Wednesday APRS tracking - Partial for some reason
I had quasi-planned to hitch a ride with Jacque into Albuquerque today and ride around on the bike while she attended to her knee doctor appointment. Howsomever, her appointment was at 8:30 and I messed around until it was too late: If she'd have waited for me, as she was willing to do, she would have been unforgivably late. So I told her to go without me, after which I saddled up and rode the bike all the way to ABQ. I had just loaded up and remembered my squishy tire from yesterday.... it was even softer today. I figured it would hold up with just a good solid 60 pounds of pressure inside, so I aired it up and took off. It did last fine, but I DO need to get that rear (of course, the easy-to-remove front tire rarely has a flat on any bike for some reason) tire removed and patched. It was almost 8:30 when I left, but we had a good hard freeze last night and I hoped the mud and greasy ruts on our mile of miserable dirt road would be frozen hard enough to get through without everything being coated with several inches of mud. We also had a little dusting of snow last night so it was a good thing I got off on still-frozen roadway or it would have been even MORE messy than the last few days.
Things were complicated a bit by the fact Jacque left her cell phone at home. She called in on her ham radio and told me this, and I asked her to check in with me at each of her errand-stops around town so I could figure out where she was when I finally arrived on the 2-wheeler. I popped her cell phone in my other pocket, confident we would be able to find each other and she would get her phone back and I would get a leisurely ride back to the house, which is a pretty daunting climb in that direction. I've never made this return trip completely. The one time I tried was a couple years ago on a Saturday and was the first time I rode all the way into town. That time I stopped right at the ABQ city limits and turned around and rode back towards home, but only made it a couple miles up the second hill north of Tijeras.
I stayed off the still-snowy and icey bike path paralleling Frost Road and just rode up on the main road on the shoulder, riding in the main roadway when there were no cars in my rear view and taking the shoulder as soon as a car appeared in the distance behind me. No problems. Going south on N-14 towards Tijeras is always dicey, in my mind, because the first 2 or 3 miles is so steep I barely crawl along much of the way and feel too helpless at such slow speeds to try riding in the right hand road lane, although I have done just that, a couple times. So I used the decrepit bike lane to the top of what we call "Marco Polo Hill" (so called because there used to be a little pizza parlor dive almost at the top of this hill.) Of course, it was full of gravel and cinders from all the snow plowing activity we've had all winter, and of course up in the shady tree line it still had lumpy snow and ice covering the path, so instead of huffing all the way to the top I had to get off and push the bike the last quarter mile or so. I don't like falling down, is the reason.... bah.
Then, o'course, at the top of the hill it's downhill for about 3 solid miles and trying to ride that nasty surface at speed is asking for a wreck. So I always cross the 4-lane road and ride the main road all the way to Tijeras, pedaling only about half the time when my speeds get below about 22 MPH, and just coasting my speeds have been 37+ MPH a few times. I believe I hit 29 today.... wheeee.
I was approaching Carnuel on Old Route 66 when a strange number rang my cell phone... it was Jacque on a friend's cell whom she'd met at one of her store-stops. They had decided we were going to lunch at Village Inn. When I arrived I(almost an hour before the ladies showed up) I remembered it was my son Jake's birthday so I called him from the restaurant and found he wasn't already committed so I offered to buy him lunch if he's show up, so he did. Great visit. My 10% senior discount came in handy at check-out time, too, since 3 of the 4 of us were "over 60" and I only had to pay full fare for the one youngster, Jake, who turned 39 today. May he be able to maintain that age as long as Jack Benny did.
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