Today we left our camp right at 7 am and it was really, really cold. A couple of miles after we started Richards bike broke so we phoned the ladies to come take him and his bike to the bike store in Silver City that I bought my bike in to get it fixed. John and and I continued on today’s journey. It was all up hill for the first 20 miles, steep uphill, until we reached “Emory Pass” at 8,200 feet. I walked and pushed my bike much of the last 4 miles. The elevation got to me and I had a hard time breathing.  I would ride for a couple hundred yards and be huffing and puffing like an old steam locomotive, and then I would walk until I caught my breath and then ride another couple hundred yards. Once I got to the top it was mostly down hill for 33 miles to camp which is right on the shores of the Rio Grande river. I braked a lot coming down the hill because it was so steep and very, very curvy, but even with the braking I averaged 19 mph the last 33 miles into camp and I hardly had to pedal. When Richard’s bike was fixed the plan was to catch up to me and he would finish the ride from there, but they ran into a bridge that had 12 feet of clearance and the top of the camper is 13 feet, so they had to go the long way around to camp. They made it to camp shortly before I did, and about an hour after John pulled in. Poor Richard had to ride with the ladies all day, and they even saw and stopped at a quilt store on the way. Today was the hardest day of the trip for me, but tomorrow we have a 62 mile day and it is all flat as the road we will be on follows the Rio Grande River so it will even be a little down hill. Tomorrow night we will be at the “Siesta RV Park” in Las Cruces, New Mexico.