Five Things You Shouldn't Do When Camping

Well I survived the first night of camping (barely).    We had to set up our tents in a baseball field at the Santa Fe Athletic Center.

We started in the later afternoon when the sun was shining.  But here are five things you should not do when camping.

1.  Never try to set up your tent by yourself when the wind is blowing.  It was quite the time setting up and I think I should have done more than one test run in my backyard.

2.  If the ground is hard don't try to bang in your tent stakes with your hand (or foot).  I now have a shinning new set of bent tent stakes.

3.  Before you set up your tent check to see if there are any overhead street lights that might shine on you after dark.  Oops.  Should have looked.  Now we are talking the kind of overhead light they use at Fenway for night games.  It was like trying to sleep in broad daylight.

4.  Never set your tent up to a couple that just started dating and this is their first trip together.  Enough said.

5.  Don't try to camp downtown in the middle of a Mexican Fiesta.  The bands played to 12 at night and the bars must have been open until 2.

Lessons learned.

We started our trip this morning and we took group pictures down in the plaza.

We have a full crew  of about 40 people.  The group is from all over.  Australia, Canada, East Coast, West Coast etc.  Going to be hard remembering all their names.  Most are experienced riders but there are some newbies.   We had a real hard day today.  It was basically a 72 mile climb and it was hot and windy.  The new guys have really heavy bikes, loaded to the gill with stuff (big 35mm cameras, snacks, clothes, god knows what else).  Some of us just did not have the heart to tell them to dump the stuff.  I hope they make it.
One of the new guys bought cushioned underwear (never heard of these before), had bike shorts with a chamois and had one of those gel pads you put on top of your seat.  He is going to be one hurting puppy tonight.   All I could think of was Mike Driscoll heading off to Italy.

As I said we had a 72 miles.  The first 20 miles were on Inter State 25.  As it was Sunday morning the traffic was light and very few trucks.  So it wasn't that bad.  From there we jumped on the old Santa Fe Highway which I found out was at one time also Route 66

Were are staying in Las Vegas NM tonight at the local college.  We are camping behind the indoor pool and have use of the showers until 6pm.  After that they are going to open up the restrooms at the football stadium for our use.  I have no clue where we are having dinner.

Got to cut this short - got to go eat....  Not going to check for spelling mistakes.