Done.

Ok, well, here I am at Bob and Cathy's place in good ol' Socorro, NM. It doesn't really feel like it's over though. I suppose because I'm not back home in Pasadena yet. In that case, it will never feel "over" because I'm moving to Mountain View (or thereabouts) and not back to Pasadena.

Cathy has a hole in her shirt because her bird likes to rip her shirt. Bird ownership is a mystery to me.




Anyway, the wedding is coming up this Saturday, and the following Tuesday I'm flying back to California. Then I get to start looking for a place to live. Fun fun.

Today's ride was pretty reasonable. About 45 miles long. Started out at my parents' house in Belen and rode South along I-25. I rode on I-25 for about 15 miles, where there was no other way to get through.

Here's a typical mid-NM landscape view which looks (to me) very homey and familiar. Low scrub vegetation like mesquite, sagebrush, and grasses; long sight distances with mountains on the horizon; blue skies.

Those of you who went to NMTech should recognize the mountain that the freeway is pointing to in this last picture. It's M-Mountain as seen from about 15 miles North on I-25. Techies seeing this know they're almost home when coming back from Albuquerque.

I got my third flat tire today, but I knew it would happen. Only about 2 miles North of Socorro, there is no paved road that goes through except the interstate, and I didn't feel like getting back on it. So... I took the old way Bob and I used to do on our mountain bikes. This went on a bunch of twisty dirt roads, under a super-low-clearance freeway underpass (about 5 feet) and into and out of a big concrete flood control channel. Much of the dirt road surfaces were covered completely with goathead plants, and that's how I got the flat. Ah well, it was fun riding on those same old dirt roads I remember from 18 years ago in college. :)