Flat, Wet,Cold West Texas

Lubbock, TX has recent road construction that rerouted traffic like a French braid through the burgeoning west Texas city.  The skies were overcast and the skies generous with the spritzer, as it gradually opened up to full-on rain.  The weather was keeping the temperatures down, in fact so low down I had to stop to layer up.  It started out at 70 degrees, and then somewhere between drowsiness and wide-awake it dropped to 59 F.   West Texas’ topography is flat, featureless and accented with the occasional oil derrick.  Zooming along at 70 mph the speed limit on this straightaway dropped to 55 mph, welcome to New Mexico.  The landscape changed from desert vegetation with the occasional derrick to a sea of oil derricks with the the occasional desert bush.  I stopped to examine one of the pumping machines that reminded me of the water-sipping bird popular in the 1970’s.  I saw no evidence of where the oil was going, no pipes or collection tanks, where’s the oil go?  As we say in the Coast Guard, PFM (Pure F—— Magic).   On the recommendation of a motorcyclist I met in Lubbock, I traveled to Las Cruces via Lovington, Artesia, Cloudcroft through the Lincoln National Forest.   I stopped in Artesia for fuel and lunch at a deli where I enjoyed my meal with Tammy Durfy, a true cowgirl whose son was in the Coast Guard.  I saw a collection of characters that were misplaced by time in this oil support municipality.  Around town beautiful gigantic Remington-esque statues occupied most of the thoroughfare intersections, testament to the prosperity of the city.

Lincoln National Forest was a pleasant relief to the boring line of asphalt that disappeared horizon to horizon.  The forest road was more challenging with swiping curves, rock walls and treed forest, a exciting change from the treeless west Texas.  The byway through the forest climbed up to 8700 feet, and temperatures descended to 45 F.  Cloudcroft was packed with Texans escaping the heat.  The traffic was light and manageable.  When I dropped down into the valley that had a white haze that appeared like a mirage, the temperatures rose immediately back up to 80 F.  I was still layered up, still enjoying the lower temperatures, still unaware that God turned up the bake knob.  I rode through White Sands, a.k.a. the mirage, and then over the Organ Mountains into Las Cruces.  I surprised Madison, Danny and Diana’s daughter, who answered the door, looked at me in my space suit, and immediately shut the door as I stood there with my mouth open “Good aft—-.”