Welcome to New Mexico!

After deciding not to go to OLD Mexico, I decided to head to New Mexico instead. However, Texas is REALLY, REALLY big, so I didn't quite make it there in one day. I probably could have, but since I've got extra time to kill now (since I'm not heading south of what's left of the Rio Grande), why rush?

I spent the night in Fort Stockton, Texas, which is best described as uneventful. The next day, however, I made a break for New Mexico and made it through the nearly unending, hellishly hot land of strip malls called El Paso early in the day. I decided that I'd stop in Las Cruces, New Mexico for the night so I could go see the White Sands National Monument, which is supposed to be really cool ("270 square miles of white gypsum sand, unlike anywhere else in the world" said the tourist info). Once I got to Las Cruces, however, things started to go awry.

First, the ENTIRE town is under construction, from I-10 to the sidestreets to many of the buildings I saw. Because of this, you can't use half of the exits in town, and many of the streets have weird detours and the like. Anyway, I finally found the crappy motel I had a coupon for after much to-do (we motorbloggers have to cut corners somewhere, since we can't cut back on necessities like memory cards and internet access - how else would we keep YOU satisfied?), and they said they had only one room left for the ungodly sum of $99 (what, did Trump buy up everything here, too?). I guess that there was some sort of intercollegiate event going on in town, since all the hotels/motels I stopped at had motorcoaches or schoolbuses parked outside and everyone had jacked up their prices.

Next, in the process of going from one place to another (a process that took nearly as long as it had to GET there), my riding pants just gave in. The combination of my 30" inseam and a 32.3" seat height finally got the best of them, and the resulting seam capitulation made them embarrassing to wear further. I finally got the hint and decided to skeddadle out of town before anything else went wrong. After all my time on the road over the years, I've learned that sometimes you just need to cut your losses and get the hell out of town - so I did, pronto.

I arrived in Deming, New Mexico an hour or so later, and found a motel that had no problem admitting a dirty, smelly biker whose naughty bits were nearly hanging out. It was funny, actually - the woman behind the counter quoted me a price, and I just stared at her. She then quoted a lower price, and I just continued to stare without blinking. She then lowered the price AGAIN, and I just kept staring (I knew the price was still about $10 more than other places in town from their signs). Finally, she dropped her price to about what everyone else was charging and said that was as low as she could go. I checked in after that, but I have to wonder what would have happened if I'd just stood there for another minute without blinking or saying anything... she probably would have had me reported as a psycho biker flasher on the loose in town!