Day 27: Pie Town

I didn’t get very far, but the day was all work work work. Mostly not very interesting stuff, but there were a couple of highlights.

I was the second person up in the Toaster House. Moving Average had already hiked out by the time I realized I couldn’t sleep in any longer. I had been up quite a bit later than usual and wanted another hour maybe, but my eyes saw the sunlight and told the rest of me to get up.

So I made a big pot of coffee for everyone. I took some, went to the bathroom, and came back for some more. Banshee had come down to get some as well. Jefferson, the permanent resident and house sitter of sorts, also got up for some. Hawkeye did not appear.

The RV Park next door would allow hikers to sit in their public area from 7 to 7, and that was where the best cell reception was found, so I went over there next and started the long and laborious process of uploading media for this blog from the entire previous week of hiking. I don’t want to get into all the technical issues and annoyances on a hiking blog, but the biggest one was having to come down to the RV park to do the work.

Hawkeye came to join me a few minutes later to call home. He was arranging for his wife to come pick him up and take him to an actual medical professional to find out the reason for his GI issues. He would tell me later at breakfast that he didn’t think it was Giardiasis anymore. He had had that twice, and this malady was affecting him very differently.

After 8:30, I went to the post office to get my resupply box. I passed Hawkeye headed to the cafe on my way back. I told him I’d join him in a minute. I dropped off the box, asked Jefferson about borrowing his bike, and walked over to Pie Town Pies.

It was a very interesting and unique cafe. There was a limited but high quality selection of reasonably priced short order items, half of which were breakfast. But it wasn’t like a typical diner. The food could take as much as an hour to come. Mine didn’t, thankfully, but it was close to half an hour. They keep true to their promise to make your order fast, no matter how long it takes.

Why? Because half their staff was given over to the pie making operation in the other, much larger, kitchen. It seemed like they must be cranking out a hundred pies a day of a dozen different types, and selling completely out every day. They go through so much Blue Bird flour that the curtains are sewn from the empty bags.

I quite enjoyed nearly two glasses of orange juice while waiting on my eggs and bacon, while Hawkeye carefully sipped at his then gave me half. Likewise, as much as he wanted to guzzle down water, he take small careful sips. He asked for a smaller portion breakfast and gave me half his potatoes and bacon. (He did not share the best part of the breakfast though, and this is something we both agreed on: the “Miracle” toast. I could eat bread like that for every breakfast. Thick enough to make the perfect sponge for every last drop of yolk from my over easy eggs.

By the time we left there, Hawkeye said he was actually feeling almost normal. He did end up going to the bathroom once we got back though.

Also, when we got back, Banshee was ready to hike out. He got his picture for Nita’s memory book and hiked down to the RV park with me to make one last call. I got another set of things uploading and he walked out of town.

I got to another stopping point, annoyed by the sun, and went back to unpack my resupply box. Hawkeye was writing a story in the house guest book while I did this. He interrupted my packing to ask me how to spell “throat.” I interrupted him to get him to help me pour my breakfast powder into its bag. He also gave me a handful of snack bars when I noticed my resupply did not contain enough and the pantry had none. Thanks Hawkeye.

Once I was done packing the food, I was ready to do laundry. I got my phone doing some uploads and left it plugged in on the stoop where it could just barely see cell service. Then I went to get Jefferson… but he was sound asleep in his room. But he had left his keys in his door, so I snagged them to unlock his bike, and off I went. I didn’t see Hawkeye again.

The three mile bike ride to the Top of the World General Store and Laundromat was a breeze. The highway was almost all downhill to it.

While there doing my laundry, I bought a handful of things from the store as well, including some razors, which I availed myself of to shave immediately, and some root beers, two to drink then and four to put in the Toaster House fridge as replacement for the sodas I had taken from it to drink at supper.

Just as my washer was finishing up, with a literal building shaking rumble thanks to a balance issue during the last spin cycle that the store refused to actually fix, a couple came in with a beautiful and curious Great Pyrenees puppy who took quite a liking to me instantly. Also, they were great folks to talk to about life in the area (and puppies).

The ride back from the laundromat was exhausting. All uphill and upwind. And since I couldn’t raise the bike seat, all the work was on my quads. And there were some derailleur alignment issues that made it difficult to impossible to select certain gears. And yet it was still much faster than walking.

Jefferson was still napping when I got back, so I basically had the house to myself. But I didn’t really need it. Everything was done except for internet chores. Calling home and elsewhere, sending emails, scheduling enough more blog posts to cover the days until Grants. All of which meant spending more time sitting on a bench in the RV park. I ran out of energy after the phone call portion of these chores and went back to the house to get some lunch. A small cheese pizza and a Hot Pocket.

Jefferson got up and gave me the keys for the bike lock and then said never mind leave it unlocked. He said tell him when I was ready to leave and went back to his room. I ate and returned to the RV Park. While I finished up, both a dog and a cat came up to me to beg for pets, the cat quite loudly so. It was basically 6PM by the time I had gotten everything uploaded and posted and could therefore free up 2 gigs on my phone for photos and videos on the next segment.

So I went back to the house, put the last few items in my pack, and got Jefferson up to come take my departure photo. Then I began the long walk down a dusty road.

There were plenty of clouds for shade as I set off into the evening. They kept raining on me. Some of that rain came with storm winds. But I didn’t mind. It wasn’t an intense soaking rain, just an intermittent drizzle. The rabbits and the deer wandering the roadside didn’t mind it either, continuing their evening business.

There were a few cars, but less than one every ten minutes, and the road wasn’t paved, so I didn’t mind it much, though I suspected it would be miserable in the middle of the day–which I would have to deal with the next day.

When the sun went down, the rain suddenly felt a lot colder than before. Maybe the wind was harder or the drops were bigger. Either way, I scrambled to put my Packa on and wore it for the remainder of the evening’s hike, even after the rain sputtered out.

I walked on the road until the end of civil twilight, well past 9pm, then swung up behind a row of trees lining the road. I was probably far enough from the road to be on private property, but it was dark and I would be gone without a trace in the morning, so who could care?

As I was getting my tent set up, I watched a tiny mouse run up and climb the tree next to my tent. I was a bit worried it would come poking around my pack in the night, but I never saw any evidence of tampering in the morning.

The rain briefly started to come back while I was inflating my mattress (this time with the tent flap closed to minimize insect incursions). I rushed to through everything inside and get out all tucked away, but it ended up being only a light sprinkle. There was a slightly heavier rain around midnight accompanied by some powerful winds shaking my tent flaps and some distant thunder, but it was only a pleasant sound to once I was high and dry in my tent.

I wonder if New Mexico might not have already been on its way out of the dry season? As I was to leave the state in a week, I was looking forward to not sticking around when the storms got really going in earnest.

Trail miles: 7.2

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