I was feeling pretty done with this whole trip when I started the day's ride. The novelty of biking through miles of nothing has begun to wear off, and the previous cold and sleepless night had me pining the small comforts of home: my coffeemaker, my pillow-top mattress, and my purple velvet winter drapes (yes, I admit I'm Martha Stewart enough to have different drapes for different seasons). I feel like I've gotten everything I came out here for: I've met wonderful people, seen some amazing places, had all kinds of fun and adventure, and on top of all that, gained exciting new levels of fitness. Now I'm eager to go home and get back to real life.

Furthermore, when I went to cook my oatmeal that morning, I experienced the failure of a mission-critical piece of gear. The so-called "telespoon," a plastic spork with a telescoping handle that came with my cooking set, snapped in two. I texted my brother to let him know.

Me: Thad, we have a tragedy. Broken telespoon! I don't know what to do. I'm panicking.
Thad: Stay cool. Do NOT try to reach directly into the pot. It could be hot. Do they have 911 in New Mexico? I'd try that.
Thad: Can you put a splint on it? You will lose the telescopability, which, yes, is important, but desperate times are desperate.
Me: I've got some duct tape. But won't that get all gluey in the hot water?
Thad: Only put the tape above the water line!
Me: I'm gonna go for a bike ride and try to get my mind off it. I'll try the duct tape, or maybe. . . sniff. . . pick up a regular spoon.
Thad: Bite your tongue about a regular spoon! Snap out of it, sister. There's still hope. You're talking crazy now.

Later. . .

Thad: OK, help is on the way. I just spoke to a man with a crop duster plane. I'm having him drop 460 telespoons over your location with little teleparachutes tied to them. So don't get nervous if you see what looks like a herd of locusts. It's just spoons.

This cheered me up.

I am running out of ways to describe how sparse it is out here, so I decided to take a representative photo to sum up my ride to Roswell. If you want to know what my day was like, think of a town about 65 miles away. Now imagine riding a bike there, and this photo is your view the whole way. Sure, the exact ratio of grass to shrubs to cactus fluctuates a little, but this is basically it.

I had one blessed respite from the tedium of wind-blown grass along the way. I'd noticed on Google Maps a town called Caprock about 25 miles from Tatum, and sure enough as I approached I started seeing cheerful red and yellow signs, each promising some new offering of the Caprock Country Store. Gifts. Art & Antiques. Greenhouse. Breakfast & Lunch.

As it turned out, or at least as far as I could tell, the Caprock Country Store and the house where its owners live were the only things in Caprock. Well, that was just fine by me, assuming there really was breakfast to be had as the sign promised.

I walked in the door and was greeted by two young ladies, I'd guess ages 9 and 11 or thereabouts, who welcomed me to the Caprock Country Store and told me I could sit anywhere. Of the 3 tables, I picked the one that wasn't already occupied, one by their grandfather who runs the store, and the other by their father. I learned that the girls, Melanie and Lindsey, were visiting for the weekend with their parents for an early Thanksgiving celebration, and were either voluntarily trying their hand at waiting tables or being used as a source of cheap labor.

They did a wonderful job bringing me bacon, scrambled eggs, and biscuits with homemade preserves and keeping me company. Melanie is an ice skater, and Lindsey was into horseback riding but these days is getting more involved with theater. They told me all about their stray dog they took in who has been perfectly nice for months, but lately started inexpicably biting people. They were very impressed with my bike ride, and asked the kind of questions that adults either don't think of or are too reserved to ask. "Yes, I have toilet paper with me," I assured them.

As I was eating, a couple cars containing 5 adults and a couple kids came in, got ice cream bars, used restrooms, and shopped around in the gift shop. One of the women tearfully explained that she and her brother had just found out a couple weeks ago about their other brother who had been adopted by a different family. They were reunited, and now they were on a tour to visit family in Texas and New Mexico. The sister said she'd been very emotional throughout the trip and had been crying off and on all morning. I told her she looked like she could use a hug, so I gave her a big one.

After they left I got ready to go too, but not before taking some pictures, filling up my water bottles, and buying some beef jerky from the gift shop. A few miles later, I finally came to the other side of the caprock that I'd climbed a couple hundred miles back in Dickens, TX. According to a roadside historical plaque, Coronado dubbed this area the "Llano Estocado," which loosely translates to "a heck of a lot more grass, but with rocks surrounding it."

But it always boosts my spirits to meet nice people, and somehow the 40 miles after the Caprock Country Store seemed to go by more quickly than the 20 miles before it. It wasn't long before I turned off the highway onto the winding roads that took me past stunning red cliffs under glorious pink and purple clouds, and into Bottomless Lakes State Park.