Week 3, Sunday and Monday, July 7-8. Shiprock, NM

Hey, everyone!  I’m writing this from an open green field at The Wines of San Juan in Turley, New Mexico.  We were not scheduled to be here, but they rerouted us for three days due to the recent fires in Colorado.  The roads we would have traveled are open to vehicle traffic but the air quality is too poor for us to be biking there.  Our ride today was short—55 miles—but we stopped quite a bit and got to camp around 12:30.  This place is in a lovely valley near the San Juan River and is owned and operated by a former dairyman from Wisconsin.  He gave free tours this afternoon where he explained the wine-making process (and offered free tasting, of course).  We are still using port-a-potties, but they rigged up some pretty inventive outdoor showers using shower heads on the ends of garden hoses inside a white canopy tent with separated “walls”.  The water warmed up nicely in the hose, so we didn’t have cold showers!

 

We were up at 4:15 and ready to leave camp at sunup this morning at about 6:00 a.m.  This was the scenery behind us as we left Shiprock.

 

We took a detour through Farmington in hopes of finding a bike shop open, but they didn’t open until 10:00.  We also stopped at a museum called Salmon Ruins, which had artifacts from Native American Ruins.  We also stopped at an Ace Hardware store to look for a screw for Rudy’s bike seat.  He noticed Saturday afternoon at one of our stops that his seat was wobbly.  His investigation showed that one of the two screws that holds his seat onto the frame had fallen out and the other one was lose.  Uh.  Oh-oh.  We tightened up the remaining screw and made it to the end of the century ride just fine.   We couldn’t fine a replacement in Shiprock over the weekend, so we were glad to find the exact screw—diameter, length, thread length and allen-wrench top—at the store this morning. 

All those stops made for slow progress, but we got here!

I’ll make a few comments about our stay at Bethel Christian Reformed Church yesterday.  Shiprock is on the Navajo Reservation, and most of the church members are Navajo.  The pastor has been there for 17 years and is Caucasian.  When he told us what to expect from our stay and the worship service, he said that the morning service started at 10-ish.  Sounds like another church I know of. J   He also told us to expect the service to last an hour and 45 minutes.  They love to sing!  Many of the church members formed a choir to sing for us.  In the evening service, Sea to Sea people read various scripture passages and we sang most of the songs in Navajo.  I was secretly hoping we would sing “Jesus Loves Me” in Navajo because I learned this song in 3^rd grade from Miss Van Engen, who had taught in Rehoboth prior to Ireton Christian School.  And what do you know, but we did get to sing that song and I knew all the words!  What an enjoyable flash from the past! 

Before the evening service started, I asked the lady sitting near me where the nearest store was to buy some chapstick and camera batteries.  She told me which direction to go from the church, and I asked, “Can I walk there?”  She replied, “No, IT’S TOO HOT!”  She offered to bring me to the store.  I was so grateful for her generosity.  I then had a chance to talk to her a little bit.  She is a grandma whose daughter and three children have moved in to live with her and her husband because the daughter couldn’t afford her apartment rent.  I asked if her grandchildren were learning the Navajo language and she said, sadly, that they were not.  It’s a hard language to learn.  She said that some of her own kids could speak it, but others could only understand it but not speak it themselves.  It’s the same thing that seems to happen with most immigrant families. 

We have a couple tough days coming up tomorrow and Wednesday with more miles, mountain passes, and warm (hot) temperatures.  We’ll try to get an early start again. 

It’s quite obvious that most of our ride this morning was off the Reservation.  There were more stores, more irrigation, and the general appearance of a higher standard of living.  It struck me that the past several days we could have called our tour:  Sea to Sea—Cycling to See Poverty.