New Mexico 2016

Every year I like to plan a trip to New Mexico. I visit my sister Nancy and Brother-in-law, Mark. They live in Albuquerque. I also plan the trip to coincide with the Santa Fe Century ride. My cycling buddy Richard got me going on this ride here 6 years ago now and I sure enjoy the ride, the town, and the general relaxing fun to be had.

First order of business is escaping from work. We run our business with a pretty tight crew, lean and mean is the proper business nonsense vocab.....Anyway we can not afford to have anymore than 2 missing on vacation or our customers really suffer from lack of service. My people are really good about planning ahead and working it out.I schedule this time off back when I sign up, in January. Things look good until one of my guys goes down with Hernia surgery scheduled for the day I leave. Everybody else says "Go, we'll handle it" So, off I go. I have a great crew and has always been a pleasure to work with these people.

After a couple days of golf with Mark, we get up on Saturday morning and plan a ride on the Bosque trail heading us down to a nice lunch in Old Town, A destination ride!!

One of Nancy and one of Mark

I had beautiful warm days in Albuquerque. It was so nice. I actually played golf and rode my bike for 5 straight days on this trip and I did not have to wear a beanie to stay warm or slog on rain gear to stay dry!!!
Pretty sweet considering I was doing this the weekend before.

I noticed these birds while riding and I stopped for a picture. Mind you I don't have Teesie's bird picture skills. I think they were young immature Hawks.

After a nice lunch I head on up to Santa Fe. Usually I am meeting up with friends for some fun on Saturday but everybody had other commitments or choices to spend their bike travel budgets on other trips. All good, there are so many trips on everybody's bucket list it is amazing we get together ever!! I get checked in and got ready to ride the trail up to the hospital to pick up my packet. The wind was really howling this afternoon into the evening so kept the bike in the room. Packet pick-up and then over to 2nd Street brewery for their excellent Cream Stout!! OK, I'll have two!!

Off I go the next morning. I decided to ride the 50 mile ride because I just did not want to kill myself off. I have not been able to get any long rides in this spring due to weather just being crappy and busy with work. Man...... work....... I find myself busier than ever with my job, isn't it supposed to get easier as you wind down a career?? That's a whole another blog post.... Anyway I also wanted to be finished before that big wind roared up again. The prediction was a similar day like it was on Saturday.
They changed the route a bit this year due to construction on Cirillous road and the I-25 interchange. So my great location of motel right on the route changed up some too. I had to ride over to the east a few miles to pick up the route.
Here are a few pictures as I roll along.

I got down to the Galisteo food stop and the wind was picking up. I was self-congratulating myself for making the right decision. If you have ridden this ride you know that this last 20 miles is mostly uphill with the wind in your face....and it was!! I talked with a nice couple from Germany at the final food stop at Eldorado who took my picture for me. They were amazed at the ride and that so many people were involved "just for the fun of it" They just could not wrap their heads around riding your bike for 100 or 50 miles for no real reason. I told them there was a race for the real good riders and they understood that.

Finished up the ride very strong, felt great. Sat in the celebration area with a group of ladies from Longmont and Loveland and talked about riding Horsetooth!!! I rolled back to the motel and with that posted a 57.4 mile ride. My ride time was 4 hours and 12 min and averaged 12.6 mph. Good day, beat most of the wind, headed over for traditional post ride, post shower, meal at Blue Corn Cafe for a nice nut brown ale and some tacos.

I'll probably be back next year just because it matches up so well with the trip to Albuquerque to see Nancy and Mark.
Cheers everybody!!
Jim