Here is a picture of my new “extra wide mountain bike” handle bars on my new bike. The road bike handle bars were  hard for me to balance the bike well, but these work great. Today we went 63 miles and it was almost totally flat. We averaged about 13 mph for the day. The only negative thing was we had a pretty strong head wind most of the day, but John rode in the front all day and Richard and I followed behind letting John break the wind. It doesn’t seem like it would make that much difference, but it really does. We rode along the Rio Grande river all day and was I disappointed. I could easily jump across it in most places. I suppose it is bigger after some rain, but today it hardly looked like the river I saw in a bunch of western movies. We are going to take the next two days off and rest up our sore muscles and various other body parts.

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.

We had lots of hill climbing today with this spot being the highest. Tomorrow we are.going over a pass that is 8,200 feet high, and down hill from there and then we will be done with the big mountains and just have some “rollers” left. That will be so much easier!! My new bicycle is working good other than being a torture machine😀 We came by the bicycle shop that I bought it in for a tune up and I had them put really wide mountain bike handle bars on it in place of the dropped handle bars that are standard on road bikes. With the extra width I can balance the bike much easier. I will take a picture tomorrow of them. They are so wide my bike looks like a Texas long horn. Last night it was a shade above freezing and Patty and I both froze and didn’t sleep very well. We were all bundled pretty good as we started out this morning on our bikes. John and Mary Ann gave us the heater out of their little trailer to use in our tent tonight so we should be much warmer, though the forcast is 29 degrees here tonight.

 We road almost 75 miles today, with much of it uphill, and I rode my new Trek Touring Bicycle. I dismantled  the trike I built at 6:30 am this morning and it is now tied securily to the top of Richard and Mary’s Camper where it will stay until May. We are camped tonight at a KOA campground in Lordsburg, New Mexico, and I am sitting in the laundry room where it is warm  and has free WiFi. My shoulder, arm and neck muscles are extremely sore and tired tonight and my butt hurts terribly from my bicycle ride today on a “regular” bike, but I averaged close to 12 mph  and the traffic was never an issue. It was sad this morning taking the Duke Trike apart in that it was a fun experiment that I wished had worked. Oh well we can add it the long list of crazy ideas that I have had that haven’t worked. Last night we were at a “Warm Shower” host home and we set up our tent in their backyard. In the middle of the night a cat squeezed in the door of our tent and jumped on Patty, she screamed  waking me with a start. We both had a good laugh at the “demon” that had startled us, and then I caught the cat and threw him out of the door of our tent. Today we stopped for a rest, some water, and some snacks about 25 miles into the day.  My new bike doesn’t have a kick stand so we usually stop by a sign or road marker and I lean my bike against it. I had gotten some snacks out of the bag on the back of my bicycle, and a few minutes later a truck coming by caused my bike to fall over from their wind. I had my wallet in the top of the bag and when it fell my wallet fell out on the ground and none of us saw it happen. We road 10 miles and stopped for lunch and when I opened the bag on the back of my bike to get my wallet it was not there. I started racking my brain trying to remember where I had put it, and the three of us agreed that it might have fallen out when the bike fell. The ladies were almost to where we were having lunch, so when they got there, Mary Ann drove Patry and I back to where We had stopped. It was going to be such a hassle if I couldn’t find it, but when we got to the spot there it lay, thank You, Lord. Challenges are so much fun to face, solve, and conquer.  I can’t wait for what is in store for us tomorrow.

I got so frustrated today with my Recumbent Trike that I pulled over, called Patty and the ladies and asked if they would pick me up when they passed me, and drive me into Silver City, New Mexico so I could buy a bicycle. This morning the rumble strip was spaced so I couldn’t fit between it and the edge of the road, it was just wide enough that I couldn’t strattle it with the trike, so I road out in the road and watched for cars coming up behind me in my mirror and road on the rumble strip until the vehicle passed, and it would about shake me to death. 3 times my chain came off, once my saddle bag fell off, I couldn’t keep my mirror adjusted because of the shaking, and all my trail mix that I had in a container attached to my front rail to snack on as I rode flew out. So now I am the proud owner of a year old Trek Touring Bike. The guys in the bike store were super nice and got the bike all adjusted and fit to my leg and arm length. I gave my “Butt Butter” away to John, but I asked him tonight if I could have it back, and I think he is going to give it back to me. So tomorrow is a new adventure. We will see how it goes!

In Romans chapter 1 it says that the existence of God is evident in is, that God put the awareness of Him in us, but that many have choked it out as it were with our own ungodliness and unrighteousness. Our pride and desire to make our own rules and have nobody rule over us, not even God causes our spiritual ears and eyes to be unable to sense God or have a desire to love Him and serve Him. I want to be 100% in love with the Lord and not allow anything to crowd in and usurp part of my love for Him. Periodic long periods of solitude are a great time for me to reflect on my true values and beliefs in regards to God and not just the information in my head that I teach. This bicycle trip has been a wonderful time for me in that regard. Most of the day I am riding by myself and Creation is a great amplifier of God’s presence as I ride along enjoying the view. Jesus is my God, my Savior, and my friend and that is growing stronger. We took the day off from riding today to have a rest day and this morning we went to a small Baptist church in Globe, Arizona. It was a very spiritually refreshing time singing and listening to the young preacher, sitting next to Patty feeling incredibly blessed by my life experiences.

I am bicycling this year to Florida on a recumbent trike that I built from plans downloaded from the Internet, with help from a friend who did the welding. It is quite a bit slower than my old Novara Safaria touring bicycle that I road to Portland Maine 18 months ago, especially going uphill. I can’t come close to keeping up with John and Richard on this trip. It is also much more of a problem with small or non existing road shoulders with traffic because it is 3 ft wide. So you might ask why not stay with the old bike? The first reason is because of my Parkinson’s disease which is causing me to have an increasing problem with balance so at slow speeds I wobble all over the place and can’t get started at all on any kind of uphill incline. With 3 wheels that is no longer an issue so I should be able to continue riding even after the disease progresses. The second reason is the comfort factor. My new ride is incredibly comfortable even after being on it for 10 hours of hard riding. On my old bike, my rear end hurt bad, my hands ached, my shoulders hurt, and my neck killed me. Even though my new bike has problems it is so much more fun to ride. I think I will get faster as I get used to the recumbent position and get in better shape and the traffic deal is only a problem occasionally and there is usually a solution, such as calling my wife to come pick me up! Oh, and one more plus is because of the really comfortable seat that my son in law made for it I can take a nap any time I want.

Today we rode through a section of highway that was under construction and very, very busy. There was zero shoulder with concrete barriers to the edge of the rode, and my trike is 3 ft wide so I stick into the road enough so cars can’t pass me if there is a car coming from the other direction. I would look behind me and there would be dozens of cars backed up behind me going 6 mph. When there was a break in the traffic coming from the other direction a bunch of cars would speed around me until another car came from the other direction. I got quite a few long honks as they went by and glares as well, but no hand gestures that I could tell. One car slammed on his brakes as he realized that he wasn’t going to make it around me by the time that the car from the other direction got there. When I heard the squealing of the tires behind me I closed my eyes and tensed up waiting to get hit. The trucks were even worse because when they slow down my speed it takes a while for them to get back up to speed going up a hill. The road widened out for a bit and I thought, super, we are done with that, but then another section came up, so I stopped and called the ladies to come and get me. I like adventure but this was suicidal so I decided to “be safe”. I sat on my bike and took a nap while I waited. I rode 30 miles of the 63 for the day. We are taking tomorrow off and the camp sight we are in has a swimming pool so it should be a good day. I am hoping that Monday is a “normal” day, maybe even a little boring.

Leaving our camp this morning the road out of the camp was so steep that I had to push super hard on the peddles and spun the back derailleur right off of the bike. It was nice that it happened right in the parking lot so it didn’t take to long to put it back on with John’s and Richard’s help then Mary pushed me up the hill while I peddled and we got out on the road with no more mishaps. Today was a high mileage day, but the big deal was the heat. When it gets over 80 degrees my energy level goes way down so I whined quite a bit today. We rode through the city of Phoenix and are camping in Apache Junction tonight. We are staying at a Warm Shower host home tonight camping in their back yard and able to use their showers for free. Warm Showers is an organization of bicyclers who make their homes available for other bicycle travelers to use and then get to stay at other members places. There is like 70,000 members so there are lots of places to stay. The fellow who owns this home is gone but said we could stay anyway. Usually the hosts are home and feed us dinner and breakfast and we have lots of great fellowship. I made several good friends on the last trip that I still correspond with. About 20 miles of the ride through Phoenix was on a bike trail that went along a river/canal and every time the trail came to a major road there was a tunnel under it that the trail went through, so you went down real steep onto the tunnel and real steep out the other side. It was pretty dark inside and in one of them a homeless guy had set up his camp and I came within inches of running over him. He wasn’t used to “trikes” taking up so much room. In another tunnel a bike was coming from the other direction and he didn’t see me and I had to brake real hard to keep him from hitting me, and then I had to push the bike out the other side because I didn’t have the momentum to pedal it out. Tonight I am sitting in my lawn chair letting my wife spoil me with a Starbucks freeze, some delicious soup, cheese and Ritz crackers, and a snack of trail mix, while I read my Bible and write my blog and journal. Tomorrow is going to be a super hard day with major climbing and heat, but Sunday we are taking off, whooooooeeeeee, can’t wait!!!

Today we rode 63 miles and about 53 miles being uphill, but only about a 3% grade which I peddled about 8 miles an hour, so with breaks for water and snacks I was about 9 hours on the road. Every 5 miles I stop for a big slug of water or gator aid, and every 10 miles I stop for water and a snack such as a Baggie of trail mix, and every 15 miles I stop for water, snack, and dancing a jig around my trike. You gotta keep up your routine😀 I mentioned a day or two ago that after fastening the trike to the back of the camper and then pulling out of the campground that the trailer we were pulling swung around and bent one of my handles over. I bent it back up into place and it looked fine. Today while I was going up a particularly steep hill I was pulling on the handles for leverage and I pulled the one that had bent off. So I had to do the rest of the day with one steering handle. It was tricky at best. With little traffic it wasn’t to big of a problem but then I came into Wickenburg during rush hour with no designated bike path trying to maneuver with one steering handle and braking for one front tire. It was very, very exciting, close to being a near death experience!! I kept thinking about what it would feel like to be hit by a truck. I remember reading that you don’t really feel much pain during a traumatic event like that. I was hoping that was true. It was a great feeling to see John and Mary Ann Smith out by the entrance to where we were staying, I had made it!! I took a 6 inch piece of 3/4 x 3/4 angle iron and put it next to the broken piece and then took 4 hose clamps and put them around the angle iron and cinched it up tight. It seems to be holding great. I took a picture of the concoction  but I couldn’t figure out how to upload it to my blog. I will put it on Facebook. My knee is much better with all the Aleve that I am taking, and the ice I am putting on it in camp. Tomorrow we are scheduled to go 95 miles and we are riding through Phoenix to boot, Yikes!  I hope my fix job works on my steering arm!!