We are New Mexicans!

We finally arrived! Actually it's been a week now; a week filled with unpacking and figuring out where everything is in town. We did the drive in one long long day, but I managed to entertain myself with talking on the phone and, once in west Texas, looking for and trying to avoid smashing tarantulas on the road. Exciting! Thankfully we have not seen any of the monsters in our neighborhood.

A lot of work on the house was needed and we've done a pretty good job, if I do say so myself. Two bathroom floors have been redone (vinyl tiled), three rooms have been painted, and LOTS of unpacking has been accomplished.

Between all that we've gotten in some running, a couple of rides, and a swim. We are at ~4300ft of elevation, and given the equation for the amount of oxygen in the air, P = P₀ exp(-M g z / RT), means we were breathing HARD the first few days. Really just walking up and down the stairs and moving boxes was enough for an aerobic workout. But we had to explore on foot, so we ran here:

No, not up in the mountains; that we saved for our ride. We drove up to 8800ft to begin our ride on Saturday. Below was our ride elevation, the first half of which took less than an hour; the second half took well over an hour.

We gained 2800ft in those 20 miles. It definitely wasn't steep, but it kept going and going. The fun part about going up the hill was definitely the seven cattle gaps we had to cross with our bikes and cleats on our shoes. I was cursing the farmers that couldn't just fence in their $%&!# cows! It's hard to get momentum back again when you have to stop, dismount, try not to break your ankle, get back on going uphill, etc, every quarter mile. I think we can find a route that goes up from our starting point instead of down for next time. That way we get the hard part over with early on.

Not sure what the hawks are after... this was the downhill part of the ride, so we weren't looking too bad!

After the ride we put on our running shoes for our brick, which consisted of a couple of miles of hiking on the nearby trails. It was cool up there and beautiful. I'm definitely coming back to run and mountain bike here. Supposedly there are miles and miles of Rim Trail around those mountains in the picture above. I can't wait to find them.

The weather has definitely been different from home. The first day we were here it was cold and wet, no kidding. It was in the 70s all day and rained 2 inches. It's "monsoon season." And the locals are dying in the humidity. Luckily when it gets hotter, it gets drier. Like this afternoon it's around 100F but 20% humidity, so when you start dripping with sweat, you just go stand in the shade a few minutes. It's 15 degrees cooler in the shade! We have this crazy humid air conditioning system that makes everything sticky inside, which isn't pleasant when it's raining, but it's supposed to feel great when it dries up outside.

We went to the AF base pool for a swim the other day. They have an indoor 25 yd pool for lap swimming that is to be closed for 10 days or so. Because of that we got to swim in the 50 meter outdoor pool on Friday. It was fantastic. But it just hurts that they don't have regular lap swimming hours!

We've signed up for a little (hilly) sprint on Saturday. Look, I'm back to racing already! I knew it wouldn't take long.