Follow my little wheel on Route 66 in words, pictures and movie clips:
http://www.galfromdownunder.com/route66

If you want to eyeball my other blog bleatings about this trip, here they are:

Highlights from the first 15 days
My 'Big Texan' 72-oz Steak Challenge
Rider dynamics
Done and dusted

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"THE PROBLEM with America ... is the weather channel. It scares the @#$% out of people."

Leon, from South Africa, is telling me how he sees it from over his leather-wrapped handlebars.

"All you hear is ... tornados coming! Police cars damaged by hail! Hail THIS big (makes supersize burger shape with hands). Fronts coming in! Winds from the front! Meanwhile, the sky is clear. The wind is a nice breeze in your face. Perfect day to ride. Don't watch the Weather Channel ... JUST RIDE! " (You can see him do that in an Afrikaana accent at the above link).

We're now in Tucumcari, New Mexico. Yesterday we were in Santa Rosa. Day before, Las Vegas. But not THAT Las Vegas as I soon found out.

Me: "Hey, how close are we staying to Las Vegas town? I want to see the Pyramid Casino and ..."

Crew member: "Errrrr, Lynette, we're going to Las Vegas, NEW MEXICO, NOT Nevada!"

We're exactly halfway through the Route 66 tour. The days are a blur - up at 5am, breakfast at 6, ride for 80 miles or more, over the alternately smooth to boneshaking Route66, pause to eat stuff, take a few pictures, crash around 9pm to do it again the next day. And I am not even doing the half miles of the group - I ride some, leapfrog them in the van to film them struggling up hills, eating ostrich egg omelette, blazing across the tops of mesas, and end up being dropped anyway in the last 20 miles. All the while filming for the DVD and taking pictures of things that I find quirky but others probably blow past.

The pace so far has been 'easy' on a PACTOUR scale. Remember, this is the touring company for the Exceptional Cyclist. Their famous transcontinental crossings are the training ground for RAAM champs, at 140 + miles per day in some cases.

This tour one requires riders to be strong enough to ride 80-100 miles in 6-7 hours. Most are doing it, but there's always the van if things look darkest just before they go completely black.

"It's about confidence," says Lon, 6x RAAM legend, but still inclined to stop and smell the burritos as well as the smoking rubber.

I'm too knackered each day to postulate ad nauseum like I usually do, so here are some highlights for me so far:

* Day 12, the La Bajada crossing, stands out in my mind. This is the 'bones of the olde road', the mesa between Albuquerque and Santa Fe, with the old Route 66 switchbacking to the top of it. Lon built up a degree of drama about it based on his experience of it 5 years ago.

"You won't want to do it," said Lon, not realizing that I'd spend a searing hot Easter in Nicaragua once, pushing my loaded Bike Friday through sand. What he meant, was that he didn't want me off the back and stuck out there alone at dusk. The solution? Get driven to the base of it and meet riders there, to film them going over it. Loooxury!

It turned out to be fairly easy - a twisty hike-bike ascent, a long hard packed gravel crossing and a nice descent over the other side. I stayed on the tail of Gerd, 72, who's been off the front every day. This retired physical chemist only took up cycling when he was 65 and he's already done centuries, double centuries...

* Meeting Angel Degdillo in Seligman, AZ. Angel is credited with kickstarting the re-birth of Route 66. "I can tell you, when they put in the Interstate, this place died. Just died." He means, it was a struggle to put food on the table. Now, they're laughing all the way to the ATM.

* Eating in style at La Posada, Winslow, a grand restored Harvey House hotel, where guests could languish and be fed and watered in style while their trains were being restoked with coal. I thought I'd died and gone to Paris.

* Slumming it at the movie-star hotel El Rancho at Grants, New Mexico. I stayed in the Susan Hayward room. Ornate turned wood, a hotel with real character - just like in movies of old!

*Being treated to a fancy meal in the swank restaurant beside our Hotel in Santa Fe: Rosemarie and Jim Meyers were the perpetrators of the treat. While Jim was enquiring about the vintage of the Pinot I am sure I disgraced myself by focussing on the size of all the elegant epicurean offerings listed on the menu. Viz:

Me: "The cream of butternut pumpkin soup - er... how many liters is the cup? How about the bowl? The arugula salad with candied walnuts, roasted beets and a balsamic dressing - how big is that (making shape like a supersize burger with my hands)? The ravioli - how many do you get in the bowl?"

Jim asked for a side of carbs, also making a shape the size of a supersize burger with his hands. A petite boat of mash potato appeared with a flourish.

Later:

Me: "Um, Rosemarie - are you going to eat that salad?"

Still later:

Waiter: "Can I take that away?" (x3 times) Then: "You haven't touched it for a while."

Talk about overservicing! In Australia, you get tipped if you watch from a distance, zoom in and give service, then disappear, thus not disrupting intimate conversations of national or marital importance etc. Jim concluded that rather than tell us in polite English they had overbooked, they were trying to get us out of our chairs.

A few days ago, a trucker stopped to offer us a bag of energy bars. The automatic reaction was the we should throw them away, as they might be laced with a cyclist-exterminator. I pointed out that many a trucker has saved my life in my travels. Apart from the odd nutcase, they're generally respectful of anyone breaking a sweat like they do, and cycling is one of those pursuits. I have to remind people that 99% of humanity is like you and I - pretty nice, and just trying to have a nice life. If you focus on the 1%, you will not even go out your front door...

Lon has me signed up for the 72-oz steak eating challenge in Texas tomorrow. Stay tuned to see how this mostly-vegetarian handles that with grace ...