All’s fair. I last reported on my adventure, so here is Chuck’s story of day three of his motorcycle road trip:
My Big Adventure Day 3. This was my final day to my destination near Albuquerque. I was to meet up with my friend John in a town called Mountainair, NM at noon and we would have lunch. So I got my MacBook Air out and went to Google Maps and it was 218 miles and said I could do it in 3:41 minutes. So I did my math (round to 4 hours) and I needed to leave by 8 AM. (do you see my problem yet?). As I had a couple of stops I wanted to make I added in another hour and a half having me leave at 6:30.
So I got up early and hit the road. Another day of really beautiful scenery and nice roads, mostly. It’s summer in NM and that is when they fix all the roads. Unlike CA where we can fix roads all year round, here they have a limited season. So I ran into the first of my two places where I had to be led by a pilot car for a few miles where it was down to one lane. The breaks were nice but cost me some time.
Then I stopped at the VLA (Very Large Array). Very cool to see. Then on to Socorro NM where I thought I’d find a vistior’s center. But the address I had found and was using to get to the center turned out to be an administrative center on the campus of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology. This cost me another half hour.
Left Socorro on my way to Mountainair – about 70 miles. Plenty of time to get there by noon. So I’m heading north on I-15 and get a call from John (I have this really cool setup on the bike that I can get and make calls with the helmet). John tells me he is already in Mountainair, how far out am I? Looks to me at that point I’m about a half hour away. So I hang up and think, John must have gotten an early start. Then it struck me (and I’m blaming Arizona for this) New Mexico is in the Mountain Time zone. So now I’m running late. ;-( (You ask why blame Arizona? First why not, and second, although they are in the Mountain Time zone they don’t recognize Mountain Daylight Time.)
Made it to Mountainair and met John who was patiently waiting. We went to Alpine Alley. Rated five star by TripAdvisor. One of 5 restaurants in town. Had a nice lunch and took off for John and Becky’s house just outside of Albuquerque. Nice and easy ride and fun to be with someone else.
I’ll pick up the adventure when I head back in a few days (or if something really interesting happens in the meantime.
And thanks for all the safe riding wishes!
