Tomorrow afternoon, at 4:45, if all goes according to plan, I will board an Amtrak train in Albuquerque, New Mexico, en route to Los Angeles, California.

I left the hostel in Santa Fe just after noon and headed southwest along I-25. My destination lay thirty miles ahead at a campground on Cochiti Lake. After my flat tire and exhaustion and thoughts of ending the whole trip, I had decided I needed to take some time off, to clear my head, and think through my decision. I chose a campground not too far from the city so that I would not spend my whole day riding and have some time to set up and cook dinner before dark, which comes just after five now. Cochiti Lake seemed ideal, being right by a lake and at a relatively low elevation.

The weather was fair, but the winds kicked up toward the end of daylight, providing a steady headwind for the last hour or so. The beginning of the ride ran on a frontage road paralleling the interstate, but that road ended due to construction, forcing me to walk my bike through some dirt onto the interstate shoulder. The last twelve miles found me on a small highway heading north. I passed through vast open country, some farmlands, and small signs of civilization, including a buffalo farm. Sometime before five I reached my destination: Lake Cochiti campground. The place was fairly quiet, with only a few RVs around. The campground is divided into two loops, an upper one containing electrical hookups, and a lower one without. I chose the lower loop, as it was four dollars cheaper and was completely unoccupied. I wanted to be alone. The site I chose seemed to be the only one optimal for hanging my hammock. Nearly all the sites have covered shelters with a picnic table, but only mine had a larger shelter with narrower, wooden support beams, ideal for tying my hammock to. The rest of the support beams were made of stone and much wider. The shelter also had four picnic tables, which may seem excessive, given that I am just one man, but I figured I could spread my stuff out and use each table for a different purpose. Since I was planning on staying two nights, I figured I might as well be comfortable.

I wasted no time setting up my hammock, as I was racing the sun. Once that task was completed, I set about scrounging for twigs to build a fire in my new tomato can wood stove. I had only tried it once before, just after I made it in Denver, and I had been eager to try it out for real and cook with it. Well, I wasn’t really cooking so much as heating up a can of chili that I picked up at a Trader Joes before leaving Santa Fe. The stove worked well for making my chili nice and hot as the setting sun took his ambient heat with him.

By the time I finished my meal, the sky had turned to black, and the quarter moon and some stars were already shining down. It was still only six, and I had no idea what to do with the rest of my time. I knew I wouldn’t be able to go to sleep for at least a few hours, but most options for activities would require a flashlight, and for some reason that did not appeal to me much. I decided to stretch and try to unwind. The stretch did wonders for mellowing me out, and I wrote a bit in my journal. Always on my mind was the decision I had come there to make. I didn’t want to forget.

Writing and walking around a bit and looking at the stars, among some other small activities, managed to pass about three hours, and I decided I was ready to go to sleep. The forecast called for a low of only about forty degrees, so I wasn’t too terribly worried about staying warm. I wore a few layers, but not all of them. Inside my bag was actually quite warm at first. Before falling asleep, I read a bit of my current book, Travels With Charley, but sleepiness came fairly quickly, and I didn’t read much. I can’t say how much time passed before I awoke the first time. The wind had picked up considerably and was whipping the rainfly on my hammock with fury. Constant cracking as the cover flapped violently in the gusts. I’m not sure how long it took me to get back to sleep. I’m also not sure how many other times I woke up in the dark, or how long I actually slept for. Every waking minute seemed an eternity as I listened to the sound of the wind, but I also seemed to be only half-conscious.

The call of nature, as well as the wind, woke me for good around seven-thirty. The sun had already established his presence in the day, but clouds obscured his direct rays. The morning seemed rather temperate, but after washing my hands in the spigot of cold water, I realized how chilly it actually was. I put my fleece and a pair of gloves on and ate a cold breakfast of oatmeal with powdered milk. After breakfast I decided to scour the area around my campsite for arrowheads. Since coming into the southwest I had been hoping to find one laying around. I have always been fascinated by Native American crafts and weapons, and I wanted to find a relic of those simple but inventive people. I searched for about a half hour, but all I found were what appear to be volcanic rock- shiny and black, almost like glass.

After my search, my hands were starting to get cold. While the wind had stopped for a bit after I awoke, the blowing had continued and kept the temperature rather cool. I decided to build a fire in my stove and cook some more breakfast. So I set about searching for twigs again and got my fire going. I heated up some grits and added a packet of instant oatmeal, as well as some powdered milk. With the gusty winds, my fire was quite ineffective for cooking, so while I managed to get the food warm, my grits were not properly cooked. I ate them anyway. My second breakfast done, I looked around the area some more for cool rocks. I had decided that I wanted to try my hands at making my own arrowhead. I thought the volcanic rock might be a good substance, but I wanted to find one that was already near in shape to the final product. The wind was blowing still, but all of a sudden I felt some moisture. Now I had felt a few drops of rain carried in on the wind the night before, but it only lasted about a minute. This seemed to be the same at first, but as I stood and felt the moisture coming down, I realized that it wasn’t actually rain but snow. Some flakes landed on my gloves and remained for a minute before disolving to water. Well, I thought that was pretty exciting- a little bit of snow out in the desert. Within a minute, however, the winds had kicked up into something fierce, and all of a sudden it was almost like I was in the middle of a blizzard. The snow was getting heavy and the winds were strong. The shelter provided no relief as the snow came in sideways and was beginning to wet my gear. The wind flapped up the rainfly on my hammock and some snow was hitting the bottom. I scrambled to get all my bags covered with my tarp. Once all my bags were covered, I stood and watched the phenomenon and laughed. What a strange sight, all this snow blowing in on the wind among the tumbleweeds and sagebrush and small pines. The snow lasted about ten minutes and left just as quickly as it had entered, leaving the picnic tables and concrete ground under my shelter completely covered in moisture. The sun came out, and I knew it would all evaporate with an hour.

With no where to sit, I decided to take a walk down to the lake and check out the view. The sun warmed things up, and the day seemed quite pleasant. That lasted for about a half hour before the winds kicked up again. They roared through, kicking up dust and offering resistance as I walked back to my site. I ate some lunch of trailmix and decided to set about making that arrowhead. With a real hard rock, I set about trying to chisel the black, glassy rock into a sharp point. In trying to make the point really sharp, however, I managed to break off the whole tip, thus making that rock no longer suitable for my endeavor. I tried another rock that was a bit thicker, and had some moderate success for a while, but in the end that one suffered a similar fate.

It was afternoon now, and the winds had picked up considerably. At some point during my walk back from the lake, I had lost my gloves; they had fallen out of my jacket pocket or I set them down on a table. I knew there was pretty much no chance of finding them. In any other situation, I could simply retrace my path and figure I would find them somewhere along the way. With the wicked wind, however, the gloves could have been a hundred yards from where I dropped them, and not even knowing where I dropped them, I figured it was hopeless. I walked around a bit anyway, and I did come across one of my handkerchiefs, which I hadn’t even realized I was missing, but I saw no sign of the gloves. I was a bit upset about that. I do have another pair, but his pair was a bit thinner and thus more ideal for activities requiring some level of finger dexterity.

I decided to take some time and relax, as I wasn’t really sure what activity to get into next. So I lay down in the road and looked up to the sky. The wind rushed over me, and I just stared at the blue sky and passing clouds. I was thinking about my impending decision, about whether to hop a train. My mind had been pretty much made up that morning, and I knew I was going to be following through with that plan, but after talking to a good friend, who happens to also be my ex-girlfriend, I was feeling a bit apprehensive about being back in southern California. Doubts began to swirl in my mind, and I wondered why I was going there, what I was going to do when I get there, and what I really wanted to be doing. I knew I was done biking, but all of a sudden I was not feeling good about going there. I had to write it all down and get my head straight, so I took out my journal and wrote a bit. That seemed to help.

The wind was still blowing fiercely and flapping my rainfly violently. I needed to find a fix for that so I would be able to sleep peacefully tonight. I made some adjustments, and instead of tying the support strings to the picnic tables, I gathered a few large, heavy rocks to tie the strings to, thereby giving me more flexibility in the angle of the cover. That seemed to help with the noise and violent flapping, but one side was pushed into the side of the hammock with major force. I decided I should try out lying in the hammock to see how this was going to work out, so I could make adjustments. Lying in the hammock, one side of the netting and the rainfly were pushed in so hard that there was no escaping them pushing up against my face. I got out and tried to make some adjustments, but there seemed to be nothing I could do to avoid that problem, save loosening up the fly and submitting it to tormenting flapping. I became frustrated.

In the meantime, the temperature had seemed to drop. My hands were beginning to go numb. Some flurries of snow had come in here and there, but nothing lasting longer than a couple seconds. I looked up to the sky, at the gray clouds on the horizon, I felt the wind blowing at a steady pace of at least ten miles an hour, probably fifteen, with gusts that must have been around thirty miles an hour. I thought about my numbing hands, the forecast low of twenty degrees for the night, the gray clouds promising more snow, and the unavoidable problem of my rainfly. In a flash of certainty, I made up my mind for the entire situation. I was going to get the hell out of there right that minute. I was going to head to Abluquerque and catch the train the next day. There was no way I was going to put up with that crap there at the campground. I wasn’t in the mood to deal with it. It was two o’clock, and a terrible time to be deciding to leave and begin a fifty mile ride, but I felt that was my only option. So I packed up my gear and loaded up my bike. This all took about a half hour, due to the incredibly difficulty of folding and rolling objects like tarps and sleeping bags with such an unrelenting wind. I loaded up my bike and took off, leaving the campground behind, looking back just once to catch a last glimpse of my site, now empty.

Heading back to the interstate, the wind fluxuated, sometimes at my rear, sometime straight at my side. It was an unstable ride, but the boosts helped. Back on the freeway, I found myself staring straight into a setting sun and a fierce headwind. Every pedal stroke was a marathon, even going downhill, but I was determined to find somewhere warm to lay my head for the night. A few exits early on offered some hope of a short day, but they proved to be just small roads leading off to small towns and pueblos, no signs of motels or hostels, no passing strangers offering rides or hospitality. I pressed on. In the end, after a few hours of riding, one of them in the dark, I finally came to the suburbs of Albuquerque and found myself a hotel. I was able to talk the guy behind the counter down ten dollars on the rate, which made me feel much better about paying for lodgings. I had arrived exhuasted and cold, and I was terribly happy to learn that the hotel has a hottub and free breakfast. I took advantage of the hottub tonight and gave myself a nice warm shower afterwards.

Now, sitting in my warm room with king-size bed, I think about what is to come next. I still feel some apprehension about being back in soCal, but I have reminded myself that the future is largely what I make of it. There is no reason why I have to get stuck in my old ways there, to find myself in the same funk I left behind six months ago. It’s funny, I began this trip four months ago thinking I would come out if with some direction, some idea of where I wanted to be and what I wanted to be doing. I have none of that now. I can think of plenty of places that are nice, plenty of reasons to be in some places, but nothing comes to me to drive me to those places. I find myself completely lacking direction. So for now, the comfort of warm and sunny southern California, among friends and ex-lovers, will have to suffice as I continue on some kind of quest to at least figure something else out. I don’t think my days of bike riding are quite over. I still have a few destinations in California that I had intended to spend some time at and which I still intend on visiting, including Joshua Tree and the Salton Sea. I also still need to make my way down to San Diego and out to Las Vegas to visit more family

So the plan for tomorrow is to ride the remaining twenty miles to downtown Albuquerque, find a bike shop so I can box up my bike, and catch the daily train out west, heading to that old familiar place to see some old familiar faces. I’m looking forward to seeing friends.