Day 10- Mon. Oct. 26, El Paso, TX 83 miles

Today was Ryder's last day of riding with me. We started out from Hatch, NM (chile capital of the world) and rode 83 miles to El Paso, TX. Today marks the end of the first third of my trip across America. Now riding through the widest part of Texas will take up the second third part of the trip. So far we have ridden 890 miles. Dave R. would like to have ridden 900, but we ran out of daylight, since we got a late start and took a couple hours to eat out and do some sightseeing for lunch. But Dave says he plans to get the extra miles in when he goes home.
In order to ride across the country in five weeks I will need to average 100 miles a day. There have been a couple days we haven't got a hundred miles in, so will have to do some 120 miles days to get caught up.
Todays high was only 60, but sunny. But we also had the wind in our faces most of the day, which makes it extra cold, too.
For lunch I took David, Faith, and Dave out to eat at an old Mexican restaurant in the old historic town of Mesilla, NM (near Las Cruces). I'm going to let Faith write about that experience later in this blog.
We finished our ride today in downtown El Paso, and the picture of Dave and I by the car with the bikes on it shows the end of Dave R. journey with me. He will be greatly missed and have appreciated him riding with me for nearly two weeks.
Then we drove to a Hampton Inn near the airport so Dave could get a shuttle in the morning and not have to get up so early. It is our nicest room yet, a suite (all they had), with full kitchen, separate bedroom, and living room. You see a picture of Dave and I relaxing in the room.
I praise God for giving us strength and safety so far on our journey, as we continue to claim the promise in Zech. 4:6 "Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord."