Day 82 - Lordsburg, New Mexico
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Day 82 and the most stressful part about this stretch is worrying that I'll get stopped and told I can't be on the interstate. It was another 40 miles with minimal elevation gain, just a little bit of hills throughout. I went back and forth between the service roads and the actual interstate. The service roads have been pretty rough this whole trip, much less maintained than the smooth shoulders of the highway. Despite vehicles going 70 and 80 mph and faster, I feel safe on the interstate. Just been trying not to risk being on there all day, so I don't have to reroute or back track if law enforcement decides to give me trouble. I feel like I stressed a lot about something that was just an issue in my head, and looking back, I could have made the trip so much quicker and a lot more easily, had I just pushed on the buttery highway shoulder more often. There was one point in the day that the frontage roads were so terrible that I had to crawl underneath a barbed wire fence to get back to the interstate. I guess it makes sense to have the cattle guards up in case any animals want to run across the highway, they can't. Looks like I'm the only animal on the interstate today. I skated towards traffic most of today's push. It depends on the mood and the roads as to which side I choose. One of the worst pains I had on the road was my neck hurting from turning back to make sure cars aren't about to run me over. It was such a sharp pinch that was giving me issues- to the point that I gave up looking back. I was strictly relying on faith to not get mowed down. Not wanting the stress of impending doom by death from behind, I stayed on the other side. Thinking that I had nowhere to stop for food or hydration, I left with over 5 liters of water. That is an added 11 pounds to my pack, and it's tough to deal with. Some of these long stretch days had me drinking water even when I wasn't thirsty, just to make my bag lighter! I had a couple times on the skate across the country that I was running out of water in the desert, so I figured I'd rather have a heavy backpack- than to die of dehydration. I got some good photos of the scenery around me while skating down the interstate. I wanted to make it to a hotel for the night, so I just kept pushing and painted from a photo reference. It was nice to have a shower and a bed again!
