Hi this is Felix Wong calling from Mimbres, NM at 11:25. I’m here a lot later than planned or expected, but quite frankly I’m happy to be here at all. There have been many times during this race when I thought that there is no way this race could have gotten any more difficult, any more traumatizing, but let me tell you the last 24 hours starting roughly half an hour after my last message have been incredibly difficult. First it started pouring like I’ve never seen before. For 15 minutes, I stood under a tree waiting it out. I still got drenched to the bone. Even though the rain petered off to reasonable levels, it rained for the rest of the day all the way until I finally called it a night. But the trail got very muddy. There were sections where I was pushing my bike. Had so much mud accumulated on my tires that the wheels would not turn. I’ve been through that before in the Tetons, I think, but this seemed to be worse since there was a much longer way to go and higher trail was wet. I was so far away from Mimbres, my next supply point. During those unrideable sections, I even resorted to picking up my bike and trying to carry it weighted down by mud on my shoes and the bike itself. There were moments when it took me 3 minutes to go 10 feet. That’s how difficult it was. I really wanted to get to Mimbres or very optimistically, Silver City, last night, where I had spare tubes waiting for me. Speaking of spare tubes, shortly after it started raining, I did get another flat. Since I was out of CO2 cartridges.
(recorder time: 2008-07-09 12:30:22 EST) Read more »
