Rick & Lori: October 11, 2015

We made another trip to the cabin on Thursday night. We were able to get away a few hours early and had great enchiladas and beer at the Western before Amy and Vince arrived.

The forecast wasn't very favorable, but Rick had been able to schedule a crew of roofers from one of his buddies in Lubbock, and we had the trailer filled with the metal roofing, so the old roof was coming off! The roofers had decided to arrive Friday morning despite an 80% chance of rain. They changed their minds on Friday morning, moved the start time to early Saturday morning, and said they would try to finish in one day.

That cleared us to ride but it was quite cool, foggy, misty and windy. Rickey, Vince and I decided to give it a shot in the early afternoon. We drove out on Sunspot Highway, parked at the entrance to Russia Canyon Road, unloaded the bikes and were about to take off when it started raining. We waited in the truck for a while, then just decided to skip it, and met Amy at the Western for nachos and beer. We cooked green chile stew at the cabin later that night.

The roofers actually did show up around 9am on Saturday morning. The weather was warmer and clear, but they had neglected to bring ropes and supplies needed to work on a steep roof despite being told to do so by both Rickey and the roofing contractor and being shown pictures of the roof the week before on the iPad. Instead of leaving some of them at the cabin to work from the ladder, they all loaded up and headed to Alamogordo for supplies. They arrived back in 2 hours with still limited supplies but started tearing the roof off. The roof was apparently the original roof, and the cabin was built in 1978! They worked for the rest of the day tearing the roof off and getting new tar paper down on one side. Words can't quite describe what it was like watching them work on the roof. Their use of the ropes to secure the guys working on the roof was a bit unconventional and most likely unsafe, but somehow no one fell off the roof during the weekend. Rick decided to stay at the cabin to keep an eye on the roofing, but Amy, Vince and I did a MTB ride from town early Saturday afternoon on the single track and Switchback trail. We finished the ride and headed to the bbq place but were extremely disappointed to find they had already sold out and were closed--at 3:00! Allsups burritos weren't what we had in mind, but they had to work. Rick got a motel room for the roofers a few miles from the cabin, and they told Rick they would start working at daylight so we called it an evening much earlier than usual on Saturday night.

They showed up at 9:15 on Sunday morning and still had a LOT of work to do to get finished. Vince and I decided to go on a MTB ride in the Benson Ridge and Russia Canyon area while Amy studied and Rick kept an eye on the roofing. The weather was clear and about 60 degrees, and we had scouted out a very basic route of about 24 miles. We were having a grand time and riding along a ridge at elevations from about 9000' to 9600' in beautiful fall foliage. Everything was great until I checked the GPS app and discovered we were not on the right trail anymore. We looked it over and both decided to take a trail which also wasn't on the app but appeared it would go the correct direction and take us to the desired area. Well, that didn't work out as expected, and we got into some areas so isolated that we ended up wearing our bright yellow rain jackets in full sunlight to avoid being shot by elk hunters. We finally made it back to the top of Benson Ridge after a 6 mile detour up, down and around multiple mountains. It ended up being a 26.3 mile ride with 2700'+ of climbing. It was a great adventure, but the sad part was that we drove out to Russia Canyon Road two different times and have still not ridden on that road yet! I have since studied the maps thoroughly and know the area much better now. We'll try it again next trip.

Our ride took longer than expected, but we were back in town before 3:00 and starving for bbq. I saw the "Sold Out" sign from across the street and was devastated, but we lucked out and were able to get 3 brisket plates and a pulled pork plate with all of the sides and were their last customers of the day. We had late bbq lunch at the cabin, Amy and Vince left around 4:00 for Vince to catch a flight, and we had to stay and wait for the roofers to finish. They finally finished after 7pm, which was almost dark, and we headed back to Lubbock around 7:30 with the big trailer and arrived home around 11:30pm. I was totally exhausted on Monday!

Riding was questionable on Friday afternoon with temps at 48 degrees with fog, mist and wind. We decided to try it anyway. We drove out to Russia Canyon Road, unloaded the bikes and got ready to take off. It then started raining.