Winter is closing in. I can feel it. The air is super crisp and bites hard at the ears and nose. We’ve been cycling every day with long rides on weekends. We’ve been wanting to go bikepacking just one time before winter descends and we lose all opportunity until next spring. So we decided on a spontaneous week long trip to New Mexico bikepack a loop in the desert over the Thanksgiving holiday.
My new bike is rad, but I still prefer my vintage 1991 Trek 970 ^. There’s just something great about it.
We knew when we moved here that we wanted to get some junker bikes to ride around on. Just something simple, nothing pretentious. It was surprisingly difficult finding something decent that wasn’t hundreds of dollars or completely rusted out. The local police auction was promising, but the bikes went fast and split decisions were made… That didn’t work out. Against every fiber of my being, I gave up my soul to the devil and registered a Facebook account to be able to access the marketplace. This led us to a late night drive into Fort Collins at the urging of a seller, and we bought a couple of bikes at deep discount out in front of a storage unit at midnight. It felt a little like a clandestine drug deal (but I did confirm the bikes were not reported as stolen). Now we have way nicer bikes than we ever planned for.