Namesté
I was practically alone on the road today. I think I saw a total of 5 other bikes on the road -- three being ridden, two being trailored. One of the trailored bikes is a show bike built by a famous custom bike builder, Gary Woodford. It was the first bike Gary built for Discovery's "Southern Choppers." (If you're interested, see it at www.milwaukeeiron.com -- click on Photo Gallery; Bike Showcase; Lucas Oil - The Side Car Bike.)

Anyway. I put in 313 miles today from Hinton, OK, to Tucumacari, NM. It was much less windy today, so my ride through the Texas panhandle went well. Western Oklahoma blended into Texas without much of a change in scenery. But as I approached New Mexico the landscape changed: first a bit of rolling hills, then mesas. Beautiful land, although it is a bit depressing. As amazing and striking as it is, I'm so used to seeing trees, shrubs and grass that it's hard to not think that this semi-barren land is somehow wrong or incomplete. I hope I get a chance to hit some parks in NM on my way back east and take in more of the landscape. But for now I have to settle for the views from the highway.

Speaking of the weather: I got screwed (and not in a good way) and I'm probably going to end up stuck at a truck stop for a day. Yesterday the forecast for Texas called for showers tonight. The line on the map looked awful close to the NM border. My plan was to get into NM before the storms developed behind me. I was planning on camping tonight in Tucu. In the last half hour of my ride tonight the clouds steadily thickened to the point that I was sure I would be hitting rain. Screwed. I got in to Tucu and made a quick decision to use a bit more of my motel fund and skip the camping for another day. So I pay for the room, head upstairs, turn on the weather... no rain. More accurately, no rain reaching the ground. The air is so dry that the rain that was falling from the massive clouds evaporated before in reached Earth. Screwed. The new and improved forecast calls for rain tomorrow. It may or may not hold off until the afternoon, but the idgits on the box seem pretty sure it's gonna happen. Thus the truck stop. Screwed.

Finally for today, I wanted to talk about a phenomenon in the bike world. We wave to each other. Every bike that goes by. You can hold your hand straight out, point two fingers, hold it down at an angle, or do the Statue of Liberty. But everyone does it -- from a 50-year-old Harley guy with a full beard and Jack Daniels tank top to the 19-year-old in Tommy and Oakleys on a Ninja crotch-rocket. It's nice. (ATR, it's a lot like the dirt road phenomenon.) With the lack of people to wave to today, I was thinking about this wonderful tradition. It made me think of a word I learned from my former yoga instructor. "Namasté." It is an Indian (the Asian country, not native American) word that means something like "I see the divine in you." Or, "I see in you that which is pure and good." It's a sign of respect and/or love. It's similar to the Hawaiian word "aloha".

We all have issues. We all have faults, We all make mistakes. Each of us is different. Yet I recognize that which is good about you.

And so...
Namasté