As soon as we left the hotel we looked for a place to inflate my uncle’s rear tire properly. To our luck, there was an open tire shop right next to the hotel.
There we met two nice fellows who owned the tire shop. We started chatting and they told us about how proud they were to be natives of New Mexico, and that they considered Spanish to be their official language because that piece of land used to be Mexico. They also told us they were the only tire shop still opened in Moriarty, so we were lucky to be there.
After a few minutes, we said good bye and moved on. The next seventeen miles were hard. The elevation was tough and the sun was hot, which made it that much harder to progress. When we finally reached Edgewood city we looked for a place to eat and, as usual, found a Subway restaurant. The manager was very nice. He let us place the bicycles inside the store. We also got to talk and he asked to take picture together with us.
Just when we were returning to the road we noticed my front tire was flat: remove panniers, disassemble tire, change tube, find hole, apply patch, replace tube, assemble tire, inflate and attach panniers.
After this point the ride was smooth, we went downhill for pretty much the remainder of the course, the longest downhill stretch we got on this entire trip! As we approached Albuquerque’s urban area the landscape started to change. We started seeing mountains on both sides of the road and, looking behind, we could see the giant mountains we have crossed in this and the previous day.
We then stopped to navigate using the GPS and found a hotel on the West side of the city. Just as we were resuming the ride my uncle saw his front tire was flat. We fixed it and moved on.
We passed by a Walmart and stopped to get food, and then rode to the downtown section of Albuquerque. The place had welcoming feeling to it, with many restaurants and coffee shops. We were crossing through Central Ave, so we cut through the center of the city.
We arrived on the hotel very tired, so we tried to be quick in preparing to sleep but that didn’t really happen. We ended up sleeping close to midnight, and as usual when we sleep too little, that would affect my performance on the next day.