Going For It!

Snow & Fog

By morning the snow had all but melted. The ground was clear, and the clouds were gone leaving a bright blue sky with a spattering of snow on the trees and shrubs. This looked like the beginnings of a beautiful day, I wasn’t going to let a little bit of snow and cold in the morning prevent me from enjoying a nice day down the hill and delay my overdue maintenance yet another week. It should be just a bit cool until I pass La Bajada Hill, then I’ll be through the worst of it right…?

I took the opportunity to snap some pictures while I waited for it to warm up a bit more and let the roads dry out some. I think some came out rather nice, what do you think? When I figure out how to work my new gallery plugin so I dont have to use Picasa on google I’ll link the rest of them in here somewhere. Now that I have this blog started I’m trying to do more panoramic shots using the stitch assist function on my Cannon for the header graphic. I think it’ll be cool to have the header slowly rotate through several New Mexico scenes.

It had finally warmed up nicely and I cleared the rest of the snow off the bike and decided to go for it. Due to all the oil leaks that keep coming up from riding in the 20’s and teens, I’m trying to not ride it as much in the extreme cold anymore even if I’m physically able. I’d ridden through much colder so this shouldnt be that bad right? The ride was absolutely stunning for the first 5 miles. All the dust had been washed out of the air the night before and everything was crystal clear. The reflection off the snow made the sky a vivid deep blue like I’ve rarely seen before, it almost looked fake. I wish I had an onboard video camera so I could put up some clips of what I ride through. Despite the snow on the sides of the road it was warm enough that I dont think I even needed the balaclava that I had on.

Then I hit La Bajada Hill and plunged into a fog as thick as pea soup. Instantly my face shield fogged over to be nearly useless and cracking it open did little to help. I had to ride with the helmet open, this is one of my major complaints with this new helmet I’m going to need to find a solution to the fogging problem eventually. The fog got thicker and within a few miles turned to stinging little ice crystals and my windshield and controls started icing over. Oh shit.. this is starting to suck in a hurry.

The road surface was just a little damp and the center ridge was still dry. I figgured the fog would end when I got out of the shadow of the hill in a few miles and it would be over soon, boy was I wrong. The fog kept getting thicker and thicker, and I was now starting to get ice on the inside of the helmet on the nose guard thing to supposedly prevent fogging from having the shield up.

By now I was only going 60 and the cagers seemed to have not slowed down much at all despite only having 25 ft of visibility. I’m grateful for my new much brighter tail lights so I dont get creamed. All the cars coming up behind me pulled into the other lane far in advance when all I could see of them was the headlights so they must be seeing me ok. I’d still prefer to have a hazard option on my blinkers and leave both of them flashing for better visibility, this is the third time that feature would have come in handy I’m going to have to look into wiring something up.

After 20-30 minuts of this I was completely disoriented, I had no clue where I was or how far I had come. I had to trust that the small strip of lines on the road that I could see would lead me to my destination. Then as quickly as it arrived the fog was gone and I was somehow already in Bernalillo when I thought I was maybe 10 miles further back. I made it to R&S right as they were opening up. First in line!

I desperately needed to get something warm to eat after all of that. After the girl arrived, we hit Denny’s. I had wanted to go to Shoney’s but that was the first place we saw on the way. Denny’s has a new option to pick and choose your menu items for $5.99 I think for 4 things. I was starving so I went with one of the bigger meals and Cece did the $5.99 thing. She ended up with more food than me, what the heck? They also gave us a $5 off coupon for the next visit, good deal. Next time I’m in the mood for breakfast at 3AM I’m getting the build your own slam thing.

Then it was off to The Rally to check out all the super luxurious RVs I cant afford