Slow Down!

One of the things I like most about these adventures with Neil is everything we’ve been through together. We have a long history of racing hard together but never against each other. We have pushed our bodies and minds beyond what we thought we were capable of – on marathon courses, adventure races and triathlons. The “hay is in the barn” as they say and we don’t have anything else to prove. My focus has shifted from miles per hour to how many beautiful sunsets that we can see, counting the wild animals and listening for new birdsong we haven’t heard before. It’s a great place to be – still fit enough to be out here but not feeling pressured to push beyond a certain level of pain. There is only so much hike-a-bike that I really want to do and there aren’t any medals waiting for us at the end of the day regardless of how hard we push.

We checked in with each other after the slog over White Gap and decided it was time to slow down. We had completed the northern loop in two hard days but wanted to slow things down a bit and see what the day would bring. After a nice sleep in and a lazy breakfast, we headed out into the southern loop with the plan of covering about 25 miles and then finding a place to camp and enjoy the stars in the far east side of the course near White Sands. The climb out of town was challenging but steady. It was all rideable but tricky in its own way. After about 10 miles of simply awesome single track trail, we started to descend off of the foothills towards the south. As we followed the course, the trail took us across a series of endless steep and narrow ditches that were spaced about 25 yards across. The first dozen were fun but they got to be pretty tedious after a while. We would come up on the steep ditch and pitch our heavy bikes down the hill hoping for the best. As the front tire hit the bottom, the weight of our handlebar bags slammed the front forks down into the shocks and then it was full power mode back up the steep rocky far side. We decided that each section of the Dangerbird has its own unique beauty and cruelty. Today’s kick in the shins was ditch diving.

We came across another rider along this part of the route and he was finishing up the 300 mile version of the course with a very ultralight setup. He praised the next few miles of trail and said the cattle tanks were looking full. We didn’t come across any water but we did find a really cool abandoned stone structure around the place we wanted to stop and decided to camp there for the night to take advantage of the shade it provided. After setting up our sleeping gear “cowboy style”, we went on a short hike up the hill. Neil found some really cool prehistoric marine fossils in the stones along the embankment. As soon as we started taking a close look, we found dozens of them. I used the GoogleLens feature on my phone to discover that they were fossilized brachiopods that ranged anywhere from 540-250 million years old! It was humbling to hold those creatures in my palm and realize that we were standing on a prehistoric ocean floor.

We were a few miles from the nearest water source so we were really careful about making sure that we had enough water left over for the evening meal and coffee tomorrow morning. As soon as it got dark, we cocooned ourselves into our warm sleeping bags and studied the stars and satellites in the purple desert sky. There was no wind and the silence was so powerful as we drifted off to sleep. Orion’s Belt was directly overhead when I went to sleep and the Big Dipper greeted me when I woke up around 4AM. This was our reward for slowing down and picking a cool campsite when we found it instead of pushing through to some arbitrary milestone. Our bodies and minds needed the rest and we really enjoyed learning about the fossils in the area. You just can’t do both – it’s either all out pushing through these courses or taking the time to stop and enjoy where you are. I’m feeling happy to be on this side of the adventure.