About time

So lets fill everyone in on what happened between new mexico and california.. august has been mainly a month of photographs and little words and for those who know me i am NOT a man of few words.

i'll start at new mexico.

first off, other than the hills of santa fe it's by far the crappiest state in america. why we don't just give the whole damn thing to the indians (native america may be PC but the NA's as i'll shorthand it call themselves indians on billboards/casinos etc.). So we're nearing santa fe and looking for a place to call it a night, cole spots this baseball field and i decide to go check it out. out of nowhere this 100 lb pitbull mix darts at me and i'm pedaling for my life, this one got close, within inches, but my cavendish like sprinting abilities was too much for him and i escaped. shaking still i ask a few people if we could crash at their yard, most say no, this one guy tells me i'm trespassing in private indian land and tells me to leave (but much more rudely of course). i'm thinking, for real? are you looking at me dude, i'm riding a bike across the country, so i ride into your "land" for a few hundred yards, get that chip off your shoulder because if you haven't noticed i'm of asian decent and i'm pretty sure the asians didn't take your land... anyways, i find this nice lady who's willing to drive by me as i ride back to cole and chad, i also ask a cop (who happened to drive by) to go to the house and tell the owners to leash their stupid dog.. i love dogs and all, but if i had a gun, i most likely would have shot that dog because it was without a doubt going to bite me.

so after that's over (i was literally shaking for 10-15 minutes) we ride onwards. did i mention how much new mexico sucks? the roads are terrible, needles everywhere, glass, do they even have street cleaning or does all state funds go towards welfare in that state? anyways, we ride and it gets dark, we pull up to this area and we see a building with lights on that suddenly go off. we think people are leaving work and we sprint to the building only to find that it is actually a house. i knock and give my best sad puppy face and the family allowed us to stay. the father was an architect from seattle and just built his dream house. they let us stay in their backyard which overlooked all of santa fe. it was amazing. they brought us beers (first time i had a pacifico, delish after riding 110+ miles), watermelon, and potatoe salad (wich was the BOMB by the way). they allowed us to use their shower as well. the house was gorgeous, i mean, probably one of the nicest houses i've ever seen in my life, the kitchen, wow, amazing.

from santa fe we left for AZ.... it was hot, real hot, pushing 100's everyday. it was 106 at 6pm at albequerqe which was miserable. the rest of the days i'm too lazy to talk about, it was just hot and lots of nothing since we're in new mexico and eastern arizona.

what i will talk about is getting to flagstaff, probably the worst day of riding (make that 2nd worst) i had on the trip. the wind was blowing at a constant 30mph and gusting to 35-40 at times. it was a north eastern blowing wind and we were riding southwest.. so as you can see it was a rough ride.. i was blown off my bike twice.. riding downhill we topped out at 9mph at best... then we finally got to this gas station and bumped into SHILO.. this dude was out of control, probably in his mid 50's but looked like he was in his late 60's. he was riding rt66 and has done his share of touring and was ever so inclined to tell us everything about touring as if we hadn't just ridden 2500 miles ourselves. he was what you call a one upper and went on talking about everything and anything, oftentimes just to himself.

i'll update more later on.. the clouds are parting and it's time to enjoy saturday.