RT66 Day 4: Dumb Luck or Did Fate Just Do Me A Solid?
An interesting day: two back-to-back flat tires sabotage an early-morning start. Normally, I'd be annoyed, but those flats may have saved my life!
People always ask me if it’s legal to ride a bicycle on an Interstate. This sign doesn’t really clear things up…
Day 4: Santa Rosa, NM to Moriarty, NM; 69 miles, 3,130 feet elevation gain
60 miles on I-40
Day 4: Planned on Ride with GPS
Intraday Stops: Phillips 66 Milagro (31 miles), Flying C Ranch Marathon Gas* (9 miles), Cline’s Corner (26 miles), Conoco Moriarty (21 miles), Best Western Moriarty
What’s on the horizon this morning? Sixty miles on I-40, headed toward Moriarty, with 3 mph westerly winds. I’m scared.
This is the first day I’ll spend the majority of my ride on the interstate. Cars and trucks will be flying by at speeds over 75 mph, with only a few feet of pavement separating me from them. A lot can happen at those speeds, and it could mean game over for me in an instant. (Sorry for being so morbid, but my mom is finally starting to get to me — more on that in a separate post.)
At 8:00 a.m., I’m getting ready to roll out of the hotel when I realize I have a flat tire — my first flat of the trip. Actually, there are three separate punctures, all of which I had to pull out with tweezers. Fortunately, the leaks developed overnight while I was already off the highway, rather than while riding.
Wire threads get embedded in my tires from riding on the interstate. The threads are from reinforced tires on tractor-trailers, which get shredded as the truck drives long distances.
Fifteen miles later, I get another flat, this time on the interstate itself. Changing a tire on the shoulder of I-40 is harrowing. You hear the high-pitched whine of cars and trucks screaming past, and you can feel the vacuum of wind tugging at your clothes and hair as they pass. For some reason — stupidity, inexperience, laziness, maybe all three — I struggled to inflate the tire with my hand pump. Thankfully, my dad happened to drive by with the portable inflator.
By the time I rolled into my first stop, Phillips 66 Milagro, about 20 miles in, it was already 10:30 a.m. and I was exhausted. After some food and a short rest in the car, I headed toward Cline’s Corner, another 26 miles away and up some fairly significant hills. I do regret not stopping at Flying C Ranch, which looked like an epic roadside stop.
Then my dad calls me. Apparently, traffic a few miles ahead has slowed dramatically. Tractor-trailers are pulling off into a rest area, so he follows them. When I catch up to him near the Edge of the Plains plaque, he’s sitting calmly in the car parked beneath a tree. We eat lunch there and speculate about what could possibly have brought interstate traffic to a halt.
After lunch, I leave my dad under the tree and pedal back into traffic, which has now come to a complete stop. Somehow, my long, miserable interstate day has been transformed by whatever incident occurred ahead. Traffic is backed up for nine miles.
At one point, people are actually getting out of their cars to stretch while I cruise past them on my bike. It feels glorious.
Eventually, I reach the source of the traffic jam: two tractor-trailers — and possibly a third vehicle — have collided. Honestly, I have a tremendous amount of faith in the skill of truck drivers, so seeing an accident like this is shocking. Then another thought occurs to me: if I had been 30–45 minutes earlier, I might have had a front-row seat to the crash — or worse, been part of it. It’s impossible to know, of course, but I couldn’t help feeling fortunate that my progress had been delayed by those two flat tires.
As if the day hadn’t already provided enough excitement, dark clouds and light rain greet me at Exit 203 for Moriarty, still 15 miles away from my destination. Fortunately, the weather holds long enough for me to reach the first hotel, a Super 8. Unfortunately, the room smells overwhelmingly like antiseptic. After checking four different rooms — all carrying either heavy cleaner fumes or stale cigarette odors — I decide to check into the Best Western next door instead.
My dad finally catches up about an hour later. Over dinner — salad and noodles — we talk through tomorrow’s plan while I ice my still-swollen ankle. He’s doing really well on the trip, has finally learned how to text message, and I’m grateful he’s here with me.
I assume any day now the swelling in my ankle will subside and it will feel normal again, but maybe I’m wrong…