This might be the year I get fat. I have eaten my weight in butter every year of my life, but three months of convalescence (read: no bike riding and many sweets from friends) followed by a packed schedule of travel-guide research and a long summer vacation to tasty destinations could well do me in. I’m only a few days into a short trip around southwestern New Mexico, and already I’m feeling the pinch. Ordinarily, the jeans I’m wearing would be all stretched out and unattractively saggy by Day 4, but now they’re just getting comfortable.

But I do it for you, of course. I eat ginormous chorizo-and-egg breakfast burritos at El Mirador in Deming, just so on your next visit to Deming (I know you’re booking it right this second), you’ll know somewhere tasty to eat. And I eat two desserts at the Barbershop Café in Hillsboro because I want to make sure they’re as good as people say they are. The carrot cake is pretty good, it’s true. And that scone from White Coyote (via Coffee Tea or C) in Truth or Consequences—totally gratuitous, considered I’d already eaten a giant slab of ham-and-egg casserole, but now I know recommendations of White Coyote do have a basis in fact.

Oh, I’m such a martyr. Anyway, the only point of this post is just to notify people that I am in fact in New Mexico, and to remind you that the travel writer’s life is not nearly as glamorous as you imagine. I’m looking forward to riding my bike when I get home at the end of the week.