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Kansas City Irish Festivals, Music, Pubs, & Events by an Artist in Ireland

Deming, New Mexico

Part 68 of the Cycle-Across-America series. (Read from the start in Boston or see the full index)

In a zigzag fashion I am eating my way west across the breathtaking scenery of southern New Mexico’s mountains and deserts, while Bill Clinton and Bob Dole near the end of their election campaigns.

These excerpts are from the audio-taped sections of the journal, so the usual apologies apply about my lack of structure and rambling etc.

Sunday morning, November the 3rd. Another day forecast with rain and snow at higher elevations – which is pertinent today because although, I’m at 4,000, I’m going up to about 6,000. Or am I going even higher?

I’m going to Silver City today. With a bit of luck the snow won’t come down this far south, but there’s supposed to be showers actually, pretty much all over New Mexico today.

Worry about that a little bit later on. If the forecast I saw yesterday was okay and accurate I might well have a wind on my back – which I did yesterday, making yesterday perhaps the easiest day of all.

I had 8 miles of – you can’t really call it rolly-polly hills, they were all hills but they were like steps. You’d go up and then you’d level. Up and level. And so on. Then there was 7 miles of a very straight road leading into hills and mountains.

I woke up yesterday at eight o’clock so my host was up and gone to work so I cycled down to the garage, which is only 300 yards away and I went up and said goodbye. Just shook his hand really and he gave me his card and that was that.

So I hadn’t really talked to him an awful lot. I did at first when we got in, at the bar in his house and he showed me an ashtray to tell me he wasn’t a smoker – he’s an ex-smoker. 15 years ago he gave it up. But he wasn’t on any crusade.

He’d had three wives, but he called himself a bachelor and I was kinda wondering would someone who had 3 wives lose track of which one was which. And he did when he tried to remember which one he was with when he had given up smoking.

[The rest of this post is continued below the fold]

I crossed over the road to the Dairy Queen.

Said can I have French toast and pancakes please. And she says “Do you want French toast OR pancakes?” Both, I said. Because it was one of those days where there was going to be pretty much 50 miles of no option to buy anything.

So I went into the Conoco then and I got a red chilli and a green chilli, burrito. Incidentally if you want red and green together in any form of Mexican food around these parts you say Christmas. And off I went.

<< yawn >> Why am I permanently tired? Oh could it be altitude sickness? I have had headaches. In Ruidoso at 7,000 and going up to nearly 8,000 I found myself very breathless then and I was puzzled by it. Seems a bit obvious.

Then again I’d been there for days so I don’t know. You’re always at, at least 4,000 feet here in New Mexico where I am.

I was probably averaging somewhere between 10mph and 12mph. And the scenery was breathtaking. There was mountains all around. There seemed to be no pattern or rhyme to them. If you look at a bigger relief map, which I’ve seen on television the odd time, it all looks quite ordered as they come down in ranges from the Rockies. But cycling through them it does seem to be mountains dotted around rising straight up from the, well it’s a plateau I suppose - and all manner of shapes and colours.

If you look around - some mountains would be green, some would be yellow. There would be red ones, there would be blue and purple ones in the distance. A lot of them would be almost perfect triangles. There was one the previous day in that canyon, which I seem to have forgotten, the one after Radium Springs. Was it Broad Canyon I think it was called? But this mountain looked like a series of triangles all stacked on top of each other. It was quite odd.

Yesterday after 19 miles there was a junction. There was a road which was described by a signpost as a National Back Country Scenic Road and it took you to Lake Valley which is a ghost town. In fact if you kept following it - it took you to Hillsborough and Kingstown, and they’re ghost towns as well. They’re up in the mountains though.

Anyway I didn’t follow it but at this junction there was a house and a building – a pub. A pub. In the middle of wherever there was a pub called The Middle of Nowhere.

I went inside and there was a Gary Larson cartoon on the notice board. It was a couple driving in a car. The man was driving, the woman was looking at a map. The map said ‘Nowhere’. A sign was approaching them – they were indeed approaching the sign and it said ‘Entering the Middle’. To which she says ‘well this just goes from bad to worse’.

I got a coke from the machine in there. It wasn’t a pretty fancy place. And on the television were the Huskers playing – which I’d hoped to try and bump into. I didn’t know at what time they’d be playing yesterday. They were playing Oklahoma, which once upon a time used to be a great rivalry but now the Huskers just beat them and that’s the 6th game on the trot they beat them.

This was the 3rd quarter. It was 17 points to no. And I was just hoping I’d get to see a bit of action while I stayed for my coke. I could afford to take some time because I knew the hills were all over with now; it was flat the rest of the way, and I could easily average 12 mph no problem. I had time. At the very latest I’d be there at 4 o’clock.

Really I was aiming for 3:30 I think. But then there was an interception by a Huskers guy. And he ran, it looked about 60-70 yards. Touch down. 24 to no. Later that night in the round up I saw that they won 75 points to I don’t know, 3 or 12 or something. It was the biggest victory against Oklahoma ever by anybody.

In the same round up of College matches yesterday, they’re whizzing through all the different ones all over the country. Some of them they’re flashing up a moment or two from the match. And instantly on one is Croke Park. And they say ‘this one might look different, it is. It’s because it’s in Dublin.’

It’s Notre Dame against whoever but they don’t pay any attention to it then as to its difference. You know it might as well have been in Boston. They just say what happened, who did it, and they moved on very quickly. So it was only on the screen for about 15 seconds if even.

A chap asked me if I’d seen a blue and white Chevvy parked on the road travelling from Hatch that morning. And I said no, I hadn’t but sometimes I daydream and I mightn’t have noticed it. That was really a cover my ass thing, because there was no blue and white Chevvy. I didn’t see anything. There was nothing. I’d passed a tarantula. I’d passed a hawk, a couple of horses, and a gateway with Dairy written on it.

In cycling on I found that I was going almost 24 an hour. From this junction it was only going to be 30 miles to a motel door. The wind was only supposed to be 5 miles an hour, and it was from the side – it wasn’t full on my back - but it was flat. And I held it all the way.

It meant I got into Deming at 2 o’clock in the day.

To the north of that pub was this great big rock. Like a big awkward red looking lump of rock. And that was called Nuff Peak. I don’t know what height it was but you wouldn’t walk up it. That was for climbing, that. A big broad rock. The mountains to the north west which really I’m avoiding by going south to Deming and then north to Silver City.

It was a very overcast day, very very cloudy. It was very cold actually. It was in the 40s. The wind chill didn’t help. It hurt my face when it managed to make it to my face. But these were at the bottom of the Mimbres Mountains, which are at the bottom of the Mogollon Mountains – the black range.

Other ones I could see were the Massacre Mountains which would’ve hidden the Interstate going west, I-10. And the ones that held my attention most of the time were the Florida Mountains. These are just south east of Deming, and they’re not unlike the Organ Mountains.

But there were all these other mountain ranges that were just dotted around. Well the Florida ones from a distance looked like, well as did many of the other ones, but they looked like mountains if you were going to draw or paint them you wouldn’t. They’re stupid, unless it’s fantasy art or science fiction with different planets. Because mountains don’t just rise up out of the ground and look spectacular and come again - but they do in New Mexico. Cook’s Peak in the canyon is 8,400 so that was quite high but there was no roads anywhere near it.

The whole road I took, which is Highway 26 from Hatch to Deming, is marked on the state map as a scenic route – and it is. It’s a pity I didn’t have particularly blue skies here because I would have taken some photographs of these mountains, and at times if you have sweeping views of the flatlands as well but they’re uncaptured. These flatlands of course are desert as ever.

A bird did run in front of me and I tried to look very quickly but I wasn’t sure if it was a Road Runner or not. It did seem to have a customary long tail and it was a great runner. It disappeared into a bush so I immediately jumped off the bike, laid it down safely well off the shoulder. And I walked over with the camera ready trying to get a photograph. It was there for ages and it just - flew out of the bush.

I came into Deming. I cycled the wrong way deliberately just to go up and check the mileage on a sign because signs didn’t seem to agree with each other. This one though did seem correct.

The road actually dips underneath the railroad and the interstate, rather than goes over it, which is more unusual. There’s a town, nice and small. A nice little downtown with a main street and a couple of streets off it.

Then I said ah what the heck I’ll check out this museum – because I’d a feeling there was something I wanted to see in Deming and I’d forgotten about it. I’d read about it a few days earlier. So I went to the museum and it’s a big, it’s an old armoury building, completed 2 months after the famous Pancho Villa raid, March the 9th 1916 at Columbus, New Mexico.

I was in the county of Luna. Hatch is in Dona Luna and then you go into, for less than a mile, you go into Sierra. The main town of Sierra, which is to the north of Dona Luna is Truth or Consequences. It’s about 40 miles up the Rio Grande from Hatch. Its original name was Hot Springs and they changed it to name it after a television or radio show or something. As a result it gets tons of attention from radio and television because of its name – and from travel writers. And that all seemed like a very good reason not to go to Truth or Consequences.

The Deming Luna Mimbres Museum has the proud distinction of being a community project operating with all volunteer personnel and public contributions and that’s what it was I’d forgotten about. It was a Mimbres museum.

Mimbres Indians, which were part of the Mogollon Indians they reckon so they’d died out before white man got here. “Nearly 1,000 years ago the Mimbres Indians, the first people known to inhabit the area lived in villages along the Mimbres river. Primitive though they were in other respects, the pictures of daily life they painted inside their pottery reflect their gifted creativity and unsurpassed skill in reproducing likenesses of animals and birds. Known through the world some beautiful examples of magnificent Mimbres pottery are on display in the museum.”

Somewhere else I read that it’s commonly referred to as black and white but it’s not always it’s frequently brown and red, and tan and – it’s two tone basically. ‘Their geometric designs are an incredible variety with no two being alike.’ It just means they can’t mass-produce them.

‘Their naturalistic drawings range from mystical figures to birds, fishes, animals, insects and human beings. Unknown of in its time outside its territory, the painted Mimbres pottery was virtually killed by being smashed or a hole punched in it at the time of burial which is placed over the head of the dead who could then look eternally into the picture.’ That’s right I saw that on a video somewhere.

‘Where did they go? It is believed they perished because of a long drought. But why was their art of pottery discontinued? Did it die with the few individuals who had conceived and mastered it or was it the work of one great artist and his or her followers?

The designs take on a completely mystifying appeal when you stop and recall that they were produced by a very primitive people who had no precision tools.’

I’m not sure about that last bit. It sounds very American to me.

In general it would’ve had lots of things that other museums have that I’m not interested in. So it had farm sections, industrial sections, it had truck wagons, it had Old West, it had things from the thirties, and things from the Victorian era, cowboy stuff.

So instead I just looked at what I wanted to look at, and it was very rewarding. The first room I went into, well the very first room actually I went into was just photographs of the area in panorama which are always great. Old ones. Had a few looks at that, and then it was into a doll room. I said do I really want to look at dolls? They had dolls from all over the world.

Virtually every country in Europe there, didn’t see any Irish ones – I saw Welsh and Scottish and English. So that was actually quite interesting for that, and particularly some of the Indian ones – the Hopi kachinas and variations on those. And I whizzed through the other half which was just doll’s houses and things that weren’t really very interesting. G.I..Joe was in there. Looks a bit like Action Man actually.

Then I went straight to the Indian section – to the Mimbres pottery. And this stuff is great. Some of it reminds you of Greek. The geometric designs are quite interesting but their representations of animals are great. They can be highly stylised and yet very, very accurate. I like them a lot.

They’re just laid out in cases and what have you. There’s no particular writing on a particular one so you just look at them and enjoy them. They also had some other Indian stuff given to them from people in the area but it was from Indians from other areas so there was a few Lakota Sioux things. There was, ah what’s his name? Is it Spotted Eagle? Yeah, I think. His war club. He was 42 at the time of the battle of the Bighorn, Little Bighorn. So although he was great leader he wasn’t too active in the fighting because he was old by warrior standards.

The kachinas were great. Representing the sun, the weather, whatever, given to kids at various ages to help them understand things. I bought 5 cards with Mimbres designs on them. So it’s the equivalent of some tacky reproductions of the Book of Kells really.

‘The Mimbreans lived in pit houses and cliff dwellings above the Mimbres River in south-western New Mexico, and their drawings depicted the animals with whom they shared their habitat and may have been tributes to their spirits.’ They may have been.

Then it was still bright when I left and I cycled down here. This is the Grand Hotel. It’s discount time so it’s 32 dollars instead of 40-something. She seems to be a bit interested in cycling. Her father cycled from country to country. This is Judy on the desk. So she put me downstairs with a queen-size bed for the cheaper price so I could bring my bike in and have plenty of room for it. She

gets to meet people because she’s single, she said.

I had a main dinner of pork and mashed potatoes, which were nice, and green beans which were nice. Refreshing, because much as I like Mexican food I hadn’t had them in a while, these things. And then she said:

-Would you like some desert?
-No thanks, actually I’d rather go backwards and have another dinner.

So I had some Mexican food then as well. I was hungry.

I’m getting annoyed with people who keep, every time I say ‘thank you’ they always fire out very rapidly ‘you’re welcome’ almost like it’s a challenge and you feel as if you should never have said ‘thank you’ in the first place. So I’m thinking of stopping it. Maybe that’s what happened to the rest of America.

Well, almost election time now. Clinton was in Las Cruces the day I left – a bit later on that day. Bob Dole is going to Alamogordo tomorrow or Tuesday. But no, tomorrow is his last day isn’t it? So he’s going there as the 2nd last place he goes to. He then actually goes back to Russell where he’s from in West Kansas. But I really can’t watch it all any more – it’s all so negative. Nobody says anything at all positive. They just constantly slag off each other. The adverts are all negative ones. Ah good luck to it

Read the Previous Entry (#67) in My Bicycle Trip Across America

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This entry was posted on Thursday, October 23rd, 2008 at 4:57 am and is filed under 1-eolai, Cycle Across America, Travel. You can follow responses via my RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.