Day 5
First stop Reserve for breakfast – much appreciated after lasts nights fast. Spent ages talking to the cafe assistant, George Barreras, regarding his history and the history of the area and were to learn that it would be our pleasure today to ride the calichie (red clay) to Pie Town. It was no problem in the dry but the route would have been impassable in even the slightest of wet. Reached Pie Town and its Pie Cafe, something of a meeting place for adventure riders and had the obligatory piece of pie. Frank had the good sense not to have a piece.

Excellent PM ride to Cuba (pronounced coo ba) through rugged outback country. Real trail ride stuff and country to die for – just the perfect cowboy movie backdrop I recall from my youth. Getting the hang of buying healthy from McDonald's courtesy of Frank. About 300 miles today and mostly off road. Of note were huge mounds of lava magma without the accompanying volcano.

Day 6

143 miles today. We started a little late because of laundry detail but the biggest reason for the short distance was that we got stuck in the Santa Fe forest. We got stuck on 2 impassable roads so had to back track and then finally a road with deep bulldust. So once again we have been forced to camp out unprepared. Last time it was emergency rations of sardines and tonight we had to share a McDonald's apple pie and a jar of peanut butter – crunchy so we aren't so badly off. Oh and a bottle of bourbon that we are sampling from the caps of our chain lube cans. We are still in New Mexico and a lot of the country side is dry, harsh sagebrush prairie but as we head further upland and towards Colorado things are starting to green up. It is still very hot despite being up at around 7,000 feet and our water bottles don't last very long. Anyway tonight is another impromptu night under the stars. Our original plan for day 6 had us almost out of Colorado so we area little behind schedule.