Weather: beautiful 80 degrees and a passing isolated thunderstorm.
Elevation height: 6500
Today is a big day in the world of Bike & Build. We awoke with British accents to the start of House of Cup, a scavenger hunt to find the winning champion and defeat the weaklings on our 6 day stretch into Arizona. The beauty of knowing nothing of Harry Potter and riding a bike for 6 hours with someone who does means I had a ye old story time tale for 7 chapters. Now all filled in, let the games begin.
New Mexico, you put the icing on the cake. Or should i say, a day that will be filed into an easy reach box in my memory. There is only one other place in my life that might compare to what I've seen today, and it was atop a high mountain in a far away land of New Zealand. We started out the morning In desert, wandering the wide windy roads to Aztac like land, with pasty yellow nobby hills sprinkled with green bubble blobs. A right turn onto 380 west and once again we are in another land. Chasing down a lightening storm we head towards the town Billy the Kid escaped from to find ourselves at the once a year Billy the Kid festival. Waiting out the storm on a white porch in the middle of this parade, I met Kay. Dressed in green turquoise, her wrists and ears lined with hand crafted silver, red mescal seeds hung from her neck radiating off her white blouse. She wore her proud long grey hair coiled tight in a bun. Her bright blue eyes and sun worn face with deep wrinkles told a story in itself, a story of love and hard work, and a tale of peace with the land.
What was upon us was, the trail end of the Rocky Mountains, at 6500 feet we panted for oxygen till the valley below us opened up. And then it was like riding off the crest of a waterfall, down into the valley of Switzerland, down to where the cacti look like fluffy teddy bears, the sun shown through the clouds as though Heaven was above on and on for 15 miles. It was the kind of day that you want to pocket, a picture doesn't do justice, a million saddle sores is worth, and silence is your best friend.
We arrive to a quaint town of Carizozo at the bottom on Mt Capitan. 1000 habitantS, an economically deprived town with nearly 2/3 of its entirety attending Free Thursdays Church dinners. However no amount of money could pay for the stunning sunsets here, the storms that light the sky only in July, and the red streaked sunrise we will see tomorrow.
Now with the remains of the storm in the distance I sleep under the starry sky angled in a row of the rubberized high school track rink. The clouds glisten under the moon, the wind blows a sweet peaceful breeze, the lightening still strikes in the distance, and the magical night make the imagination run wild.
