Striking gold in Silver City

Well, well, well. Here we are in New Mexico, land of enchantment, Bob Dylan movies, large mountains to climb and puppets! No complaints though, all the folks here are treating us very, very well and we're having amazing adventures...

First off, we leave Chris in El Paso to cycle a lovely 50 miles of flat, wind-free pecan groves to Las Cruces. We arrive in Las Cruces for Marianne's 21st birthday! YAY! Our hosts there, Lee and Cindy show us around their really cool retro house, treat us to a lovely italian dinner and then we catch I'm not there, a film about Bob Dylan, at the Fountain Theatre in La Mesilla. A following day in Las Cruces included some trekking around town, finding used maps of all our next destinations and some really tasty dinner and birthday cake for Mare...

From Cruces, we battled ridiculous winds through Hatch to end up at Caballo State Park, where we camped for the night. While we were informed about an eclipse of the moon, the evening saw nothing but clouds over the shores of Caballo Lake which made it impossible to see the eclipse.

Then, comes the epic Emory Pass... 8828 feet of elevation and an intense climb from Caballo. We broke the ride up into two days stopping at the Black Range Inn, in Kingston, after more really intense wind. At the Black Range, we enjoyed a great nights sleep and a lovely breakfast. Then, the final eight miles of pure uphill intensity. When we reached the top of the pass, the wind was blowing very, very hard and the downhill was pretty great.

After the pass, we got the oportunity to stay with Pat, in Hanover. She made us a lovely dinner and we got to hang out with all her animals. Pat sent us off to Silver City with a batch and a half of her amazing cookies... definetly worth climbing for.

Upon arrival in Silver City, we stopped in at the bike shop for some tubes and recomendations on a good place to stay. We were promptly sent to the home of Jamie, Paul, Andrew, Gretta and Joel, their two chickens, dog, cat and room full of giant puppets. We enjoyed a birthday party for Erika, a friend, on Saturday night. Sunday, another friend, Christian, very, very kindly lent us his truck so that we could go check out the Gila Cliff Dwellings while a bunch of people biked up the Emory Pass and back.

While the Dwellings are only 44 miles

away from town, the drive took over an hour and a half as the road is very windy through the mountains. It was well worth it though, we were really excited to check out the old structures which were built and inhabited by the Mongollon between 1280 and 1300.

After spending what felt like a very, very long time in Texas, it was hard to believe that one or two days of biking would have us leaving the state of New Mexico. We spend one more day in Silver City to gear up for the next leg towards Phoenix.

Find out more when adventures from Team Ontario continue!

Two states down! With a trip to Mexico in the mix...

Okay, so... last you left the two remaining members of Team Ontario, they were in Alpine. But, for the sake of this amazing picture let us backtrack a bit. This is Eve's Garden in Marathon, where we stayed just before Alpine. The space was a very cool maze of paper crete construction including greenhouses, fountains and more beautiful vegetation than you could shake a fist at...especially in the middle of the Chihuahuan desert.







And now, we must stop in order to be in awe at a truly amazing woman. This is Liz Rogers with Marianne and I. You may remember hearing mention of Liz and thinking: "Wow, how cool that she let the girls stay at her place in Sanderson." Well, the story certainly did not end there. We crossed paths with Liz again in Alpine where she basically paved the way out of Texas with some of the coolest experiences we would have. During a 30 minute meeting in her office, Liz set us up with friends and family allong our way.

Happy Birthday Liz and thanks for all your help... You truly are a force of nature!





Our next stop from Alpine was Marfa. While we were scheduled to ride all the way to Valentine from Alpine, ridiculous winds and a cool scene in Marfa had us stopping to smell the falafel. By chance, we ran into Gary Oliver at the public library and he kindly invited us to stay in his very cool guest house...

This man who shared his home with a handful of cats and dogs cooked us a delicious vegan dinner and treated us to some of his original music in the morning, he plays both the accordion and guitar. He sent us off with a handful of cartoons and a wealth of knowledge about Texas and Mexico.

Our next stop: Valentine, Texas. For Valentine's day no less! This town recieves thousands of Valentines a year which are hand-postmarked on the 14th with Valentine's official stamp!

While in Valentine, Team Ontario stayed with Maralea and Albert Miller. Here, we got to accomplish one of our very important Texas goals... to visit a ranch. Not just any ranch, but a 33 000 acre cattle operation which has been in our hosts family for over 80 years. Maralea drove us over to her in-laws house in the afternoon where Albert's father told us all about the history of the fort which is located up in the mountains on the ranch. Later, Albert and Maralea took us over there so we could check out the fort and walk down to the creek that runs on their land. It was really really really cool! We left Valentine beaming and very excited about what we had experienced.

All that energy, some window shopping at Prada's west Texas location and the delicious brownies which Maralea baked us made the 71 mile ride into Sierra Blanca seem like a walk in the park. Okay, the tail wind for the first 38 miles into Van Horn did help as well. We wondered why the two cyclists coming the other way were moving so slowly.

After Sierra Blanca, we rode downhill to Fort Hancock where we stayed with Street and Melloy Rogers, Liz's brother and sister in-law. We toured around their cotton farm with Street and their dog Rags, met Melloy's mother and brothers and crossed a tiny foot bridge over the Rio Grande into Mexico!

After a lovely lunch in El Paso with Street and Melloy, we were delivered to the stunning old home of Chris Kelso, Liz's longtime friend. Our time in El Paso was fun filled and exciting. We both got to see our first basketball game, the UTEP Miners woman's team beating the RICE Owls. Yee haw! We also crossed into Mexico for the second time for a slightly more extended visit in Juarez. We toured a market and had drinks with Chris at the Kentucky Club. Later that evening, we cooked Chris dinner and took off the next morning for Las Cruces.

Stay tuned for tales of New Mexico, land of enchantment and the Emery Pass. Yikes! Hopefully it won't snow...

The bike man of Alpine!

Greetings from Alpine, Texas. More specifically, Mare and I are currently at John's bike shop here in Alpine where he is re-packing her hubs and doing a bit of work on her bike. I am typing away here listening to Austin's public radio station and making friends with the cat.

The riding recently has been a bit tough with lots of headwinds. However, the extra work has definitely been worth it. West Texas is beautiful. We are enjoying sunshine, wide open skies, beautiful stars at night, lots of deer and javelina sightings and amazing mountains and desert terrain. Also, the folks we are meeting here are really cool and are showing us an awesome time!

After saying a sad goodbye to James in Del Rio, we cycled to Langtry where we had the privilege to enjoy a community dinner with about half the town. They happened to be meeting about the town's water at the community centre where we were staying. Thanks again for the brownies and pickles you folks sent us off with!

Sixty miles down the road, in Sanderson, we stayed at the luxurious home of Liz Rogers. Liz is an amazing woman who lives in Alpine but also has a home in Sanderson which is vacant some of the time. Liz stopped us on the side of the road days ago in Bracketville and gave us her address in Sanderson offering to let us stay there on our own. It was awesome! We slept like babies and enjoyed the use of the kitchen in the morning!

Since then, we enjoyed less wind into Marathon and finally a short day into Alpine which is beautiful, fun and filled with exciting and interesting characters.

Our hosts James and Julie have been amazing. We got picked up by James yesterday after brunch in town and were really happy not to be cycling the remaining eight miles south to their house straight up-hill. We had a relaxing afternoon and delicious dinner with them last night. This morning, we met with Liz who is very kindly hooking us up with more folks allong our route towards El Paso. This afternoon, we are are off to Marfa for lunch and to check out some Marfa hipsters and minimalist art. Can't wait!

Miss Cycle Del Rio 2008!

Last you heard, Team Ontario was about to be chopped in half, Elissar returning to Montreal and Trish taking a bit of time in Mexico before returning to Bowmanville, via Los Angeles!?! All this took place about one week ago in Austin. We enjoyed our last night together watching Juno at the Alamo Draughthouse. We also got the chance to swim at Barton Springs with Elissar on our last day in Austin, which was chilly but fun... We will miss you Trish and Elissar!

Mare and I took off after a few lovely days with Kerry, an acupuncture student in Austin who cycled us around to some cool spots. We rode and rode for six days, camping in various parks, library yards (right), camp grounds etc. Over the past six days of travel, we covered about 310 miles and made it all the way to Del Rio.

The weather has been awesome, getting warmer and warmer but we did encounter some insane, INSANE winds. On day two out of Austin, while we had hoped to go to Enchanted Rock State Park, this was made totally impossible by a head wind clocked at thirty miles per hour! We were nearly being nocked off our saddles, needless to say! Also, for the most part, the terrain has been very, very hilly. I can't even remember if I was going up or down in this one! (Mare saying you were going down.)

We arrived in Del Rio yesterday and spent the afternoon and evening with Tim, who just finished his pilot training. He is the next door neighbor of James, who is our most excellent host here in Del Rio. We had lots of fun checking out the town, going out for dinner and meeting up with James after his play rehersal.

Our second day in Del Rio has been spent mostly shopping for camp stoves on the internet but I will spare you the boring details and skip straight to the good stuff: DRESSES!!!

After driving around with Tim yesterday and spying a rather exciting dress shop, I couldn't resist going back this afternoon to try on this particular number. We are told Del Rio is very big on beauty pagents, which is likely the reason a town of 33 ooo people can keep more than one shop like this in business... The shopkeeper only spoke spanish but it proved not to be a problem for me to try it on and take a couple pictures. Maybe I can strap this bad boy to the back of my trailer for any formal events I might encounter between here and San Francisco. If you can believe it, the dress was even pinker in real life.

After trying on the dress, we enjoyed ice cream, coffee and letter writting in the local soda fountain... Tonight, we will cook dinner and brownies for James when he gets home from work and play rehearsal.

On Thursday, we continue on our merry way towards Alpine and El Paso before we say goodbye to Texas and move towards New Mexico and Arizona.

So long for now!