Day 37: New Mexico Ate Our Brake Pads

Sunday July 25

Lake Roberts to Silver City, NM

29.6 miles, 2757 ft climbed, 2424 cumulative miles

Slipping our feet into still wet shoes is an unpleasant way to start the day. Almost as unpleasant as discovering that your brake pad is completely mangled. So Irena started her day by replacing her back brake pads and wondered how long she has been metal on metal braking yesterday. Sarah’s back brake pad made that metal on metal sound most of the morning as well and we replaced hers 19 miles into the ride. The Great Divide was really chewing up our brake pads. 

There was a thick fog hanging over the Gila Forest, that formed droplets on our eye lids. We continued to climb in the fog and popped out into the sunshine that was trying to break through a couple of times. We are getting to the end of our big climbing days and today may have been the last one. We rode through the historic Pinos Altos, now in the sun and got another Continental Divide Crossing. The downhill took us into Silver City and we were relieved to be back in civilization after three days and dry for a change. 

When we secured our hostel, we learned that Evan was also staying there. Last time we saw Evan was in Grants where our departing words were along the lines of…if we see each other again, things didn’t go well. We changed our plans due to the heavy rains and so did he. We spent the afternoon and evening sharing our storm battle stories. We again said our goodbyes…will it be the last time? 

Published July 25, 2021