From Deming we cycled 62 miles to Lordsburg through a reasonably strong headwind. All the way across America and our first headwind worth mentioning.

I’ve moaned about the heat, the rain and the cold but I’m not going to moan about the wind. Not yet anyway. A headwind is worse than everything else put together but its not been bad enough yet to create an issue for us.

Still the cycle to Lordsburg was pretty tiring and it didn’t help that we got another puncture 6 miles from our destination.

To date that’s 18 punctures. Probably 5 caused by degraded rim tape, 6 by wire from truck tyres and the rest cause unknown. Tyre choice is important when touring and the Schwalbe Big Apple tyres we started with was a mistake. Great tyres for the tandem but not for American roads which are ridiculously covered in crap.

After Lordsburg we headed 77 miles to Safford. Along the way we passed into Arizona. That’s right – time for another border picture.

Now I suppose at this point I should clarify a little bit of fake news. We’re in America after all and I hear there’s a lot of fake news about and well I kind of added to it.

I know you would have been disappointed if we had crossed into New Mexico and I hadn’t posted a picture of the border with a sign. So I did a couple of posts ago.

Actually, when we crossed into New Mexico along the Rio Grande cycle path there wasn’t a ‘New Mexico’ sign. A couple of days later, when we left ‘New Mexico’ into Arizona we crossed the road and pretended we were arriving. Susan made me do it.

Now most of the people reading the blog won’t know the difference but in the interests of blog integrity I must confess the arriving in New Mexico picture is a fake! We were actually leaving!

Thankfully, most of us are old people and will forget that detail and in a month I will erase the last few paragraphs of this post and nobody will be wiser and my conscience will be clear.

However, we really are in Arizona and what a place of outstanding beauty it is.

So where are we now?

Honestly, this is where we are! No more fake news.

3 days cycling to Phoenix.

2,250 miles done and dusted.

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