SPEA

Gary's Journal - Day 7

Hello Everyone,
 
I hope you have received some of our mail by now. Because we were out in no man's land, our cell phone has not worked well. We finally checked with technical support at Printek (Jeff Yeager) and he helped us set up the computor in the hotel room. We got some email out. Someone needs to advise me what you have received and I will send the rest. We also received some email and we greatly appreciate receiving it. Believe me, we don't always show it, but we miss everyone when we are away. Enough already! We left Gallup, NM late this morning because we got in late yesterday. We slept in a little. Our first great event was reaching the Continental Divide. I had read about it but had never seen it. It showed we had climbed over 7,000 feet since we left California. We thought it was 21,000 with all the mountains we had climbed. A number of pictures were in order.

Technically, it is all down hill from here, right!! Not!!! It was easy riding with a lot of down hill until about twenty miles from Albuquerque, then we paid for the down hill. We went up hills, three miles straight!!! I was very  proud of Joe! He never stopped until the top. We saw an old train wreck that we had read about sometime ago. I guess they are just going to leave it. What a shame. It is such beautiful scenery.

Joe's bad luck is continuing. He had another flat. This makes about five. It is on the same tire. Go Figure!!! As we speak, he is changing both tires, tubes, and rims. Maybe this will change his luck. I had another first today. I swallowed a bug!!! I need protein but not this way. I eat a lot of pancakes when I travel. I met my match. I ordered the biggest pancake I have ever seen (see) I couldn't finish even a part of it. We are starting to look a little funny. The right side of our bodies are getting very red, while the left side is still white. Riding east all day, in the morning it is still cold so we get no sun, so to speak, on our left side. As the day goes by, the sun gets hot, so our right side burns up. I guess we learn to ride backwards. Not much else to say. Tomorrow we leave for Las Vegas, NM. Albuquerque is down in a valley so we have to climb out tomorrow. Many hills. Wish us luck. 

gary, joe, and dion