During road trips, you learn a lot of important lessons. For instance, it's better to be on the backside of a camera than in front of it.

Earlier this month, the Boohers (Steve and Chris) took a week-long bike trip through parts of New Mexico and Colorado with the Villhauers (Denny and Melissa). Perhaps you read my trip entries. If you did, thanks.

Anyway, with the trip completed and now only a memory, it’s time to take stock and reflect on the valuable life experience we picked up along the way.

Here are seven lessons I learned from the road:

TAOS IS A COOL TOWN

It’s especially cool if you like hanging out with old hippies. Taos sort of reminds me of Branson, only populated with free-love commune refugees instead of clean-cut Christians.

Now, some people would pass on hanging out with people who smoked garbage bags of weed and dropped more acid than an epileptic working at a battery plant. But I grew up in the 70s. I observed hippies closely and interacted with them in their natural environment. I am fluent in groovy lingo.

But, hey, I can dig it if it’s not your scene. Split. And, keep on truckin’, turkey.

SMALL TOWNS CAN BE UGLY

Sorry to be blunt, but it’s true. We rode through some the ugliest, dirtiest, most God-forsaken crap holes that New Mexico and Colorado had to offer. One town (I forget its name) had a residential area that consisted mainly of beat up trailers. These weren’t even nice, tornado-attracting kind; they were mobile hovels.

I don’t have anything against trailers. But in Missouri, our parks are orderly. The trailers are well-spaced and lined up perpendicular with the streets. By contrast, this town looked like some one had stuffed a bunch of mobiles homes in their mouth, didn’t like the taste and spit them haphazardly over 80 acres.

THEY’RE CUTE, BUT…

We stayed at a Super 8 hotel in Taos, right next to a convenience store with a prairie dog colony between. The furry little critters had constructed quite a network of tunnels and holes all over the place.

In couple of spots, they had burrowed underneath the edge of the parking lot and were starting to damage the motel’s asphalt. I walked through their settlement on my way to the convenience store, tripped in a hole and nearly fell on my face. I could have sworn I heard small laughter coming from underground.

LLAMAS WITH ATTITUDES

You see more livestock than people while riding through northern New Mexico. Every bit of land is fenced, meaning somebody owns it, and we saw herds of cattle and sheep but not single pig.

We did see a llama, grazing by a fence along the highway. As we passed, he glanced up, spit, and went back to chewing. We rode on.

ENTER KANSAS AT YOUR PERIL

We’ll likely head south or east for our next bike trip just to avoid riding through Kansas, especially the western half. There are a couple of reasons for that.

First, Kansas is sneaky. You think it’s just an average-sized state, but it’s deceptively long from east to west and vice versa. After a long day of riding, you think it never freakin’ ends.

Second, you battle a stiff wind the whole way. You think it was a cyclone that carried Dorothy and Toto away to the Land of Oz?

Shoot. That was just the usual windy day in Kansas.

MEXICAN IS MEXICAN IS MEXICAN

I’ve eaten my share of Mexican food. Heck, three of my kids work at Palma’s Authentic Mexican restaurant and I attend corn night there religiously. But everywhere we went on this trip, every slop joint bragged about their special brand of Mexican cuisine. And we tried a few.

But guess what. To me, it all tasted like the same Mexican food you can get right here in Joetown.

THERE’S ALWAYS AN ARKANSAS IDIOT

We encountered this particular zipperhead from the Land of Walmart while driving though New Mexico’s Cimarron Canyon during a downpour. We were taking it slow because… well, because we were in a canyon and it was raining. The road was slick and twisty. We were cautiously following three other vehicles.

Suddenly, a two-toned Ford (red primer with gray primer highlights) with Arkansas plates thundered around us and knifed back into our lane, just barely missing an oncoming vehicle.

A few curves later, he tried to pass an SUV, but the other driver wouldn’t let him back in our lane. I cheered as he was forced to drive slowly until we came out of the canyon.

Darned Razorback.