Hail, and Hobbs' Finest Accommodations

Interstates are made solely for getting many people from one place to another as fast as possible, and even if they go through nice areas, their function alone is enough to keep me away from them on this trip. I have almost unlimited time and therefore the luxury of not having to get anywhere as fast as is possible. Riding a motorcycle next to semis in three lanes of traffic with people passing me and merging into my lane is not a real selling point either. Needless to say, I am glad to get off I-10 in Las Cruces, although due to construction, I can't make the easy connection onto New Mexico state highway 70 that I would like to. I have to wait until I can exit, and I get off on Main Street and ask directions at a liquor store. Luckily, following Main Street north will put me directly on 70. Soon I am where I want to be, and I take 70 up and over a low pass that spills out into a large flat desert valley. I see signs for White Sands Missile Range, and I have to go through a checkpoint similar to a couple I passed through in southern California and Arizona. From what I can tell, these checkpoints are just government controlled racial profiling stations. Being one of the whitest men alive, I naturally have no problem passing through when I say that yes, I am a US citizen. I guess it would be hard for me to stow some illegals on my motorcycle anyway. I drive past the White Sands National Monument, and sure enough, I can see dunes of white sand spotted with desert scrub rolling away to the northwest as I drive by. I see and hear a fighter jet of some kind scream across the sky also, obviously from the nearby airforce base. At Alamogordo I stop for lunch at possibly the slowest fast food joint have ever been too. It might seem like I would remember the name of the place, having spent so much time there waiting for my burger and fries, but that's not the case, and I can't remember it so as to warn anyone else who might consider stopping there. The vanilla shake, though, is very good.
I double check the index card in my jacket pocket with all the roads I need to take, and the approximate mileage between them. From Alamogordo I get on 82 heading east. I pass a sign that warns of the steep ascent over the next 16 miles, and to me this says lots of fun curves and hills. I am not disappointed in the road at all, but the weather is a different story. From what I can tell, I am climbing my way directly into a violently black thunderstorm. The wind is going crazy, blowing across my lane, but where I am is still in the sunshine. I pass a cop waiting for speeders next to an old shelter of some kind. The shelter could easily house me and my bike should I need to turn around, and judging by how the wind is blowing, and what the sky looks like, I decide I need to turn around. I park underneath it and ask the cop about what the storms are like around here. Apparently they can be short or they can be long, and this answer really doesn't help me. I sit on my bike and trudge my way through 20 minutes of Kafka's The Castle. When I walk out from under the shelter to see what the sky looks like, most of the clouds have disappeared. I feel like it's safe to continue up the still-climbing road, and I am glad to get going, not to stop wasting time, but because I have discovered one of the hideous and massive spiders that calls the shelter I am under home. I don't like spiders, they creep me out, and this one is just disgusting. At the peak of the road, at a town called Cloudcroft, I see that I made a wise choice in waiting out the weather. I have to drive slowly due to the slush on the road, and I can't believe that I can see snow on the side of the still-wet roads. I pull into the high school parking lot to take some photos when I realize that it is hail, not snow. In one low parking lot, cars are deluged up to their doors, and a front-end loader is futilely trying to scrape the water and slush away from the parking lot. At least that's what it looks like; I guess that he is trying to clear off debris from a drain. Heavy equipment seems like the wrong tool for the job, but let him have his fun. I think again of how glad I am that I decided to take a break. There was not a single drop of rain where I was, 10 minutes down the road. I would have been a dead man, or at least a miserably wet man, had I been caught in this flash hail storm. From Cloudcroft the road goes down, and it is wet, so I take it slow, and allow any cars and trucks that come up behind me to pass. As I ride down 82 the road eventually dries out, flattens out, and straightens up. I am hoping to get to a campground that I probably won't get to, taking into account what time it is and how many miles I have to go, but I decide to see how far I can get today. It is late afternoon and as I am burning across 82, enjoying the plains that seem to drop off below the horizon. On the road ahead of me, I see something small and brown moving. I fixate on it until it is right in front of me and I realize that it is a large brown spider, stepping its way across the road. I don't like spiders, and watching its eight hairy legs pump up and down sends shivers across my body and I can't do anything but maintain my path of travel and run it over, which disgusts me, as I realize I probably have tarantula guts glued to my wheels, rotating underneath me about a thousand times per second. Ugh. I continue driving on, now noticing that there are more and more brown spots on the road, and again, I see myself about to run over another spider, I am sure it's a tarantula this time, and I can't move out of the way. If there are this many spiders who are caught on the road, the high grasslands on either side of me must be teeming with them. This is a very uncomfortable thought, as is the idea of camping in this area.
I pass another motorcyclist at a rest area and give him a wave, and I recognize him from when he passed me as I was taking a quick break in Cloudcroft. His bike is maroon and covered in gold crosses, and other Christian propaganda like "Jesus is Lord" and something about burning in hell. Sort of heavy stuff to put on your bike, but he gives me a friendly wave back as I go back. In my mirror I see him in the distance behind me, and over a few miles, I can see that he is slowly gaining on me. I like to keep my speed at about 65 when I can, because going any faster kills my mileage, but he must be doing around 75 to catch up to me, and then he just kind of hovers at 65 behind me. I drive along the side of the lane to see if he wants to pass, but he maintains his distance behind me. I don't have a whole lot of experience on the road, and I don't know if this is a common thing among bikers, to just attach yourself to another and take comfort in the common strand among two otherwise strangers, so I don't bother pulling over or speeding up. After about twenty miles, we hit Artesia, and I stop to get gas, wondering if this guy will pull over and start preaching to me, or just strike up a conversation about the stretch of road we just went down together or what, but he just continues on with a wave. I fill up and continue on the road, looking for a turn off onto 529 which runs southeast real quick to 180. I keep passing all these county farm roads, and I'm starting to second guess myself, thinking I may have passed it while I was distracted by the Christian phantom in my mirror, when I finally come upon a sign for Loco Hills, which I remember from the map is right before my turnoff.
The sun is going down as I bear to the right, and the land around me is beginning to be dotted with those weird pumps that drag up oil, except I know that they are mining natural gas because the smell of methane, or whatever gas it is they are pulling up. The sun is just about fully down now, and I can see lightning in the east, directly in front of me, but it is still a ways off. There is virtually no one else on the road and I continue down 529, looking at these pumping stations, considering how feasible it would be to pull over to one and try and find some shelter to pitch a tent underneath in case a storm jumped me. I finally make it to 180 though, at a T intersection. Left is Hobbs, and right is Carlsbad. I know 180 is supposed to take me east, but it looks like my choices right now are north or south. I recognize both town names, and my index card is not helping me out at this point, but then I recall that Carlsbad was south of where I wanted to be, and set off towards Hobbs, hoping I was right. Fortunately I was. I get into the outskirts of town and ask about accommodations. Since I planned on camping tonight, and that will not be the case evidently, I feel like spending as little money as possible. I ask where the cheap hotels are and I get pointed in the right direction by the woman working at a gas station. I stop at the first hotel I see to get an idea of the price range I'm looking at. 45 bucks. Pretty cheap. I go to the next one and its the same thing - a local hotel run by an Indian family for the same price. I feel like this is all I'm going to run into so I just take it. It's a little nicer too. I dump my stuff in my room and drive to a gas station and spend my last five dollars in cash on a six pack of Keystone Light, bringing back to my college days at UNH, except there it was ten or eleven dollars for a thirty pack. What a bargain. On the way to the store and back I see many other motels advertise free hot breakfasts, and I think I may have gotten hosed on the place I am staying at. Oh well, I'm not sure I would want to trust food from these places anyway. I enjoy a hot shower and I lie on the bed watching TV. I can hear my neighbors through the wall, and I am not surprised at all with the level of establishment I am in. They are going in and out all night, having quite the party it seems, and I keep peeking out my window to check on my bike as I am watching Wedding Crashers. Eventually, I fall asleep as John Travolta and Olivia Newton John are singing their way through Grease.