Texas, Part 2!

Here we are, east Texas....land of green pastures, big cows, sweet tea, Spanish moss, and a whole different kind of "rural" than we've had in the last month.

Last I left off we were just about to explore beautiful San Antonio...and we did!...on just about the nicest day ever created. Every time you visit a new city it should always be an 80 degree sunny Saturday! We spent the vast majority of the day just walking all over, exploring the artsy Riverwalk, looking for a The Alamo and seeking out the best margaritas. Another benefit of the scooter is that even though our Warmshowers host lived far from downtown, we were easily able to both jump on the scooter and scoot our way all over....we even had the local police write us a fake ticket so that it wouldn't actually be ticketed since the rules on parking scooters is a bit hazy.

Our "ticket"

Neither of us wanted to leave San Antonio, but overnight the weather took a turn for the worse, which made me decide to forgo the icky 80 mile ride on the highway sideroad and instead hop a bus up to Austin. Unfortunately Dot no longer has this luxury and she had to scooter there herself. Luckily our Couchsurfing host in Austin (Katie) was AWESOME and greeted us with coffee and pancakes...we were enamored from the get-go! Because the weather continued to spiral downward (30 degree temps, rain, wind, sleet), we stayed in Austin for 3 nights and caught up on some much needed errands and "chill time". Even though this trip seems so simple, we actually spend a great deal of our non-riding time hurriedly planning for the next day(s). This is especially true when staying with host families since a large part of the evening is spent socializing with them....one of the great benefits of traveling this way. That all said, we unfortunately didn't really see Austin like most tourists do, but we had a great time regardless! I even got to cook one night which was something I had really missed doing.

Leaving Austin was even harder than leaving San Antonio, mostly because we were starting to act like we lived there. We left the city and headed about 90 miles out into the beautiful rolling hills of east Texas, where we stayed with Carol on her ranch. Carol is just about the spunkiest 85 year old I've ever met. When she retired she moved to the country, bought a lot of land and then proceeded to build her own house, bunkhouse, wood shop, and numerous other buildings. She is an incredible woodworker, runs a bed & breakfast, plays music, is a pool shark, and is learning Spanish....and that's just the tip of the iceberg. Carol has also been hosting cyclist for 10 years and knew all the strings to pull when, upon leaving the next morning, Dot found a big nail had flattened her scooter tire.

Carol and her cat

Check out the early morning Texas frost!

With Dot and Carol on "nail removal duty", I set out on the next 90 mile leg, not even sure if Dot would catch up that day or not. Luckily, the sun was out and the wind was mostly at my back so I made it to our next destination in record time. We stayed the night in Glen Flora, TX....population: 200, generously. The couple we stayed with were longtime adventurers as well who ironically had been to Putnam many times for the antiquing. Small world! This is the first town that we've stayed in that really FEELS southern and the hospitality was certainly there. After a delicious breakfast the next morning, Roy then rode the first 25ish miles with me. It was nice to have the company, especially on such a cold, dreary morning. Unfortunately the weather didn't clear (it only got colder and windier) so our plans to push it the 109 miles to Galveston, TX quickly became a pipe dream. We squeezed out a out 65 to Lake Jackson and decided that with 25mph wind gusts and 40 degree temps that was good enough!

Tomorrow we will try once again to push for Galveston and then further up the coast. While it feels wrong to complain about temperatures over freezing, being on a bike (and scooter) lately has become a bit un-fun thanks to the incessant winds. That said, this is an adventure and not a vacation, and to that end it is supposed to have un-fun, challenging days....it's the trip package we purchased! See y'all in Louisiana!

A post office in some unknown town on Farm Road 1301...they didn't have postcard stamps, but there was a nice dog named Daisy and it was a out 2 degrees warmer inside then it was outside...

Our bunkhouse home at Carol's house

 

The scooter goes to get its tire repaired...our bunkhouse in the background.

 

And lastly, The Alamo!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Texas, Part 1

 

Well we did it, we made it through west Texas and I'm here to disprove a few notions we had prior to this section of the trip:

1.) West Texas is boring and ugly. Untrue! And those who think that have either ONLY traveled I-10 ( which is boring and ugly) or they haven't yet seen other parts of the west which are just as vast and beautiful. Perhaps we still have our east coast goggles on, but we have not yet been disappointed.

2.) The winds this time of year travel out of the west and it's always warm, sunny and dry. Untrue, untrue, untrue! The last 5 days have had relentless headwinds and strong gusts, cool temperatures, and a bit of rain. Nothing like the pictures below.....we only take pretty day ones.

3.) It's flat. Well, yes, if you were to measure straight across the land you would generally only find a 300 ft difference in elevation after decending the mountains. But what Google doesn't take into consideration are the 427 arroyos, canyons, and washes that one has to climb in and out of....this turns a "downhill day" into a day of unflattering words.

4.) All road surfaces are the same..NOT! This is a general observation from the whole trip, but has been made abundantly clear in the last 6 days. As of lately we've been riding on bad chip seal (tar and chip), which is like a biking hell...for days. The nerves in my arms are shot from the vibrations and I'm surprised my bike didn't just shake apart.

Okay, I just had to get that off my chest since this is pretty much all I think about for 8 hours a day.

The last week has all in all been a productive one. Since Dot is now carrying the vast majority of the gear weight, I can now (hypothetically) go longer and faster. So we began the week with a 100 mile day up to Alpine, TX..at about 5,000 ft. We stayed with an amazing couple who are two of the coolest, most layed-back family physicians I've ever met. We both wanted to extend our stay with them, but because I now set the speed of the trip, I had to press on the next day into cold, wet winds while Dot got to stay and explore Big Bend National Park with Katie (one of our hosts) and their friend Casey. They also had a border patrol run-in, but that's a good story for later! Because the Big Bend trip took so long, Dot and I esentially traveled separately for two full days and she caught up with me again in Langtry, TX.

Traveling separately for hours is our new traveling compromise. While being apart for two whole days is rare, we both realized that Dot cannot go my pace for hours without loosing her mind or falling asleep. So now our new daily routine involves a 2 hour morning walk for Dot while I start biking. This way I have 20-50 miles under my tires by the time she catches up. She can then spell me a bit by blocking my wind (did I mention the 25mph wind gusts?) until she gets bored and pushes forward. She then walks again in the evening while I shower. While we have lost a bit of the biking camraderie, we are making the trip work for both if us.

The week in general has been notably boring for reasons of location and exhaustion. We are now averaging closer to 85 miles a day. Highlights have included:

• Riding through Marfa (Texas celebrity hang out), Alpine and our hosts there, Big Bend, and seeing a bed and breakfast in Marathon made entirely out of paper concrete
• The Indian breakfast in Sanderson at a rather sketchy Budget Inn
• The cyclists travel trailer in Sanderson, continuing to prove the extreme generosity of strangers.
• Staying with the Bouchers at Fort Clark in Brackettville (and being rescued by Bob after 60 miles of headwinds made it impossible for me to do the last 30 to their house before dark),
• Making two new friends in Uvalde...one, a Canadian, who drove ahead to get gas when Dot unexpectedly ran out and another (Ron) who took us out to dinner and swapped travel stories.
• Arriving in San Antonio! For two girls who have seen almost nothing but scubrush and Border Control vehicles for the last week, San Antonio is an urban oasis of people, art, and life. We were not expecting it to be so cool and plan to spend all day today exploring the city before heading 80 miles north to Austin tomorrow....IF I can convince Dot to leave this amazing town!

One final note, not only are we physically half way across Texas, but in the last day or so we seem to have made a very apparent environmental and cultural change. Even before arriving in San Antonio, it was abundantly clear that we were no longer in "the west". It's hard to put a finger on the change, but the air smells different all of a sudden, things are a bit greener, the trees are bigger, and catfish is making its way onto menus. We're both a little sad about this, but recognize that this is also what makes travel so exhilarating.

 

 

 

 

 

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And it's a bike-scooter parade!

Welcome to the longhorn state! Ever since beginning this journey (and long before we ever got on our bikes), almost everyone had something negative to say about west Texas....the size, the nothingness, the proximity to the Mexican border, etc....and now that we're here we're just glad to be back rolling again!

Our stay in El Paso was about a week longer than anticipated. Just figuring out and then exicuting Plan B took a lot more time than anticipated and required a trip back up to Las Cruces. That said, many good things came from the situation. We now have a whole new appreciation for the city of El Paso, we made new friends, we avoided some 35mph headwinds, ate well, and Dot got a real X-ray and then got a scooter!!

As with any change to a great trip, the switch from a two bicycle adventure to a one bicycle, one scooter parade has been an adjustment, to say the least. While our pace has quickened thanks to the fact that the scooter can carry the vast majority of our gear, Dot now has to settle into life at my biking speed, which is painfully boring and very chilly! That said, her good character is shining through and she's taking on the role of "support vehicle" very well....a much appreciated endeavor and very useful in headwinds. And in return I am promising to bike fast enough to make it to our destinations early so that she can at least get a brisk walk in before dark.

Upon leaving El Paso we headed to Fort Hancock by essentially following the US/Mexico border eastward. We saw another pair of cyclist, two guys from Virginia who were biking the same route east to west. We swapped stories and they gave us the heads up on a scary Rottweiler at an intersection that we would be crossing the next day. We made a mental note to avoid the dog by jump on the interstate instead. As relaxing as back roads can be, our nerves are still a little fried from the dog experience and biking through these small towns with unfenced/unchained dogs is an incredibly anxious experience. Dogs just like to chase bikes.

The town of Fort Hancock is another sad reminder of the lack of jobs and overwhelming poverty in this part of our world. With an even more destitute Mexican town just 4 miles away, the repercussions of their close proximity adds an even greater stressor. We stayed the night at the local Catholic Church where Sister Silvia welcomed us with tight hugs, stories, and a bag of candy...I adore her. The neighbor then brought us canned soup and saltines and we slept safely below more religious icons than I could ever count.

Today we rode the I-10 interstate and an adjoining road to Van Horn which is just as destitution as Fort Hancock, but also has about 27 semi-functioning hotels. We passed another biker today (Norm) who was heading from California to Boston for his daughter's graduation from Harvard. Seeing other bikers out here is pretty rare and SUPER exciting....they're like a mirage in the desert. Like almost every town we've gone through, Van Horn has the classic "rock initial on the hillside"....if you don't have one, apparently you don't exist as a town. We are treating ourselves tonight to a hotel room, tv and rewarmed pasta!

To the right is the big Van Horn "V". Below are the two most important accessable items on my daily ride, mace and M&Ms. Sadly, the candy spilled so I fueled up on raisins all day instead.

 

We made it to Central time!! Whaaaaaat!?!

As we begin the next third of this journey, I just wanted to say THANK YOU to all of you who have helped to support us over the last week. Your words, encouragement, knowledge, ideas, donations, and general love has been overwhelming. I think it will take all of Texas to process what a wonderful group of people we are surrounded by.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Soon to be...back on the road!

What's a good trip without a little excitement, eh? Last updated, we were in El Paso with hazy ideas about where to turn next. Whelp, we're still in El Paso, but our plans are solidifying a bit more and we hope to be back on the open road by the weekend. It's hard to believe that we've only been wrestling with this for just over 72 hours, but after a solid day of research, walking, talking, and planning....we think we have a plan that is a bit more solid. A scooter. That's right, Dot will be completing this trip on an orange Genuine Buddy 125 scooter! It's stinkin adorable and will no doubt make me jealous on the hill climbs. She will also hopefully now be able to carry a bit more of the gear weight so perhaps numerous days of century rides are in our future...as neither of us are trying to hang around west Texas for too long. For those of you who know Dot, you know that a day sitting on a scooter as she watches me ride will be torturous, but I have promised early starts so as to leave time for an afternoon run (once her collar bone has healed a bit more) and I am hiding (or hoarding) the bag of M&Ms.

 

Secondly, because dropping a few thousand dollars on a scooter mid-trip isn't exactly a planned expense, Dot has started a GoFundMe page. Essentially, you can help to fund her new wheels and in turn receive a commemorative ceramic trip cup or tile! Check out: http://www.gofundme.com/scootertoflorida for more information or to give. This way we know Dot will be waaaaay busy once she returns to CT!

Finally, everything works out for a reason, right? We are still trying to reason out the broken collar bone, but we have been incredibly grateful to the people we have met through this experience and the extra time we have gotten to spend in El Paso. For a city that I would have never envisioned myself hanging around, it has been a wonderful and eye opening experience to the world of boarder-city living. It's like traveling abroad on home soil. Below in the foreground is the US, in the background is Ciudad Juarez.

Tonight we will spend one more night with our new El Paso Couchsurfing friends Meghan and James and then head to another Couchsurfing home for the next two nights while we continue to get ourselves squared away. Spending time in the homes of strangers (turned friends) as been one of the biggest highlights of our trip and it's hard to imagine this experience without their kindness, support, food, ideas, warm showers, couches, beds, nice animals, drinks, and stories. Every day is a beautiful day :)

Over and out friends, here's to hoping by the next update we will be well into the Texas heartland!

 

 

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New Mexico...done & done.

We rolled into New Mexico by climbing up, up, up to Silver City. The highlight was that we crossed the continental divide a little over 6,000 feet, the lowlight was that the ride was tough and either uphill or big rolling hills. Regardless, Silver City was worth it! It is a diverse city of about 9,000 and full of interesting food, outdoor art, bike friendly folks and people who just love where they live. We lucked out with our Warmshowers hosts who were incredibly kind and didn't blink an eye to our decision to stay an extra day so that we could travel up to the Gila cliff dwellings....a plan our bike map says we could do, but after looking at the elevation gain we thought this would just be a terrible decision. Whoever wrote this part of the map is nuts. That said, we didn't miss out because Pat (our host) offered to drive us the two hours up! We enjoyed an entire day with him, seeing the ancient Mogollon dwellings and enjoying the mountains via car. The day ended with a ride in his Elf....a bike/scooter mobile of sorts. Thank you Pat and Jackie!

Leaving Silver City was a tough decision. Not only was there more to explore, but we had to decide if we were going to travel up and over the mountains (climbing up to Emory Pass at 8,228 ft) or hit the lowlands again. The decision was made when an avid biker told us that our decision was like choosing between the best and worst of New Mexico.....so clearly we chose the best and spent the day climbing up and over the mountains. The ride up, though long, wasn't as bad as we anticipated and it was stinkin beautiful! The way down was a 9 mile, 2,000 ft. drop of hairpin turns. We were like the Tour De France. Insane. And we pulled into Kingston, NM (population 22) about three hours earlier than expected.

Our host in Kingston (Catherine) runs the best, old mountain lodge and is also an expert in straw-bale architecture and building. If you're into this, you've probably read one of her books. Her lodge (the Black Range Lodge) was built in the 1800s as a mining lodge and still holds much of this character....I was swooning! We enjoyed great conversation and dinner with her and then got probably the best sleep of our entire trip thus far.

Joy of joys, from Kingston almost everything is downhill! Eighty-two miles doesn't seem so bad when you know that most of it will be smooth sailing...or so we thought. About 30 miles into the ride (in the middle of chili pepper country) we had an encounter with a dog. Oy. This wasn't our first, but it was the fastest and came right after Dot. As she tried to bail from her bike, her foot got caught in her clips and she crashed hard. We were lucky to be in a town (and that the dog really meant no harm, I guess), but Dot took a hard spill on her shoulder, so much so that biking was not an option so we caught a ride to the closest real town, Hatch, to get one of their famous chili cheeseburgers and calm down a bit. Once we got there and reassessed her injuries we realized that her collar bone was in bad shape and required us getting to an urgent care in Las Cruces, 40 miles away, that day without biking. So we posted ourselves at the local gas station and waited for a kind person in a truck.

Hitchhiking is a new part of our adventure I guess! After waiting about an hour (and realizing that Las Cruces isn't exactly a hot spot for travelers thought there), a wonderful woman named Bobbi took pity on us and reroute her trip so that she could drive us. Bobbi is a transport service for rescue animals and was on her way to pick up two dogs in Albuquerque and bring them down to Tucson....a 7 hour drive one way. She said that she has picked up animals in almost every state but the Northeast. Amazing. She was quite a character, but she was our saving grace today and for that we couldn't be more thankful as she made it possible for us to get to the Las Cruces urgent care before it closed. Our day was rounded out by a trip to Walmart for heavy narcotics and a final ride to our host family's house where we settled in with pasta, strawberries and peanut M&Ms....comfort food all around. Little did we know what an "interesting" home we had stumbled into....and we'll leave it at that.

On Sunday we turned our cycling legs into walking machines and walked to Mesilla, a small town just outside Las Cruces. Here we celebrated with delicious margaritas at La Posta, walked around their market and purchased chilis from the most eclectic "shop" I have ever seen. On our way back we stopped in a Ramada Inn to inquire about buses to El Paso and met a guy who hosts Couchsurfers with his girlfriend. Quickly realizing that staying with them would be a MUCH better situation, we headed back, packed our gear and made a speedy, yet gracious exit to their house...and boy were we joyous. Thank you Cody and Sommer!!

 

It is now Monday and we sit in a cafe in El Paso, just a few blocks from "the fence" and Ciudad Juarez. What an interesting place to be and it's hard to wrap our brains around what country we're really in at any given moment. It is clear that Dot will not be able to ride her bike for the duration of the trip (for fear of greater pain or further injury), so we're looking into other modes of transportation: Recumbent bike? Scooter? Tricycle? We're trying to think out of the box as much as possible while also being realistic about her injury, limits and the vastness of Texas still to come. Neither of us are ready for the adventure to end, especially knowing the state of the Northeast at the moment.....sorry friends!

That said, we have our work cut out for us in the next few days as we solidify Plan B and will keep you posted. You can't stop this adventure train, we just have to reroute our track a bit :)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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