Funk-less riding is definitely superior to its opposite alternative! Since that early morning therapy secession outside my room in Van Horn, TX, this ride has been near perfect. Funny, we had reached a time when I was going to abort the whole thing and return to that sinister recliner waiting to seduce me into plopping down and napping my life away. But, a change in attitude changed everything…

How does that happen? I mean, are our emotions and moods that easy to alter? Can we simply will ourselves to shape up and presto… we do? Can someone instruct us or cajole us into feeling differently? I don’t think so, but we and they do try anyway, don’t we…? Well, it’s all academic now… The fog has lifted!

I’m not a fan at all of driving through El Paso, so an alternate was sought once again… There really aren’t any, but I decided to ride north to US 180 then west to that dreaded obstacle on the Rio Grande, thereby avoiding much of I-10 plus the gauntlet run through the middle of that always bustling metropolis. It was cold… Thanks again SmokinJoe and the Wild Bunch for convincing me to purchase those Gerbings! I had them on full-bore that morning!

Anyway, I found my way through the western edge of that urban jungle and onto I-10 towards Las Cruces. I did stop just before the New Mexico state line for some breakfast and a fill-up for ALI.  Yep, we were both on reserve by then! It was still cool when we returned to the trek, but the Gerbings were on a lower setting after that stop… still necessary, though…

We made it to Deming, NM, where I was planning to spend the night and see what might come next. We stopped at the same motel I’ve stayed in several times over the years… partly because the rooms are comfortable, and partly because this facility has a restaurant and lounge on site… The Lazy Lizard…

I got a room convenient to the celebration of life facilities, settled in, and prepped for things to come… I made my entry into the Lizard’s lair, and things began to happen right away. I hadn’t been seated long before the nice lady seated next to me handed me a fist full of quarters and instructed me to play the jukebox… I did. I played several of my favorite C&W tunes, figuring I’d either come off as a hero or break her from asking me to do that again… It was the former…

Next thing you know, she had me twirling her around and belly-rubbing right there in the space between our chairs and the Rock-O-La… Who’d a thunk it? She is a meat inspector for the USDA, and she was in Deming on business… She’d also chosen this motel for the same reasons I had… I was afraid to ask her how I graded out… Pretty sure it wouldn’t have been ‘Grade A Prime’… more likely ‘aged, near expiration’! I didn’t ask.

The night wore on and I wore out… I remember getting up several times during the night reliving another similar night back in Winnie, TX, after an evening at AL-Ts a year or two ago… Déjà vu all over again! I’m seriously considering changing my brand of brew… I’m starting to suspect they’re using sub-standard hops or something…

The next morning the wind was howling, the ‘Feels Like’ temp outside was in the teens, and my headbone had a ‘Feels Like’ reading of ‘let’s stay here another night’! Well, OK…

By evening, I was starting to feel much better, and I was smarting a mite at having been whopped by that ol’ Lizard, so… I decided to just have another go of it and see if I could get it right this time… Same thing happened that night, only a different gal this time, but the result was definitely the same! I hope this isn’t becoming a pattern…

I gave up and headed south towards the border, then turned west paralleling the line separating the two adjacent nations all the way to Douglas, AZ. Nothing grabbed me as we cruised through town, so we continued on to Bisbee, thinking that might be our stop place… Nope, kept on going and wound up in Sierra Vista. Spent two nights there, because I had a couple of chores needing attention… I needed a haircut, I needed to do laundry, and there was one other thing…

I was going to do that one other thing last, but it turned out to be more convenient to actually do it first… so I did. Now, if you ain’t sitting down, you need to be… I took ALI to a car wash… and I gave her a good cleaning! After the trek from Florida to central Texas, we’d managed to get her looking like few have ever seen her… Even I was starting to not like having her look so… well… road weary…

The other two chores occupied the remainder of the afternoon, then it was time to check in on our board and see what was happening in the Valk world… Meathead and I made contact, so appears we’ll be hooking up sometime or other for lunch and whatever… That’ll be a good thing…

We left that place and headed down to Nogales, riding a delightful road… well… for the most part. A bit rough in spots, and there was some road work being done on one stretch that produced a delay… Still, the scenery was quite nice, and I was in a funk-less state of mind… hard to beat a deal like that!

Now about that delay… Signs gave ample warning well in advance, so no surprise when the car in front of me had its brake lights come on. A half a dozen vehicles were stopped ahead of him. Sensing this might take a while, I turned ALI off, sat back, and took in the view.

After about fifteen minutes or so, a pilot truck led vehicles coming from the other direction, and he turned off in front of our line, like I’ve seen them do all over the country. This time was a little different, however…

Instead of pulling in front of our lead car and leading us through the fur-ball next… He pulled onto a side road and drove several yards to a port-a-potty. He got out, in no hurry whatsoever, bent down and looked at his tires, then moseyed over to the John and went inside… I suspected it wasn’t an elevated pooperosity issue or he’d have been moving faster and more deliberately… shouldn’t take long, I figured. Our line of cars waited… it did take a while…

Finally, he emerged, walked back to his truck, looked at the tires again, then got in and led us through the construction site… I say construction site and not construction work, because while there were many ‘workers’ present, only a few were actually working… Oh well… government job, right?

I’d been this route before, but it had been a dozen years or more, so it was almost like riding it for the first time. Familiar, but not completely… nothing routine about it, anyway… My spirits were soaring, and even our pilot had not managed to put a dent in my funk-less state of mind!