Brrr, my hands were cold, and my gloves were wet.

5 miles is a long way to ride in the rain with cold, wet hands. We finally reached the gas station in San Ysidro where I washed the road grime off my face and warmed my hands under the hand dryer. We drank hot drinks and discussed our plight as the rain fell. Eli abstained from voting—as the third member, he would go with the group’s decision. I leaned towards returning to Abq, but worried about getting many more flats. Ryan wanted to ride up towards Jemez so that we could see better scenery. We would go on. I bought a pair of gardening gloves for $3 and borrowed glove liners from Ryan.

The rain stopped, and up Jemez Canyon we went. Since we were riding uphill and my hands were dry, I was in good spirits. 5 miles up the road the rain restarted. Then it rained harder. Eli turned for home, but Ryan and I planned to reach Jemez Springs. As we approached Jemez Springs, the rain was turning to a snowy, sleety mix and water ran across the road.

We pulled off at the Laughing Lizard at 10:45 thoroughly soaked and rather cold. Their sign said they would open at 11, but they let us in shortly after we took off our outer gear. The LL has a wood burning stove with a wood fence around it on which we hung our wet stuff. We each drank 4 cups of tea, ate a quesadilla, and had dessert while the rain turned to snow and then to a blizzard. Other patrons told us that snow was sticking to the roadway further up the mountain, so we assumed that our journey had reached the turn-around point.