Today was a really long, hot day. My 8th day in a row of riding. I put 375 miles on the GS today and I’m more than a little tired. I’m riding to Cloudcroft tomorrow where I’ll set up my tent and rest in the cool air before riding down into southern Texas.

I left Ruidoso and headed to Roswell. Today would be my day to see the aliens and to explore the lore and myth of Billy the Kid. It was a beautiful morning with little to no wind. Just the kind of weather a flying saucer would no doubt prefer when landing in the middle of nowhere in New Mexico.

Roswell….was not what I expected. If you watch any Sci-Fi show it will have you believe Roswell is just some little sleepy place of a few hundred people who have all, at one time or another, been abducted by aliens, laid out on an examining table and had their innards probed by some little green man. In reality it is a town of twenty or so thousand folks with a whole lot of normal living going on although even the normal businesses like hotels, restaurants and barbers are not above putting the little green man image on their billboards to help move sales along. McDonald’s has made their Roswell Playland in the shape of a flying saucer. Forgive me, I did not eat there.

I parked the GS on a side street having already cruised the main boulevard and determined where the aliens were be found. There is a little section of main street that is “Alien Center.” It reminds me of old Times Square in New York before it was cleaned up. There are numerous museums and institutes for the discovery and analysis of aliens and similar drivel. I went straight for the mother lode and hit the oldest Roswell U.F.O. Museum. It was the tallest, had the shiniest exterior (Aliens like shiny, right?) and most importantly, did not have any nut-jobs standing outside jabbering about what it must be like to REALLY meet an alien.

In I go to the UFO and scope out the con. It works like this – if you want to go beyond the velvet rope and behold room after room of alien narrative written and produced by people who have never laid eyes on one then give the man your ten dollars and off you go. Or, if you are one of the unpersuaded who just wants a bumper sticker then belly up to the control counter where your chest will be affixed with a UFO sticker that grants you admission only to the gift shop. I got such a sticker.

There is a special place in hell reserved for parents who let their kids run wild in stores. Little three foot tall monsters were running and screaming all over the gift shop. Could these be aliens at last? No, but almost. They were from Indiana.  Their mother cared not one whit they were tearing the place apart. I made quick work of my bumper sticker quest and made my exit. I took a few minutes and walked down the street but honestly, I couldn’t work up enough spit to even take a picture of the place. It’s just a fraud and with so much that is truly beautiful and majestic in New Mexico why would you waste another minute looking at six foot tall plastic green men? Which I did not. I got on my bike and weaved my way through some incredibly heavy traffic and made for Fort Sumner, the place of Billy the Kid’s death and his purported last resting place.

The ride there lacked the fun of the high country twisties . It was more of a utilitarian, let’s get over there and visit the Kid.  Fort Sumner is now a sleepy, little town, the fort itself long gone with all that remains being a few foundational stones and a nice little picnic area. The Kid however is a multi-million dollar enterprise. There are stores about the Kid, multiple museums, even multiple graves. Everyone wants a piece of the Kid.

I did my research ahead of time and knew which of the museums was the recommended. It was the last and closest to the old fort and it’s really not much. Any of the little museums in Gatlinburg or Pigeon Forge will put the Kid’s museums to shame. Cheap trinkets from China, a few t-shirt racks and bumper stickers and that’s about it. Except for the grave which you can see in the accompanying photo. The Kid’s grave. The final resting place of William Bonney or whoever he was. Some twenty-one year old who let himself get used by powerful men in a war to enhance their wealth. Some of you who are reading this fought in one of those wars yourself a lifetime ago.

I’m an Old West buff. I know every street, alley, and board in Tombstone. I’ve visited Ed Schefflin’s grave and crawled in the abandoned mine works of Tombstone and Bisbee. I know way too much about Wyatt Earp and his crew and the men he really did kill. I have also spent way too much time reading about the Kid. Both men are famous but there is a very important difference – the legend of Wyatt Earp can be proven. The Kid? Well, no one is even sure if he is in the ground. Pat Garrett was his good friend and Garrett would have the world believe he killed his friend in the dark and buried him quickly and his employers should have taken his word for it. That’s not how it worked in those days. Many a dead outlaw was dug up and photographed, even he was a might ripe, just so the good citizens would know he was dead and they could sleep better at night. Not so for the kid. Everyone, including the provisional governor, Lew Wallace (later to write Ben Hur) was fine to take Garret at his word.

   So did I visit the Kid’s grave? In my view of things, no. The Kid never died there. Garret and his buddies helped the Kid ride off to Old Mexico where he lived out his life in anonymity and left the great state of New Mexico and Hollywood to get rich off the myth they made out of his name.

I started to leave the museum when I saw a woman running around a house off in the distance some three or four hundred yards away. There was screaming. There was a small group of tourists looking that way. There was the museum clerk talking to the deputy sheriff instead of taking my dollar fifty for a bumper sticker. The deputy burns rubber toward the running woman. A flip-flop wearing young man of a tourist brought me up to speed. Seems she and a man were having a domestic altercation and she was screaming her head off for help while he was abusing her. The cashier called the law and now everyone was watching. Or trying to, the distance being too great for them to see. Everyone was really worried about the welfare of the women. The deputy was a woman. If only the tourists could see.

I went over to my tank bag and retrieved my 10 power monocular which I carry on trips. I walked backed to the group and started following the deputy’s progress. She was doing fine and had matters well in hand. Flip-flop looks at my monocular and says “Gee. You’re making me look bad. Here you are on that bike and you’re better prepared than we are.” There were in one of those deluxe Jeep Wranglers pulling a trailer. Flip-flops continued, ” We should be ready to help the deputy.”

“Son,”, I said to myself, “Me being from Eastern Kentucky, you have no idea how ready I really am.” But I kept quiet. The deputy got it squared away and I did not have to use my concealed carry license. I was on my way.

I got back to Alamogordo and was the most tired I’ve been on this trip. I could tell my reflexes were not as sharp so I headed for a hotel. There were two men sitting outside keeping the Camel cigarette company in business. Both looked me up and down.

“How do you wear all that damn gear in this weather?”  asked one of them.

“You get used to it.” I replied

Which put me to thinking. Motorcycle riders are aliens to a lot of folks. We ride funny machines that intimidate people. We wear gear that makes us look like we walk on the moon.  We ride solely for the joy of the ride.
Much of what is said about us as bikers is not true. We are not thugs. We don’t run drugs. We don’t belong to gangs that engage in organized crime. We have jobs. Many of us have multiple college degrees. (I’m at three and holding.) We have families. So, we’re a lot like Billy the Kid. We are one thing while people see what they want to see and make us out to be something entirely different.
My time in New Mexico is just about finished and then, like the Kid, I’ll be moving on. First, I’m going to set up my tent and ride the high country one last time.

Ride safe and bless you all,
Brian

I did a lot of New Mexico riding today. 355 miles and I never left the Land of Enchantment. I really enjoyed my stay at the Murray Hotel in Silver City. It has a retro 1940’s look but with thoroughly modern conveniences.

My day started at 6:45 this morning. I was still in bed when I was awakened by the roar of 20 plus bikes tearing out of town. I started laughing , thinking of those Brits, all my age and older, flying out of town determined to wake me up and break every speed limit in the state.

I tried to get out of town early, I really did, but it seems when people see a lone biker people want to talk. The first was a 60- something  guy on a mountain bicycle with extra large tires. He asked me about my bike and I in turn asked him about his since I have a Surley Long Haul Trucker steel frame bike.  He was pleased to know I will pedal and he in turn told me he owned a GS, an older model. He was wearing a baseball hat under his biking helmet and had a classic vintage 60’s scraggly beard. I took him for a draft evader but in the course of our conversation I learned he was retired U.S. Navy having worked in sonar tracking of Soviet subs. He finally said to hell with the Navy and has been in Nevada ever since. Those were his words. He asked me where I was going and I explained my general clockwise loop toward Lincoln. He offered to retrieve his old maps and show me some route options. He left on his bike and I resumed trying to load my bike.

At that point a van pulled alongside and it was another BMW enthusiast who wanted to show me pictures of his BMW. It was the model used in an old James Bond film. I’m sorry, I can’t remember the model. We stood there talking bikes when Sam, the navy man came pedaling up. I bid the van fan good day and sat down on the sidewalk with Sam and studied maps. It was one of those great, spontaneous moments that makes solo travel so fulfilling. I had totally misread this man. Here he was a veteran going out of his way to help me. He ended up giving me his map. We shook hands and off he went.

I finally got away shortly before 10:00. My route took me up scenic 180 into the Gila again. I made a right at Reserve, NM and rode the high country for the rest of the day. I crossed the Continental Divide at an elevation of about 7,250 feet. Along the way I stopped to admire some of the scenery of the Gila Wilderness. When it was set aside as a wilderness it was large enough that a man could ride in one direction on a horse or a mule for two weeks and never see another person. That’s a big piece of real estate.

Backroads travel takes you to some really out of the way places. I stopped for gas at the Glenwood Trading Post. It was the only real viable business in this tiny wide spot in the road. The inside of the store was right of the Great Depression and I’m not talking about the Cracker Barrel Country Store nostalgia version. The place was dimly lit and much of the interior was cluttered with what I think had been someone’s long ago effort a stocking a variety store only to see that venture fail and leave the merchandise to wither and decay. The good news for me was a shelf stocked with Payday candy bars that were not out of date. I paid for my gas and was on my way.

Once again I found the only thunderstorm in New Mexico and managed to ride in it for an hour. The temperature dropped from 88 to 51 and stayed there for quite awhile. It may be a desert but it still rains out here.

I passed some signs today that put me to thinking about the mental state of the people who come up with these things. The first was a state highway sign that said “Do not drive on wet oil.” Hmmm…..I wondered as I was whizzing along around a curve at 65mph, “am I about to die? Is the road up ahead covered in black goo that will spell my doom? Could it be the prison inmates just had too much time on their hands and made a bunch of these and the state had to put them somewhere?”  I rounded the curve and found dry blacktop. Score one for the inmates.

Next up was a sign that really made me feel bad for the youth of tiny Magdalena, NM. I was cruising carefully down their main street at 25mph so the speed trap police officer parked under the tree would not have an excuse to write me a ticket when what did I see but the local high school and a sign in it’s yard that said “Home of the Magdalena Steers.” Think about it for a minute. I get using bulls or stallions for a mascot but a steer? Just imagine the trash talk, the smack going down across the line of scrimmage. The poor, castrated Steers of Magdalena are never going to live it down. They should find the principal who presided over such stupidity and if they have already fired him they should rehire him just so they can fire him again for coming up with the Steers thing.

Late afternoon found me in Corrizozo, a town you may not have heard of before. It is important because it was the location of the rail depot that put Lincoln out of business after all of the Billy the Kid troubles n the Lincoln County War. I can’t tell that Corrizozo prospered much from putting the hurt on Lincoln. Still, I was tired and there was a motel there and I thought I would get a room.

I should have been warned off by the owner having her charcoal grill going right by the front door. I should have heeded the smeared and dirty fly swatter on the counter but I didn’t. I asked if there was a room available. (There was a good chance there was since mine was the only vehicle in the parking lot.) “Why yes. Yes there is.” said the diminutive Indian lady and it could be mine for $37.50 cash and no receipt coming back my way. The place was entirely off the books. Still I gave little lady my cold hard cash and got a key, a real key, to Room #3.  As I walked the ten steps from the lobby, being careful not to get burned on her grill, I noticed two Indians in a worn out pickup driving slowly by my bike and looking it over good. These were not men who would have what it takes to buy one but they would have the ability to take mine. I decided to use at least some of my little grey cells and check the room out before unloading the bike. I did think of that. Did you know dirty motel rooms can have bedbugs? They can have them in the bed, on the walls and on the furniture. They can also have ants crawling all over the walls. Yes, I hit the jackpot here. My Room #3 had them both in abundance. I threw the key on the bed and walked out and got on my bike. By then another guy was walking around my bike. I decided to donate the $37.50 to Little Indian woman and her grill and get out of there which I did.

Forty-five minutes later I pulled up to the Comfort Inn in Ruidoso. I had looked at it’s advertisement on my mini-iPad and found that their rooms had been remodeled in 2012. Things were looking up. I walked in and waited for the desk clerk to help the woman who walked in just as I did. Their conversation went like this:

Woman: “Do you have any rooms?”
Clerk: “Yes, we have plenty. What kind do you want?”
She got her room.

Then it was my turn:
Me: “I would like a room.”
Clerk: “We don’t have any.”

As you might imagine I did not take this lying down. We exchanged a few more pleasantries and the best the Comfort Inn clerk could come up with was they did not have a room in my price range. I know what you’re thinking, she knows I’m poor because my bike and it’s doo-dads only cost $30,000.00. No one drives cars that cheap anymore. I persisted and told her to give me what they had. She said it was too expensive. I finally laid my cards on the table for her – “Miss, you don’t have anything in this place that I can’t afford so give me a room now.” I am proud to report I am writing this blog tonight in a deluxe double queen suite with a pullout bed and desk area, all for 109.00. After she quoted me the rate I asked her if they took AAA.

“Why yes sir we do,” she said sweetly, “but I took one look at you and gave you the Senior Citizen Discount.”

Score one for her. You can’t win them all.

I like the rough and tumble and the unexpected and I seem to get it all out here. Sam the Navy man was so helpful and even Little Indian woman helped me by giving me the opportunity to hone my bedbug skills. Finally, anti-biker clerk was the most instructive of all because she made me feel in some much less significant way what a black person or a gay person feels like when the door is slammed in their face. Stuff like that is wrong on any level.

I don’t know where I’m going tomorrow. I’m thinking of taking out an ad on T.V. here to offer my services to end droughts. Just call  me and the rain will follow.

Be safe and bless you all,
Brian

As you can surmise by reading this, I did not go to Cloudcroft and camp. I have ended up in Silver City and I am glad I did for reasons that will become apparent as you read this installment.

This morning at the hotel in Alamogordo I ran in to one of the older fellows who had been admiring my GS the day before. He was a biker who had recently fractured his ankle and is currently off the bike. While his ankle ails him his enthusiasm for riding remains. He again encouraged me to make the ride to “Silver” and said I would not regret the road (#152) through the Gila National Forest. I told him I would think about it and then I was off to do a few loads of laundry.

As I sat in the laundromat I looked at my maps and decided I needed to do the Gila ride since it was early in the week. I decided to keep pushing west and then later in the week turn east and cover some of eastern new Mexico.

I left Alamogordo and went south on Highway 70 to Las Cruces. The best I can say about 70 is that it is efficient. Your life will not suffer if you never ride this road. Just straight four lane at 75 mph. I reached Las cruces quickly. It is an aerospace city with NASA’s imprint everywhere. If you are inclined there are museums and tours of the facilities. I had riding on my mind so I moved on.

I picked up 185 on the outskirts of Las Cruces and rode the back roads for the rest of the day. If you wonder what really large scale agriculture is you need to go out west and drive through some of this farm country. I crossed the Rio Grande numerous times today. That little river (It’s a trickle compared to the Ohio or the Mississippi) supplies water for hundreds of thousands of acres of crops. Pecan orchards are everywhere as well as other crops which I did not know. Irrigation channels are everywhere. Water is the key to the economic survival of New Mexico as far as farmers are concerned.

At one point I passed a farm that had dozens of the largest rooster boxes I had ever seen. These things were four feet tall and six feet long. “These guys are raising the biggest fighting chickens I have ever seen”, I thought to myself as I rode. A little while later I saw many dozen more on the horizon so I slowed to see just what these chickens looked like.I was about to stop when a holstein dairy cow stuck her head out of one of the chicken boxes. The boxes were really heat shelters for dairy herds. And I thought they were raising fighting chickens on steroids.

By early afternoon I stopped for gas in Hatch, NM. I saw a little restaurant with some bikes parked in front. After gassing up I went back to the  restaurant , The Pepper Pot, to have lunch. I met three bikers there who were from Great Britain. We talked for a few minutes and then they were on their bikes and gone. I liked the looks of this place so I decided t have one of their burritos. My waitress was the owner of the place. She was anglo and straight out of a Woody Allen movie in a Diane Keaton, southwest, LSD sort of way. She was very pleasant and conversant until her side of the conversation began to veer off beam. She ended up telling me and a few others she had recently bought a new house that was perfect for her and her two recently domesticated coyotes. They had taken to the place although her two monkeys were not sold on their new home as of yet.

Which put me to wondering…

How is  it I have run in to so many people who are just outright nuts on this trip? Is it them or have I inadvertently consumed something that has taken me on an altogether unplanned trip. My son says I am a dead ringer for the cartoon character Ned Flanders so is it possible that when people see me they see this Ned guy and just proceed to yank my chain? I’m wondering…

I left monkey woman and headed for route 152 and the Gila National Forest. The old gentleman was right. This is one heck of a road. I started out counting the curves but quit at 100. It dawned on me that counting curves is a lot like asking someone how many acres they own or how much money they have saved for retirement. It’s just rude. If you ride just say it’s a good road and that ought to be enough. Sorry if you have caught me counting curves before.

I hit 152 just as a storm was brewing. I found out later my British friends made it through before the storms. I got hit with it’s full force at 7,000 feet. It made those switchbacks and S-curves real work. I took my time and enjoyed the ride.

I made it in to Silver City at supper time. When I pulled up to the newly restored Murray Hotel (Also recommended to me by Old Gentleman) there were already 20 plus bikes parked out front. These were not your typical Harley’s parked at the curb. Not one Harley. Not one. All were GS’s, Tenere’s, Interceptors, Triumphs and other sport bikes. I even saw two scooters.

As I was dismounting the GS three Brits came up to me and began quizzing me on my yellow Aerostitch gear. They really liked it but confessed they still wore all black. Turns out they were part of a group of 23 Brits who had shipped their bikes to Key West and were riding from there to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska. These are some hardcore guys. All were in their late 50′ to 70’s. They were retired police officers, soldiers and lawyers. I liked these guys! They invited me to meet them at the pub down the street for dinner.

After a quick shower, off I went to the pub where I had a jolly good time with Klempke (A diminutive Irishman who reminded me of the soldier types you see in old war movies), Sam and Dan. After a convivial beer or two I asked Klempke what he thought of Charlie Boorman. He shrugged and said “I don’t really give him much of a thought except that he’s rich and he’s Ewan McGregor’s mensch.” So much for diplomacy. Klempke then asked me if I knew who Nick Sanders was. I replied that I of course knew who he was and that he is the real deal when it comes to riding long and hard. Klempke said “That’s good because Nick is a close friend of mine and he’s sitting right behind you.” I turned around and sure enough, there sat Nick Sanders. Sanders, it seems, owns the tour company that puts on these tours and personally escorts them. Klempke would have none of it but to introduce me to Sanders. He was very gracious and willing to talk. I was wearing my “I’m Still Here Tour 2015” shirt and he wanted to know what it was. I explained to him that I was a cancer survivor and this ride was my celebration of life. He thought that was really cool. I got handshakes all around from the group and two of them accompanied me back to the bar to regale me about the four, count em’ , four speeding tickets one of them had received on the tour so far. Turns out he is an ex-CSI from London, England and when he shows the “sheriffs” his badge they throw the tickets away.

All in all it was a lot of fun with my fellow riders from across the pond. I would have missed out on this experience entirely had I not listened to “Old Gentleman” and ridden to Silver City. I would also have missed out on monkey woman.

I’m not sure where I’m going tomorrow. Right now it is raining a flood that would float Noah’s ark, so weather will have something to do with my plans.

Be safe and bless you all,
Brian