Day 3

Last night there was a lot of Rain and a strong lightning storm that carried on for a couple of hours. But this morning it was mostly clear and dry!

Day started out with perfect riding weather, mid 70's. Texas is a huge state, for the most part there is not much traffic and we're ready for another day of eating up some miles to get to San Diego.





Soon after starting out the speed limit bumped up to 80 MPH....





....I had enjoyed the jump to 75 MPH yesterday, and am liking the jump to 80 mph even more today.
Cruise control on 80, smooth road, good running ride, enjoying the ride with Mary. One of those "if I have to explain it, you wouldn't understand" moments.





I know there are some riding great roads in Texas, but hours yesterday, and many more hours today, of straight, flat roads can make even the slightest elevation change, or curve, interesting. :




At some point we went from the 20 to the 10, then soon after we hit a little traffic going thru El Paso....





....what was most interesting, from the interstate, on the west side of El Paso, we were able to see the US/Mexico border Fence, and the City of Juarez in Mexico.




Mary has the stock passenger floorboards and the Kury Adjustable pegs, this gives her a lot of foot positions, but sometimes she puts her feet up on my legs to stretch out even more. In this pic I am holding her pant leg open to get a little cool air flowing (it had warmed up to the high 80's). Little did we know what was coming. lol




We hit the New Mexico State Line....




.... almost immediately we were riding into a strong headwind..maybe 30-40 mph. I kept it at 80-85 mph, bike was handling it fine, but the MPG plummeted down to around 22.

I changed my slip-on end caps the day before leaving. It is amazing how much difference there can be in power and efficiency with seemingly small changes in exhaust flow. I have ridden in similar conditions before with different end caps and matching TTI's and still maintained close to 30 MPG. I definitely should have tested these out before leaving...but knowing that I might want to change back, we had shipped the proven (and better) end caps and TTI's to Marys' moms' house in Idaho. I'll be going back to the proven set-up when we get there.

Anyway, so the headwind was pretty strong, that's ok. Mary got a picture of this metal sculptured bird soon after crossing the State line.




Soon after that we were getting gusts so strong, at first I thought something was the matter with the brakes...nope, the gusts were just so strong that it felt like someone was hitting the brakes.

Then the wind was jumping between a pure headwind and gusting crosswinds. We rode thru a pretty good dust/sand storm, dodged a couple of 8 foot 2x4's that got lifted out of the back of a pick up truck like tooth-picks.

Mary got no pics during this time. She had the camera out of the dust/sand and was hunkered down behind me. (she really does not like sandstorms or really strong crosswinds to terribly much)

This was the last pic she got of the New Mexico landscape before we called it a day at 475 miles in Deming, New Mexico.