Cycling Across America #66
The San Agustin Pass
Part 66 of the Cycle-Across-America series. (Read from the start in Boston or see the full index)
After pausing for a day in Alamogordo I embark on the journey across the desert that is White Sands culminating in the climb of over 5,000 feet over the Organ mountains to get to Las Cruces.
These excerpts are from the transcipts of a journal entry that was taped, so again they feature me rambling, jumping tenses, and in need of much more editing.
I started yesterday in what was a Waffle House in all but name. I had a waffle. And a double egg plate with hash browns. The hash browns were overcooked, so they’re not nice at all; it’s just all this scattered stuff and crunchy hard bits of potato. I ate them all.
I stacked up with, to take across the desert, 2 breakfast burritos, one smoked ham, one sausage, and a bean burrito, as well as bits of chocolate and a lot of water. Then off I went.
In the end I braved the road without the shoulder because I was running a bit late, but it is a 6-lane highway and the traffic had gone to work, so it was safe. It hasn’t happened since the east coast that I’ve been up at the same time as the traffic - or if I have been there hasn’t been any, like from Elsmore to Kansas City.
The wind was southwest yesterday, a headwind and strong, and today it miraculously turned around to a northwest because I’m going northwest.
It was pretty much uneventful out to White Sands, because I’d done the journey twice the day before, there and back. So I looked up at the aeroplanes again. I seemed to notice much more activity. Planes seemed lower down. I could have a good look at them; I’m sure I could’ve waved to the pilot at times.
The day before there was helicopters, and there was a huge big bomber but yesterday there was a few planes. Very noisy.
I read the posters and stayed on the road. Ones welcoming soldiers and their families, written in German. Another one with a great big picture of a couple of planes. One of them was that stealth thing, to confirm I wasn’t going mad when I saw it overhead the day before.
I pulled in at the monument, to get more water and a quick browse around the Visitors’ Center. I was there for 20 minutes and I bumped into a a relief map I hadn’t seen the day before, which was great because I could see exactly what I was doing today, and potential changes for the road ahead.
In White Sands I spoke to a chap who said he met 2 people from England in South Carolina and they were cycling around the world. He explained that they used to get the plane to fly across…, and he paused for ages as he was thinking of the phrase. I was going to say “water” when he said “when they get to the sea”. So I’m not the only one who can’t cycle on water.
When I had about 30 miles done, yards in off the road is the edge of the big dunes, so you can’t see them. You’d need to get up about 50 to 100 feet to look at them. The rest of it is that kind of yellowy desert. There was lizards running along. They were visible when they came onto the tarmac, on the shoulder, because they were the colour of the the sand which is a dirty yellow.
[The rest of this long post is continued below the fold]
Behind me the Sacromento Mountains looked great. Close up the shadows are amazing. There’s great big roundness and round shadows, and it’s like an overfilled bowl of fruit. In the distance ahead you still have the blue jaggedy wall that is the San Andreas Mountains.
About a mile away I could see a small building, a very small one, and a red blodge beside it. And I thought, that’s got to be a vending machine. So though I had water and some of it under cover, the idea of an ice cold drink was very tempting. It was warm, for the first time in a long time. Even in the morning.
It was the entrance to the Missile Range, and on the far side of the fence it was a vending machine. I went up to the guard and asked him if I could use it.
-Certainly sir. Sometimes it doesn’t work. You’re welcome to try. And it doesn’t work I’ve got some cold water you’re very welcome to have sir.Took a couple of cans out. Mountain Dew was the first. Drank it outside. I could hear him inside chatting with his friend. Talking to me he’s very formal, very civil, very polite, lots of “sir, this” and “sir, that”. Talking with his friend however he’s as common as muck.
He’s discussing Hilary Clinton and Elizabeth Dole. Like pretty much everybody he doesn’t like Clinton at all but he’s certainly not going to vote for Dole. The other fellow said that if Elizabeth Dole was running he’d vote for her. The guys did not like Hilary.
I wanted to eat but didn’t think it a good idea to eat my burritos in front of them, so I drank my drink and cycled on another mile or so. Then I pulled off the edge of the road, lay the bike down on the edge of the sands and walked into it eating my burrito.
I was surrounded by yuccas and other plants. Hundreds of very large ants. One of them was dragging a fly. Lots of them were dragging very small things. One of them was dragging a small grasshopper. I didn’t stand in the one place too long in case they started to drag me around.
Drank my water, it was cold in the bag, and I cycled on. I could eat my other burrito a bit further up the road. Small snacks were the order of the day.
I was going into a headwind. The guard had told me, when I get to the foothills of the mountains to be very careful; that the crosswinds are very strong. I had thanked him for the drinks and asked if he could arrange to quieten the winds down. He said that a couple of years ago they lost a cyclist there, a young woman on her own. A side wind took her under the traffic and there was nothing anybody could do.
-So be very careful sir.First though was like a picnic area, and an historic marker. And on the far side of the road. A bit dangerous going across this road; it’s very straight but traffic’s going very fast. Nothing is going less than 70. Halfway across I waited, then did the other side. The marker is for a Colonel Fountain and his son, big figures in this part of the world in the civil war. He was a lawyer, statesman. They were murdered. A couple of people were tried for the murder but acquitted. This was the site.
I was looking out for tarantulas because I’d seen one the previous evening on that road, basically trotting across the road. They don’t look as intimidating as other spiders, perhaps because they’re so big and furry.
As I got near the foothills of the San Andreas, which is where the bend is, I was thinking of that cyclist and wondering what her story was. Where she was from, if she gave double rings home every evening. And then a few yards on was a little white cross with some flowers.
At this point the road had a shoulder to the shoulder. Wonderful surface on the shoulder proper but I wasn’t on it. It meant I had a combined shoulder area of 12 foot, so I stayed on that in case a side wind did decide to take me.
I saw a hawk going somewhat sideways and against the wind, and yet managing very little in terms of flapping the wings. I was wishing I could do that on the bike. Just a little pedal and then use the wind even though I’m going against it.
So then the climb. You go up in verious stages of straightness. The road goes straight for a few miles up, then it turns then it goes straight, then it turns, then you’ve got a horseshoe over the pass. It was tough in the wind. The slope was not a problem; I was battling the wind.
At times there was barriers to stop you falling off the road, and they put them right in the middle of the shoulder. I always cycled on the wrong side of them, rather than risk going too close to the traffic. Which meant I did risk falling 12 feet down into a big hole, but I reckoned I’d fare off better down a big hole than if I fell into the traffic.
Nearer the top it became 6 lanes, or there was an extra lane for climbing. So it annoyed me when cars went through it at 80 miles an hour. There’s 2 other lanes for them and there was no other traffic around.
Unprotected by a barrier, only a couple of miles from the top I was looking ahead, and maybe 20, 30 yards ahead there was bits of grass and some plants up in the air whizzing in the wind from left to right. And there was other bits near it going from right to left which I thought was very strange. And then I could see that it was coming towards me!
So I held on tight to the bike and the wind hit me and grabbed me, throwing me sideways, me and the bike, towards the road. As this is happening I took my foot out of the peddal clip, dropped it to the ground, held the bike steady facing sideways and waited ’til that crazy gust had gone. At the same time a semi was going past with its horn blaring and I turned the wheel so it wouldn’t get hit.
It’s easy to understand the winds because although I’d been going into a headwind from the southwest, the mountains are so jagged and rugged and rise up from nothing that the wind comes through gaps and bounces off them. It goes every which way.
Going up this climb I kept stopping to look behind because the view was great. You were looking at this amazing desert, and until I went around the corner I could still see the peak of Sierra Blanca which was now nearly 100 miles away. You could see just desert. It takes on a sea appearance probably because it’s got mountains on the far side, like land on the far side of sea.
There were 3 bucks just beside me on the other side of the barbed wire fence which marked off the missile range all the way from Alamogordo. They were picking their footsteps as they walked through the desert - but right at the top. It’s not so much desert up there. They were only a few hundred feet from the top of that mountain. And they looked at me a lot, rather than the cars.
I stopped every so often to drink some water, to look at the view, to do my calculations if I would make it before sunset, and to take out a cinnamon flavoured piece of chewing gum. I tried to think of all the people I know who chew chewing gum; in adulthood they’re all women for some reason.
Aguire Springs was across the road but it’s fee-paying. And that’s where the photographs were takeable from, on the far side of the road. You couldn’t take them from the side I was on.
Once I passed the entrance to the White Sands Missile Range at the end of the San Agustin Pass traffic was streaming out and there was no way I was able to get across 5 lanes of traffic. So I couldn’t get over there. I couldn’t take a photograph. You had this great big highway in the way of the view and I couldn’t take a photograph. The wind was crazy so I kept on going.
At the top of course you lose the shoulder. Well you’ve 18 inches but there’s a barrier there so if you go too close you bounce off it into the traffic. 5,715 feet high and it’s quite a pass because you come through it in a horseshoe bend. The top, or bottom if you like, of the “U” is the top of the mountain. And the wind coming through that gap, because they cut it out of the mountain.
And then you get a fantastic view on the other side, which of course you can’t take a photograph of either, because of the traffic and the wind and it’s all so dangerous. You just hold onto the bike and down you go.
You lose that extra lane going down, and then a barrier appears. I stopped at the barrier, put on my jacket for wind resistance, put on my visibility vest because I knew before long I’m going to need it. The sun goes down very quickly these days. It’s very blinding for about 45 minutes and then it’s gone.
I’d come to realise that the town of Organ is called after the Organ Mountains, not the other way around, because the Organ Mountains are those few mountains which are part of the San Andreas range immediately to the south of the San Agustin Pass. And as I was going up the climb looking at them it dawned on me that they actually look like an organ. And I felt pleased with myself for recognising something so obvious.
As I whizzed down through the town of Organ I was looking out for a mural I’d read about. I couldn’t see it in the town - it’s a tiny town. I couldn’t see the mural from teh street but I was whizzing by at about 22 miles an hour. Not very fast though I was still going into that wind. And then I saw a mural on a big round cylindrical thing, a space centre thing. There was models of a Space Shuttle outside. The Organ mountains were behind it with the sun shining on them.
Then I stayed on this big wide shoulder all the way into town on this great big highway. When I was a mile from I-25, a few miles inside the city limits of Las Cruces but quite away from the downtown, not really in a built up area, I saw a Super-8 and said play it safe, go in and be done with it. Which is where I am.
And now my plan is to go to Old Mesilla, have a look around, and then go north. I’m getting tired of every day fighting sunsets. Today I’m probably going to do it again now that I’m setting off so late.
Before I got to the Super-8 there was a housing estate in off the road a few hundred yards. It was the most European looking I’d seen. Very odd, all these little houses. Like home. Well like a posh part of Dublin. And beside it next door was an estate not a million miles from a poorer part of Dublin. And all around was desert.
I spoke to the girl on the desk for a while. She asked me to tell her about Ireland. She wants to go there. Her grandfather is Irish, and she loves the advert. I hadn’t seen the advert. She said it tells you all about the Vikings, the English, and the Normans, and then it says, “But if you guys come, you’ll be the first ones that are invited”.
I picked up a couple of postcards. She pointed out they’re doing a deal and if I got 5 of them they’d be cheaper. So I told her I’d been doing deals all the way and I’ve got too many postcards.
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