94 miles in 7hrs 45mins (incl. 3 punctures, another 12" of Subway and some unplanned, self-inflicted resistance training)
Total Distance - 2,361 miles
After a week of an enforced break it was time to load up the new bike, get on the road again and hope both it and I held together.
It was a pleasant sunny 20C when I set out towards this morning's puncture which was particularly early and explosive as after only 8 miles the rear wheel let go. Once fixed I turned down the ramp to rejoin the I40 interstate which is to be my home for next, I hate to think how long but I reckon about 1,000 miles. Now I'm sure any sports psychologist will tell me that's completely the wrong attitude to start this leg of the journey with but when the guidebook has one of the highlights of today's stage being a billboard of a jackrabbit then you can probably understand why I not exactly looking forward to this part.
The sky rapidly started to cloud over and I could see the storms breaking out all around me. I knew it was a matter of time before I needed my rain jacket for the first time since I left Oregon and around 35 miles I could see my luck was about to run out as I looked down the road to see a storm had developed ahead of me. And this was no ordinary storm as the clouds were the same shade of orange as I'd seen at Mexican Hat on Monday. I was on my way to a meeting with a duststorm. As I got closer I realised that the streaks in the sky weren't just rain going downwards. The storm front was filled with about four or five mini-tornados, or dust devils as I think they're know in this part of the world. They weren't small either reaching some hundreds of feet onto the sky. Two of them stood out, one disturbingly large one off a quarter of a mile or so to the left of the highway and the tallest and next biggest off to the right. As I got closer the one to the left was clearly heading off away from me, the other one, however, was neither moving left nor right, it was just getting bigger.
Despite having never seen one of these before, like many people, I have a strange attraction to these cyclonic entities but it's coupled with a healthy dose respect, and fear. As I rode on, it continued to get bigger and closer. About 100 yards away, with the bike having sail-like aerodynamics the respect and fear took over and, a touch reluctantly, I eased on the brakes and stopped to watch the towering, rapidly spinning column of dust dance for a moment on the verge about 20 yards away from me before vanishing as it moved across the road only to become visible again moving away on the other side. Utterly captivating.
The wall of chocking dust then engulfed me and I struggled on badly through gusty winds and minimal visibility (probably only around 20 metres) for the next few miles. During this time I looked down to see the back wheel squirming around on the tarmac. Puncture number two had arrived. Actually somewhat thankful I turned off the road to fix it only to discover that the back brake had been on since puncture number one 30+ miles ago. I had thought it had been a bit of a slog since then!
The dust settled I set off again on to Winslow where I stopped at Subway for 'breakfast at 1.30pm after 57 miles' (there had been absolutely nothing for the past 40 miles).
The road continued dry to just short of Joseph city where I realised I was about to be engulfed by a pretty meaningful rainstorm, and worse still, the rear tyre was squirming around again on it's way to flat number three. The rain arrived en masse, the temperature dropped to only 12C and my toys and pram became disassociated by quite some distance. Then the Tourettes came back (I'm beginning to worry a bit about it's frequency)
I arrived very wet in Holbrook to find the surreal Wigwam Motel shown in the pic. along with two machines both with punctured rear wheels.
