Grants, NM - Houdini the Desert Tiger

To my great dismay, I am not able to upload photos from this library, and in this case...a picture (or video is worth 1000 words)...but I may as well the story regardless, and then, I'll upload the images of Houdini-the-Desert-Tiger from Silver City in four days, I promise.

So after Grant's email with all the statistics including average heart rate, water consumption per degree per hour and spoke thermal expansion rates.... it is likely that female readership approval ratings have plummeted to levels reminiscent of G. W. Bush in 2007.

However, with my powers of prose, I hope to keep the final stragglers that have somehow held on and defied all odds.

So in Cuba, Grant decided to steal ahead and get a head start. And after some tall bottles of cold beer at the School Gazebo and some stories with a Texan, the rest of us headed off into the desert. But even at 5 pm, it was very hot for our Canadian blood, and riding was still a struggle. So we picked a good hill on the horizon, and committed to having a good break at the top.

Once we pulled over some 15 miles into the desert and wiped the sweat from our brows, we hear a "meow" and out runs the most threadbare, fluffy, dirty and scrawny little kitten that we've ever seen. Houdini, as he would soon be Christened, crossed the hot pavement and started trotting towards us as fast as his little legs could carry him....and in a paternal moment that hard-lining feminist sociologist may deny exists, Simon runs across the road, arms stretch completely enamoured yelling "kitty, kitty, kitty"....it was a breathtaking scene.

But little Houdini was terribly thirsty and even raced over to Ryan and he was relieving himself of the cold beer he had recently enjoyed, and so we fed this little guy as much water as his body could take and decided, and decided that he'd be coming with us.

And so he did. This little kitten travelled some 70 miles with us and was carried in Simon's handlebar bag, Bougie's vest and finally, into Bougie's rear pannier where his little head was sticking out like a golden retriever our a car window. On our first night with Houdini, he curled up into Simon's silk liner and spent most of the time pushing and pulling on it, happier that a pig in shit. It was a beautiful sight.

But, despite ideas of getting him cleaned up, and shots, and smuggling our little survivor over the border, we decided that we better see if we could find him a good home if possible. And as fate would have it, after our second day with Houdini happily riding in the pannier, we stopped at the bar for a much needed cold beer, and as it turns out, the bar had several desert cats that they fed daily....and so, with a parting "meow" and a couple a false escapes, we reluctantly parted with this little guy...it was a sad night after, and as we hammered into the truck stop buffet, few words were exchanged but the air was full of man-mourning.

Hang in there till you see this guy in action, I'll even try uploading a video...if you're lucky.