Time for an upgrade
I just returned from two weeks in the mountains of New Mexico. It was a work trip, researching an environmental lawsuit I am working on, but because I got to be in the mountains camping, walking and riding my bike, most of the time it seemed a lot like a vacation.
One thing I decided though is that my beloved Surly Karate Monkey mountain bike is badly in need of a front suspension. Last year on a similar trip I flew over the handlebars into a rockpile; this year that didn’t happen, but I nearly rattled my teeth loose and shook my eyeballs out on endless miles of rocky, bumpy trails and roads. Sometimes I felt like I’d spent the day locked inside a giant paint mixer.
Anyway, in case any of my readers are considering a mountain-bike trip to the Guadalupe Mountains of Southeastern New Mexico, a few words of warning — the place has been grazed by cows to within an inch (or less) of its life. You will have to physically move cow shit aside in order to make room for a tent, and the place is absolutely saturated with flies, newly hatched from that cow shit. Interestingly, the moment you cross the Texas state line, the very same place becomes a National Park, and is protected from cows, cowboys, cow shit, and flies. But on the New Mexico side — watch out.
Below is a picture of the current starting point of one of the legions of eroding hillsides. Cross the state border into the National Park and that grass, clipped to the ground here, is nearly waist high!
But that’s all a little off the subject of bikes and bike law . . . .
–Erik Ryberg
August 3rd, 2010 at 6:30 pm
But they (cows) have such
pretty eyes.