Bosque Ride

This past weekend was a great one for cycling!  I had two of my best rides ever.  Saturday is posted here.

Sunday, I decided that I needed to change things up.  My local routes are getting a bit boring and Sunday offered some time to try something new. I drove my bike (as in, transported it in my car) south about 15 miles past Belen, NM to get on some “very rural” roads (as compared to simply “rural” where I live).

I started riding in a place called Bosque, NM (not Bosque Farms, NM) which is basically an intersection, a post office, and a couple of homes.  I started all of this after church so it was the heat of the day – about 84 degrees at the start and 87 degrees at the finish.  Pretty reasonable temperatures for August in New Mexico – I am most certainly NOT complaining!

The ride was a great!  I REALLY enjoyed the feeling of being in the middle of nowhere – no homes in sight, no cars, relatively long stretches of road with no man-made things in sight.  That said, this a populated area so there are plenty of homes and farms – they are just a few miles apart instead of a few feet.  Anyway… the “openness” was a cool feeling.  I’ve wondered what the Tour Divide participants feel when they are miles from anything – this was my first “sorta” taste and I liked it!  All told, it was 20.5 GPS miles.

The following photos are from the ride. Click on them for a larger version.

One thing that I am still trying to figure out is this whole concept of altitude climbed and descended.  The stats provided by “Move!” list my Saturday ride as having a total uphill distance as 1827 feet and Sunday as 2358 feet.  I just cannot see that given the area that I am riding and looking at the Google earth elevation profile.  However; there probably something about this concept that I do not understand… it has happened before…  🙂

Weight this morning: 245 pounds. 🙁   That reminds me, during today’s ride, I rode past a fellow working on his driveway near the road.  As I approached, he asked if “everything was ok?”  I had to laugh – clearly this is an indication that I do not look like Lance Armstrong tooling down the road but rather some fat guy about to have a heart attack!! LOL