Halloween

Construction, grooved hwy, traffic and smelly cows made getting out of El Paso suck.  I had to go through a iimmigration checkpoint (not at the border).  The check consisted of them asking me if I was a citizen, I say yes, they say okay go.  There was also a cracked out dog sniffing for drugs and multiple very impressive arrays of cameras and camera like objects.  Really that dog was nuts - I think he gets to eat some of the cocaine that he finds.

I finally took the visor off my helmet: less drag, and noise.  But by the afternoon I was missing the shade.  Instead of putting it back on I choose to take a little nap on a wonderfully cool concrete table at the rest stop.  I was reminded by a sign at the stop that there are poisonous snakes and scorpions about ... spiders too I bet.  Not the best thoughts as I try to take a snooze.

I was bored on the ride so was watching the miles per gallon readout on my bike as I pulled up next to the big rigs or when I was behind them.  There seems to be a little bit of a shock wave that extends out next to the trucks that helps my mpg.  Behind the trucks is no fun because there is some serious buffeting from the left and right that make it really uncomfortable.  There was one truck, the magic truck where the experience was completely different.

After my nap I was merging back onto the road and I noticed this pocket of dead calm behind a truck hauling a chunk of a skyscrapper crane base.  It was tall and the openness of the tubes seemed to prevent buffeting - in fact it was eary how quiet it was in that pocket.  Oh, not only was it quiet and calm but I was getting a 50% gain in mpg.  The mpg boost, quiet, and the puzzle of how it worked kept me attached to the truck like a pilot fish to a shark for a while, until I decided that I wanted to get out of sun sooner vs saving the gas.

I'm too tired to find there words to do it justice but there was a sunset by Red Rock - golden and stretching all the way to the east, the super high clouds created by jets and then blown apart to look like a school of fish