Finished!

So we finished the ride yesterday about noon, with a tailwind propelled three miles down Montana Blvd (appropriate) in El Paso. The last two days riding ahs been distinguished by a lot of fast, well-ordered pacelines, short gaps between sags, friendly conversation and a a feeling of vacation! IN Truth or Consequences, after a 77 mile day (albeit with non stop rollers and the inevitable headwind) we hung out by the pool and laughed at our silly tans. Las Cruces, Joel and I wend out to dinner with Lil and Ray at a very fancy restaurant (the only one in New Mexico with its own beef aging room) in an old mansion with 24 carat gold ceilings in the old town of Mesilla, and then we got up yesterday morning and rode 65 miles into El Paso, entering Texas, climbing a pass over the Franklin mountains, struggling against a large headwind on teh freeway, then finally picking up the finish I described above.

Of course, the work of Pac Tour isn't over just because you're done riding. Immediately afer lunch, served in the parking lot of the airport Marriott hotel, we were all busily at work packing our bikes, then arranging for shipping. This is a much nicer hotel than we usually stay in (which means there's no free coffee in the lobby and you have to pay for the internet in your room). Then, of course, there's the preparation for the big banquet! Its a nice event; you've made this little community with the people on the ride, accomplished something together, and its worthy of celebration. You eat your buffet dinner, gab it up with your tablemates, Lon and Susan make up little plaques with your photo and hand it out with a nice comment about most people. I, being a Gunther, wrote a song to memorialize the event, (The Pac Tour Blues--thanks, Andy) which was performed to wild acceptance; I'll post the lyrics when I get home later on, and perhaps even record it for the Pac Tour website.

Bike touring really is a fun thing to do. You see the world in a unique way; you're exposed to the weather and the surroundings, you are demanding of yourself in a simple but unrelenting way. These tours take it up a notch or three; being on the bike six to ten hours a day is a lot of riding, and you really need to love being on the bike. Not just like it or tolerate it, but love it. The bike is an extension of your body; sometime you struggle with it, but it is an expression of your desire and need to get on up the road. When you spend as much time on the bike as we do, the journey truly is the reward. If you've been reading , you know that you certainly aren't travelling to get to the next town, because even when we stay in a town that has something going on, we're often too far away from it, or too tired, to do anything. Sometimes I was out on the road, in the middle of a vasat expanse of country, with no one ahead of me, no one behind me, not a soul around, only myself and the world . . . .and the bike.

So its off to breakfast, then to the airport. I'll do a couple more posts this week, and add some photos in.