Day 15 - Silver City to Hillsboro

Today's the day I had secretly been worrying about. Up to 8200'. Seems pretty high to me, but ya gotta do what ya gotta do so off we went. Pat sent us off well feed: bacon; eggs; toast; coffee and even got on his new recumbent and rode with us out of town. Very thoughtful, thanks Pat. Seems cold tho, did that temperature sign really say 40F? Must be broken.

The first 20 miles were some pretty significant rollers, followed by a pretty good climb. Not what I would have requested given the magnitude of the final climb to come. Pat told us that the climb we did out if Arizona was more difficult, maybe, maybe he was just trying to settle our nerves.

At the base of the climb we stopped in at a senior center in San Lorenzo to get out of the wind. Yup, more wind. Tail winds mostly today. Couple of nervous cross wind moments tho. The folks at the senior center let us eat our PBJs inside where it was warm.

About half way up the pass Michele and I discussed some ominous clouds that were gathering. Michele had seen them at lunch too. I waved them off as not a concern, more for my benefit I think, but did make a comment that rain or snow I was going over the pass today, no way I was turning back. I was only joking. Not half an hour later it started to snow, very lightly at first, but by the time we were at the summit it was noticeably snowing. A lot of folks made the effort to wave at us as they drove by today. Feeling sorry for us I suppose.

At that point, with 20 miles of down hill coming I was glad I had carried all of that cold weather gear. The heavy wool sweater, the winter gloves, the heavy fleece skull cap, I put it all on. Should have put on another pair of pants, cold.

It continued to snow until about half way down the mountain, but the roads were fine. I think the snow evaporated as soon as it hit the ground.

Knowing that all of the restaurants in Hillsboro would be closed before we got to our motel, Jerry had requested that sandwiches be left in our rooms. Good thinking!

Just watched a special on Harper Lee and To Kill a Mockingbird on PBS (the motel only gets one station). I should read that again.