Day 10. Las Vegas to Tucumcari, NM, 109 miles. Today's ride was absolutely beautiful! If you count the turn we made leaving our hotel in Las Vegas, we made a total of 3 turns all day to get into our hotel in Tucumcari! We entered Route 104 a mile from the hotel in Las Vegas and followed it all the way to our accommodation at the Best Western. Add New Mexico Route 104 to your bucket list of roads you MUST travel. The route was a steady decent from about 6500 feet to around 4000, but also had a couple of climbs that lasted 2-3 miles. Yet again, those westerly winds were a godsend, gusting to 20-30 mph by the end of our ride. Since the road snaked both west and south, we experienced cross the strongest crosswinds yet, but I think our riders did a nice job dealing with this new experience. I'm still recovering from the food poisoning, but I'm definitely making progress. I've stuck to a bland diet and mostly clear liquids, but for about 2/3s of today's ride, my stomach still was feeling queasy. As Arlene explained, the standard protocol for this recovery does not include riding consecutive 100+ mile days on a bike. Thanks for the encouragement and prayers out there! Today I rode with Peter, Martin and Jonielle. Since I was feeling about a "quart low," I hung on to these troopers as we climbed out of Las Vegas for several miles. After pedaling about 20 miles, we had reached the edge of the mesa and turned more easterly to get the benefit of a tailwind and some classic downhill riding that wound around the edges of land mass we just departed. And in the distance were huge mountains and painted desert that reminded me of all those westerns I used to watch on Saturday afternoon a looooong time ago. One of today's highlights was our arrival at the 1000 mile point (see photo below). We also saw two HUGE (dead) snakes, and taught most of the riders of the perils of "goatheads." Goatheads are about as big as a pea but a hard kernal surrounded by stickers. These things are every bit as dangerous to your tires as the steel wires on the side of an interstate. At our lunch stop today, one of the riders laid his bike down next to mine and his front tire had about 10 goatheads attached to his front tire. When he tried to pull them off, his tire went flat. From the lunch

break on in, I felt stronger and more normal, pulling my team most of the time as the road continued to bend toward Tucumcari. We arrived at the hotel around 2:15 pm, 2-4 hours earlier than yesterday. This extra rest is huge as we begin the second week on the bike. Tomorrow we have our first "sub" 100 mile day (97 miles) as we leave NM and head toward Dalhart, Texas (back to Central Dalight Time!). Thanks for following yet again and supporting the CAC kids. Check out our progress at cacesl.org (thanks and thanks again!). Stay healthy, Steve