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Showing posts from December, 2022

Sierra Blanca Checkpoint

    East of El Paso on Interstate 10 , the daytime legal speed limit is 80 mph.  There's not a whole lot of traffic, it's flat, desert, no one seemed to go over 85 mph. I watch what other drivers are doing; I try not to stand out. So I went with traffic, kept my sped down to around 83, and cruised past few sneaky patrol cars, speed traps, just waiting to accelerate out onto the super-slab, and nab some law breaking speeder. Forty miles west of Van Horn, all traffic was funneled into a Border Patrol checkpoint.  The officers looked very serious, and had serious looking military style equipment. There was one man in the booth, one man standing near the side of the lane with a short barreled assault rifle, and one man holding a vicious looking dog on a short lead, all at the ready, and very serious. No smiles, here. The dude in the booth, he asked me a question, but my hearing was all shot to hell from all the wind noise of high speed riding, and the roar of the engine....

Silver City

  It was once an Apache campsite and silver ore was discovered at nearby Chloride Flat.   Silver City, New Mexico was founded in the summer of 1870. It was a town with a violent crime rate: Butch Cassidy and his Wild Bunch frequented the saloons in the late 1800's, and Billy the Kid was arrested there twice by Sheriff Whitehill. In 1878, the town hired its first town marshal, "Dangerous Dan" Tucker, who had been working as a deputy for Whitehill since 1875. We took the room at The Drifter because they advertised a bar, pool table, and pool.  After we checked in, we found out the bar was closed on Mondays, and the pool was closed, too.  The place was run down, pretty much deserted, except for us.  But there was a restaurant/bar across the street, so it would do.  We'd reached the furthest point of our ride and would be heading mostly east from now on. We drank a few left-over beers in the room, with ice, because they were hot from being in the saddlebag...