Day 1 of my 22′ Rocky Mountain tour. A whole lot of nothing in West Texas
The day before this big trip, I stubbed my toe harder than I had ever stubbed it in my life.
X-ray and doctor says no break, just massive blunt force trauma. Yaaaaay…
Texas at the end of June 2022 was a bit hotter than usual. Like, 10-11 degrees hotter than usual. My plan was to leave around 6am, ride for 6 hours, and crash in an air conditioned hotel in Lubbock and nurse my toe. The other part of the backstory that I don’t even want to rehash because it was so annoying, was I had lost a rear axle spacer for the bike and needed a new one in the mail before I could put my rear tire back on and leave on my trip.
Part was delayed 3-4 days and through a karmic miracle, the mailman double checked his work that morning and found my part in the wrong mailbox. Not his fault, the part had the incorrect address on it!
I could go on, but who wants to hear a stressful story about a little $10 part trying to make its way in the world to my mailbox?
Needless to say, I start my trip at noon when it’s 102 degrees, and quickly run into construction in West Texas at 3pm.
The good news about a 6 hour ride in 100 degree weather on the first day of your trip, is that it recalibrates mentally what a hard ride is. This would have crushed me in an earlier life, but it was merely necessary today to start the trip.
I get to Lubbock and smash a full plate of food at Jalisco’s Mexican restaurant, and find my hotel. I am more than happy with how the bike ran the first day. No shifty luggage, nothing overheating, and around 55mpg.
With some free time and my first miles under my belt, I felt compelled to flex my photography prowess to begin submitting my portfolio to the world’s top photo magazines.
Maybe I should do a photo series inside a single hotel room…
Tomorrow I had to push on out of the heat and into hopefully the first hints of cooler weather at higher elevations, in Albuquerque, New Mexico.