We quickly packed up and were happy to be the first ones ready for a change.... Waving goodbye to the rest of the squad that we would be seeing later, we trundled down the road, closely followed by Jeff and Gary. They finally caught us after we turned off the road onto a gravel fire road in the trees and were stripping off our coats, having warmed up after the brisk morning. We climbed most of the morning, crossing cute little forests and winding around smaller hills before the going got tougher and we had to get off and push our bikes up a crazy steep and torn up slope. A man in a backhoe waited impatiently for me to heave myself and Poppy up the grade, sliding and stepping into deep soil all the way up. After that the road was soft and rutted before it firmed up again and we spotted what we thought was Jeff’s flip flop, purchased at the Walmart in Grants. We caught up to them at the end of the first climb and reunited Jeff with his flip flop. He happily accepted and asked if we had seen the other one. We had not.

After a snack in the surprisingly alpine-looking meadow filled with wildflowers and signs of cows, we continued on the gravel road, quickly pausing to pose with a small scrap of snow leftover from the winter. The descent was not too smooth but still doable and we were unhappy when the climbing started again. The gravel was firm and we steadily ascended the second climb, coming across Jeff and Gary at the top once again. They bid us goodluck on this notorious downhill section and bumped away, going surprisingly fast and confidently, I noted with jealousy. We ate our snacks in the shade of a pretty pine tree while Ziven called his dad and soon, too soon, I was strapping everything down tightly to prepare for this descent. The beginning filled me with fear but also some false confidence, as I was able to hang on and ride out some particularly bumpy sections filled with large rocks. The Elisa-rideable section continued for a while and we descended across flat slabs of rock and through some kind of sandy narrow-ish trails. I cannot recall anymore what the breaking point was, but the slow progress soon devolved into constant Elisa sobbing and continuous hopping on and off of Poppy as we reached sections I didn’t dare attempt. Ziven grew exasperated with me and frustrated that he couldn’t help stop my tears so he patiently waited every few hundred meters while I crawled across rock slabs, trudged through sandy sections, and walked down areas with big rocks. The afternoon became my personal hell and every time I tried to gather my composure I would get scared by something that I probably had the skills to attempt, but would regardless set off another round of sobbing and self hatred. In one particularly sandy spot we were overtaken by Will, whom we would see later that night. After this, my fear turned a bit into rage and I threw Poppy and myself up and down sections, furious that I was causing such a delay in our timeline and frustration for Ziven.

The main Polvadera Mesa ended as we turned onto a small road that led past a farm and another climb started. I stayed silent the whole time and petulantly refused to eat or drink and cause more delays. When we reached the top I finally acquiesced and guzzled down water before setting off down the gravel descent, promising to myself that I would pick up the pace and right my wrongs. While I was faster than usual, I’m not sure it made up for the hours of ridiculousness that we had just gone through, but we did catch up with Will and ride with him for a while. We were traversing more desert land at the base of the mountain we had just descended and were rushing towards Abiquiu. We lost Will when he pulled over to take some drone shots and we continued downward before stopping to dunk our shirts into a small river. We left the desert road and joined the main highway right outside of Abiquiu. Spotting a sign for ice cream, we pulled over and we each got a large coffee ice cream milkshake and ate it inside the refreshingly cool ice cream shop.

After our treat and recovering somewhat from the ordeal of that afternoon, we sat outside the shop under a Cottonwood tree that was busy releasing its seeds and snowing on us in the desert. We contacted our Warmshowers host and tried to arrange a time to go to our accommodation, unsure if we were supposed to eat beforehand or not. We decided to head to the Abiquiu Inn for some dinner and ran into Will, Jeff, and Gary waiting for their dinner. Outside we saw another biker who was very kind and even offered to let us share his room, though we declined and said we would see him on the trail. Ziven reunited Gary with the American flag that had fallen off the back of his bike and we had found partway down the Mesa. We sat at a table next to them and caught up, ordering New Mexican food and cold beverages. We talked with them and I tried to ignore my puffy eyes and probably pathetic-looking face. I was happy to learn that they had not enjoyed it much either, though they had beaten us there by quite a bit and already showered. Ziven and I ordered dessert and we heard back from our host. Bidding the other bikers goodbye, we biked quickly up to Old Abiquiui to take a picture at Georgia O’Keefe’s house, which my dad had worked on previously as a historical preservation structural engineer. We then followed the instructions given to us by our host to his lovely house beside a huge rock formation. While biking to the house, Ziven blew a snot rocket that resulted in a massive bloody nose with red syrup pouring out of both nostrils. We made a quick stop to address it and then carried on. We quickly found the house and he showed us around the annex where we would be sleeping, complete with bed, antechamber for the bikes, small bathroom, and kitchen sink. We took turns at taking showers and quickly collapsed into bed, exhausted by the heat and the drama of the day.