Day 5; Abilene, TX-Roswell, NM

This morning was actually started in the right direction.  In fact, I dont think I made a wrong turn or missed a turn anywhere along the line.  Last night a group of people decided they wanted to leave around 6 am.  Given my mechanical issues yesterday, I wanted to get a head start in front of most to make sure there was a good group of riders after me incase anything happened.  I left around 5:45 am in the dark and the temperature was about 80 degrees.  I only wore the mesh shell of my jacket because it was so warm and the ride was comfortable.  First grade science class will teach you, the higher you go in elevation the lower the termparture.  Wish I had remembered that last night when I was researching the route.  We got up to about 5000 above sea level and the temperature dropped about 30 degrees.  It was a bit on the cool side and the wind breaker liner would have been perfect.  Problem was, I packed all of my extra clothing and gear in my saddle bags and top box and gave $20 to the "Autism Speaks" charity rider to carry them in their support car.  The theory here was to cut down on weight to see if I could increase my speed at all and to take it easy on the scooter in the "hot" dessert ride I had anticipated.  As it turns out, it wasn't hot at all and I only gained about 1 MPH.  May have helped my fuel economy though. 

This route was interesting.  We went from dessert, to farm land to barren oil fields.  The roads were straight and flat.  Since I've never been in topography like this it was cool to see, but, not sure I could handle it every day.  It's pretty desolate and it smells.....like oil and cow manuer. 

So far on the CBR we have had about 5 scoots drop out due to mechanical failures in the engines or the transmissions.  We've also had 5 crashes.  4 of them were not serious and they were able to continue on their way. 1 of them ended up with a pretty broken up scooter and the rider in the hospital.  He's ok now and is riding along in a support truck with his cane. 

Tomorrows route takes us from Roswell, NM past Trinity Site where they detonated the first nuke and into Show Low, AZ.  Our elevation should get up close to 9000, and I will use todays basic science lesson tomorrow morning and bundle up. 

This blog entry was pretty boring for the most part.  I have learned thats a good thing for me as the rider trying to make it to San Diego but boring for you that are reading this.  Hang in there, I'm sure some other wacky stuff will happen along the way. 

I'll write tomorrow from Show Low!

My new and improved configuration

Scooters at the UFO Museum in Roswell

The scenery went from this......

To this......

To this......

To this! Like I said...pretty boring/interesting at the same time

They are really into the alien thing down here....