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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Adios Arizona!

Goodbye Grand Canyon state...Hello Land of Enchantment!! The last few days have been our final push through southern Arizona and into New Mexico (which we'll do tomorrow). As a disclaimer, the pictures below won't even begin to do justice to the sites and wide expanses of rugged beauty we've been passing through. It's almost a shame to try to capture it in pictures, yet we know no other way. So please use your imaginations and pretend your in an Imax theater.

Leaving the greater Phoenix metro area took for-ev-errrrr. Seriously, that is one sprawling city! From there we hit the hills and spent a rather rainy afternoon climbing up to Superior, AZ. For those of you who know what wet desert smells like, *insert olfactory memory here*. For those of you who don't, imagine dirt, metal, and sage mixed together...it's lovely. Our host family in Superior was...unique. We stayed in their airstream and were very happy to be out of the cold rain and snuggled in with two movies that they let us borrow (from their collection of thousands). Superior is a "bedroom" community for Phoenix and local copper mining towns so life in town was a little on the desolate side....but apparently Hollywood likes to use it.

Even though we thought the climb to Superior was steep, we didn't even consider what was ahead....getting out of Superior. This mountain pass was beautiful (as per usual), but slow going. We spent about 2 hours climbing the 1,600ft to Top Of The World, AZ at 4,500ft. It was only a 27 mile day, but we worked for each and every one of those miles!

This day brought us into the heart of copper mining country where the mountains look like they've been undressed and the mining companies own the land under the towns...so don't plan to get too attached to your property! The funniest sight we saw were about 25 cows grazing in this tiny plot on the side of a very steep hill. Apparently, these cows are being used to replenish the copper-savaged mountains with their poop nutrients.

 

Globe, AZ was out home for the evening and we bunked up at the community center/pool changing area. This center also shares its land with a baseball field and 1,000 year old Native American ruins. Check out the Besh-Ba-Gowah to learn more. We then spent the evening at the best bar in town; the Drift Inn Saloon, were we partook in their Super Bowl potluck, made a few friends and won some Pats paraphernalia. Globe gets high marks inour book for hospitality and general awesomeness.

It was a long day leaving Globe, 80 rolling miles of which 50 were through the San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation. This was a place where everyone had told us to "just not hang around too long". What we passed through wasn't much different from most other small towns we had seen on this journey. That is, towns where the poverty is painfully obvious, stores are nonexistent and the dogs are scary. This was the first time I had to use my pepper spray to ward of a dog who we just couldn't outbike. We ended the evening in the home of a lovely Mormon couple in Safford, AZ....a Mormon enclave it seems. We took part in a potluck at their home and learned a bit about the Mormon Richardsons...who knew!?! Below is a picture of our host's house in Safford....see the mountain snow?

Our last Arizona stretch was today as we peddled a short 36 miles into Duncan. Stinkin' beautiful! Tonight we are staying in a teardrop travel trailer behind the Simpson Hotel with our neighbors the chickens, cats and billy goat Pepper. We're pretty pleased and excited for a good sleep because tomorrow looks to be 72 miles uphill.....

For this of you who are wondering what our days look like, here's a quick overview: Up at 7ish, pack, eat, bike, bike, bike, bike, eat, bike, bike, bike, snack, bike, bike, reconfirmed address of host/camping area, bike, bike, arrive at location, unpack, "shower", eat, prep for next day, in bed by 9. It's an ironically very full day for doing such a simple activity. We spend a lot of time seeking out coffee in the morning, wine at night, and fantasizing about food...all the time!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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