Day 58

Hatch to Deming was uneventful except for one or two flats. I think we finally learned that the key is to keep your tires on the pavement at all costs, the moment they get off in the gravel or weeds to the side of the road is danger zone for the go ahead thorns.

Saw another Solar power farm, probably the third or fourth one I’ve seen in New Mexico. Huge rows of solar cells passively collecting sun produced electricity and feeding the grid for us hungry energy users. 

We stayed at a days inn on the outskirts of Deming, a nice little town with a nice couple of downtown core streets, but not a whole lot else there. Walmart, of course, was probably responsible for lots of the closed businesses in the downtown zone. 

Note to self, don’t order spaghetti off of a menu that is dominated by Mexican food and burgers! The jar of Ragu sauce that showed up on the plate with three measly meatballs on top of pasta that probably was cooked a month ago was edible, but just barely!

Day 59

The last day of cycling finally arrives! Deming to Columbus, only about 33 miles to finish!

Saw a beautiful (dead) snake on the road! Actually, there has been an enormous amount of roadkill along the way, so surprising to see so many and especially some larger animals flat and dried on the side of the road…

We also ran into Richard, I met him about a month ago on the trip when I was riding along with the Dutch group. He was riding solo from the Netherlands, when into Puerto Palomas for lunch and was riding back to Deming to catch a train to Los Angeles. Nice guy!

We rode into very small town Columbus, arriving around noon, stopped for lunch at Alma’s for Mexican. As we’ve gotten closer to the border, to become more common to see returnable bottles, the old type that I remember growing up with as a kid, heavy thick glass bottles of Coca-Cola, Fanta Orange, sprite. Ice-cold Coke out of glass taste pretty darn good! My favorite drink while cycling, though in my normal life I never touch it…

Lunch done, just three more miles to the border! My original idea was to check into the motel and drop off my gear, ride lightened bikes in Mexico, but Danell reminded us that we carried all this stuff from Canada, we should carry it in the Mexico too, so we all rode fully loaded bikes into the border crossing.

So here I find myself riding the last three miles, approaching Mexico! Euphoric yes, but also kinda just another day on the bike, somehow. 

No issues at the border, we pretty much just cycled right into Mexico! Within the first block past the border is a place called the Pink Store, a combination restaurant and gift shop full of Mexican gifts and pottery and trinkets and such. Actually really nice store and operated by very nice people! As we had just had lunch, we just relaxed with margaritas and I had beer and a couple of tequila shots. 

As I mentioned before, there was for me a certain amount of relief and yet disbelief about having completing the trip. After we enjoyed our drinks, it was time to eat some food before we cycled back to Columbus to Martha’s place, a little motel.

Bridgette will meet us at the hotel later tonight, a 6 hr drive for her from Phoenix. 

There’s a certain amount of this trip that I find in its conclusion to be anti-climactic, in a sense once you’ve achieved a thing, the effort and time that it took to achieve it is all behind you, somehow it doesn’t all add up to some glorious cumulative crescendo, it’s just done. And that’s ok… So grateful that Haley and Danell adopted me so I had friends to celebrate the finish with!

Once I get all my thoughts together in retrospect about the trip, I will add a concluding and final blog entry with my overall impressions and perspectives on completing the longest (time and distance) cycling adventure of my life. So far, anyway…