Day 36: 13 Feb, 54.0 miles today, 1,877.9 miles total, Marathon, TX
A thought that has followed me on this trip like a farm dog I just can’t shake is how much uncertainty the bicycles bring to the traveling equation. Cars do, as well, but they weather the harsh realities of the road a great deal better than these delicate apparatuses. I’ve crossed the United States some four or five times by car, and had exactly one notable mechanical problem, when the right rear tire of the car I was riding it suddenly shed it tread into the interstate and my companion leaned the hard way that her tire iron didn’t actually fit any of the lugs used on her car. The bikes, on the other hand, have issues that need to be addressed pretty much every day. Something or other always needs adjusting, patching, reconfiguring, or more air. That idea sits a little more uneasily when you’re riding 50 or 60 miles of empty desert and realize that you’re completely dependent on this finicky, capricious machine that has already required urgent attention for you on several inconvenient occasions. It’s like having to rely on a three-year-old to get you to the next water source.
Today was another trek into the empty nowheres of the western Texas desert; maybe the prettiest one yet. We spent most of the day pedaling up a slow incline through a wide, flat glacial valley surrounded by dry, scrubland mountains. The character of US 90 changed drastically after leaving Sanderson. It had been a heavily trafficked route the whole way from Del Rio, clearly an important commercial shipping corridor. But that all stopped today. We saw cars every ten minutes or so, but otherwise had the road to ourselves.
When we finally came out the western end of the valley, the scenery opened up wider than I’ve seen it so far on this trip. We could see the road stretches our in a straight line for miles and miles ahead of us—which was actually got pretty boring, if I’m being honest. I’m sorta surprised at how much I apparently rely on continually changing scenery to keep engaged with my surroundings. But anyway, this empty stretch of Texas is quite beautiful, if daunting in its desolate expanse. We’re not even close to the end of whatever this is.
We met our first fellow bikepacker this morning as he slowly overtook us on US 90 a couple miles out of Sanderson. Very nice fellow from England. We chatted for a few minutes about our ride from the east coast and his from Mexico before letting him ride on. He was already set up at the next tent site over when we got to the Marathon RV Park. I had expected us all to spend the evening talking about our respective travels, but he never came over to us, nor we to him. Are we really so awkward that we actually let slip through our fingers the one opportunity we’ve had to hang out with the only person we’ve encountered who is doing the same thing we are?
Yes, apparently.
Day 37: 14 Feb, 56.7 miles today, 1,934.6 miles total, Marfa, TX
Sean Meadow started out the day by discovering that her rear wheel had gone flat overnight—again. It had happened the day before, as well, but that sorta didn’t feel like it counted since it happened in a warm motel room while I was out getting coffee and breakfast tacos from the gas station across the street. It did count, though, and this made two mornings in a row where the first order of business was putting Sean Meadow’s bike back into working order—and the third day in a row she had to fix a flat on the same damn tire. While obviously not a great start, still it allowed us to wait until the air was tolerably warm before we started riding for the day.
By that time our English bikepacker friend was long gone. We never did speak to him again, and in the morning when he packed up, he seemed to take pains to go around the backside of the RV park and this avoid our campsite. I really couldn’t say whether we offended him somehow or if we managed to find the rare soul more socially awkward than me, but in any case it was kind of a bummer that we never got a chance to get to know him beyond those few minutes chatting on the roadside the day before.
The past few days have really warped my sense of what constitutes a difficult wind, as the forecast for today was not remotely promising, but was nonetheless so much better than it had been a couple of days prior that I dismissed it as not a big deal. While I’m sure being woken up throughout the night by a series of passing freight trains didn’t help the situation, today’s headwind really wore me down. Just another shift on the bike where every inch was work and I reached the end of the day feeling more beaten and demoralized than accomplished. Not even 60 miles today, and I feel like I’ve ridden hundreds. Even the moment when a group of orange-vested construction workers cheered and waved us on only gave me a momentary boost in morale. It was a very sweet gesture, though.
Marfa is a cute little town, though. It’s a shame we’re just passing through. No time to check out the local arts scene or go hunting the Marfa lights. The stars around here are supposed to be awesome—the RV park last night even had an area specifically set aside for stargazing, but the nearly-full moon sorta killed that dream. Oh well. We stopped at a charming little beer garden called Planet Marfa, where I ordered some queso and finally got to try Lone Star beer, which lives up to its counterparts across the country. In all honesty it tastes exactly the way I remember Rainier and Genesee tasting, though I assume if I tried them all side by side there’d be some notable differences. I swear, there is nothing like a cheap regional beer to take the edge off of brutal, long day.
I am so over this wind—but the wind itself is far from over.
Day 38: 15 Feb, 75.5 miles today, 2,010.1 miles total, Van Horn, TX
Despite the flurry of messages from our warm showers host to drive his four runner to meet him at a bar and later a party somewhere in town, we demurred. By 8 we were already under the thick blankets of the guest bed. By 9, we were asleep. Zero days notwithstanding, nothing will turn you into an early-night square quite as quickly as hiking or biking.
In the morning, we packed up as quickly and quietly as we could, trying not to disturb our host. I think we roused him nonetheless, and he came out of his room just as I was filling my water bottles. It was honestly a bit awkward to meet him right as we were dressed and ready to leave, just in time to say thanks and then vanish. To his credit, he continued to be exceedingly generous, offering coffee, tire sealant, anything we might need. We were set, though, and had a long ride ahead, so we rode off into the cold.
Today was the first day we had a tailwind since I can’t remember when. It’s amazing how strong and fit it makes you feel, as if the chips and queso you ate the night before had somehow transformed your body into that of an elite athlete. Or maybe it was the beer. Anyway, it helped, as did the gentle, general downward slope of today’s route. 75 miles is long way, and it feels good to blaze through them for once instead of the constant struggle that had marked this part of the state.
The day was otherwise largely unremarkable. We stopped for lunch under a shaded pavilion behind a crumbling catholic church, filling our water from a garden hose out front. We left when I noticed a white pickup double back while I was filling a couple of bottles, then drive a long way around the church, only to post up on the other side of some shrubs behind the church. “I’ve got no problem explaining ourselves to anyone who asks,” Sean Meadow said. “It’s the people who aren’t asking for an explanation that worry me,” I replied.
We’ve made it to Van Horn, having ridden 300+ miles of US 90 and wind from Del Rio. It’s actually been a pretty good stretch, with wide shoulders and low traffic—the sort of road I pictured when we were first planning this ride. When we leave here, we’ll ride on I-10, one of the busiest interstates in the country. At least we’ll also probably have a headwind.
Day 39: 16 Feb, 0.0 miles today, 2,010.1 miles total, Van Horn, TX
The town of Van Horn is a rarity in my experience. While I’m sure there are plenty of others along the I-10 corridor alone, I’ve never seen an entire municipality the sole industry of which was interstate traffic and which was, functionally, an oversized truck stop with a permanent population. Over all the countless miles I’ve put in driving these major highways over the years, all the days and weeks spent road-tripping across the US, I’ve seen endless rest areas and service islands, sure, but nothing quite like this. From what I can tell, the entire town is made up of motels, repair shops, RV parks, divey Mexican restaurants, gas stations, and horrendously overpriced convenience stores. There are two actual truck stops within walking distance of our hotel, and the front page of the local paper we saw for sale by the register of the aggressively mediocre Mexican place we had dinner last night proclaimed the inevitability of yet another opening up. Every establishment in town has a plus-sized parking lot to allow for the parking of big rigs; there are no sidewalks here, but wide dirt shoulders which are lined in the morning with semis whose drivers are catching a few hours’ sleep in their mobile bunks.
We didn’t select this town for a zero—we’d planned on hanging out in Austin and happened (just barely) to beat the worst storm of the winter there. This was a pure weather zero, though of course we’d take advantage of the opportunity to rest our aching knees and backs. Sean Meadow also had a long series of repairs to tackle: by the time we’d both showered yesterday and our bikes had been sitting idle in the room for an hour or two, both her wheels were flat. After addressing those issues in the ending, both tires were low/flat this morning, requiring a more thorough examination and more meticulous repair, though it wasn’t as if the job had been half-asses the first time around. It gave the day the flavor of a sort of fatalism, as there was not only a serious windstorm forecast for the afternoon, but Sean Meadow’s bike wouldn’t have been rideable in the morning anyway. At this point, all we were trying to do was get our broken asses and rides to El Paso, where we could at long last have a bike shop address the latter—the former would have to wait until the trip was finally over.
The weather that had prompted us to take a day off didn’t hit town until noon. When we went to breakfast at what turned out to be a pretty filthy Mexican place with a distinct ambivalence in re: using clean glasses, mugs, etc., it was still clear and calm enough to trick us into believing we might have made a mistake and sacrificed a decent cycling day for nothing. But by the time midday rolled around, the wind blowing out of the west (which is to say, the direction we’d be heading) had grown strong enough that biking to the next stop wouldn’t have been worth the misery it would have cost. By 1400hr, the surrounding mountains had become almost completely obscured by a massive plume of dust. By 1600hr, going outside at all had become intolerable: dust coated your eyes and throat almost the moment you crossed the threshold, and the visibility had dropped even further, so that a strange brown twilight had settled over the town with several hours yet till sunset. I stood at the window and watched as a caravan of full-sized tumbleweeds went whipping past across the street at 30mph, followed by a specimen I’d swear was at least 8’ in diameter—if not more. We were just settling in to watch a marathon of The Office when the cable went out and we were left ti amuse ourselves.
Growing tired of ramen most nights, we opted not to stay in and forage what we had in our food bags for dinner, but instead made the 1/4 mile walk down the street to the fancy hotel with a restaurant. The food was decent, and my drink was surprisingly large, giving me time to take in the patrons at the neighboring tables. Real Texan men don’t wear masks, of course, but neither do they remove their cowboy/trucker hats at the table. It’s weird to me, this tendency among a group that tends to skew toward the conservative and the very traditional to ignore what seems like such a basic bit of etiquette: it’s rude to wear a hat while dining.
Neither the walk to the restaurant nor back to our more meager lodgings were particularly pleasant. We kept our faces covered, but grit still easily found its way into every hole in my face, even with the wind at my back. There are worse places to be held up by weather than Van Horn, TX, to be sure, but I was nonetheless ready to be anywhere else; maybe even somewhere I wouldn’t have to walk past the same dead cat left to lie in the street every time I wanted a meal. Our room was clean but it was rather cramped with both of us and our bikes, and we somehow kept tracking all over the carpet the nasty little prickers we’d first encountered in Hank’s yard that we’d since learned were called goat heads by the locals. The weather outlook for the morning wasn’t great, but the worst of it was forecast to be over by the time we’d check out and head west, away from this truck stop town and directly into whatever of the wind still remains.
Day 40: 17 Feb, 52.9 miles, 2,063.0 miles total, Texas 87 Truck Stop, Sierra Blanca, TX
The 200ish-mile stretch of US 90 from Sanderson to Van Horn was maybe the first time that Adventure Cycling’s Southern Tier route felt like it came anywhere close to that questionable organization’s commitment to keeping the cyclists following its guidance on “low-traffic” roads with any consistency whatsoever. That trend came to a rather spectacular conclusion when we left Van Horn on Interstate 10.
In all fairness, we were only stuck on one of the busiest highways in the nation for a total of 12 miles—though the access road we were on the rest of the day was never more than 50’ away from it, making this one of the noisiest days of the trip. At least traffic in the access road was light. Pedaling into a headwind for most of the day, we weren’t in any position to turn up our noses at any piece of good fortune, no matter how incidental. We did have to cross the interstate to get over to the proper shoulder—hefting our bikes over the barrier running through the median in the process—when the access road abruptly ended, though, so it isn’t like it was a flawless alternative.
It wasn’t a terrible day, all in all. Pushing against the wind sucked, as per usual, and Sean Meadow, once again, had another low tire to contend with—which she ended up patching over lunch. But the scenery was actually quite lovely, and the riding day was fairly short. We ended the day at a truck stop known for letting bikepackers camp out back. It seemed the best option, as there isn’t much of anything for a further 20 miles, but the roaring of the nearby highway doesn’t exactly lull a person to sleep. Oh well; if nothing else, camping behind a dilapidated, quasi-deserted truck stop is at least a kind of novelty.
I also hope to keep it that way, moving forward.
Day 41: 18 Feb, 75.4 miles today, 2,138.4 miles total, El Paso, TX
I had actually gotten used to the sound of the highway: by the time we were ready to go to sleep, it had become almost a kind of white noise, and I had no trouble drifting off. That is, until a stream of semis pulled up next to our makeshift campsite and parked, leaving their diesel engines idling all night long. The temperature dropped as the evening wore on, and condensation soaked everything inside the tent—we woke up to find the inside walls coated in a layer of frost. In the morning, we packed up quickly, and were just moving our bikes out of the patch of dirt where we’d spent the night when we saw that just by walking them through that area, each of our tires was riddled with goat heads. When we pulled them out, each of our bikes had two flat tires.
So started the day. Breakfast in the truck stop wasn’t half bad, even though the entire restaurant staff consisted of single woman as cook, waitress, hostess, /and bus boy. After eating, we began riding through some utterly empty and desolate and beautiful land along the Mexican border, coming after 20 miles to a highway that would lead us through a series of tiny towns and into El Paso. There, we met the headwind that would dog us to the suburban sprawl outside the city. There too, Sean Meadow would get the next flat tire of the day.
We rode exhausted against the wind, attempting to stop for lunch/water refill at a gas station, only to learn that it was closed due to a funeral. We filled up outside a nearby Family Dollar for 30¢, using a machine intended for filling gallon jugs. And we rode on until the wind we’d been fighting all day was replaced with thick urban traffic. The last 20 miles was a blur of cars and sprawl, thinning only in the last mile to our hotel. Which was when Sean Meadow’s rear tire once more went completely flat. The sun was setting by then, but it didn’t matter. For all intents and purposes we’d made it to El Paso, and the first bike shops we’d seen along the route in over 500 miles. We might have had to walk our bikes the last half mile to the shop in the fading dusk, but we were saved. Tonight, our temperamental children would be someone else’s problem. It was time to find some ding dang barbecue.
Day 42: 19 Feb, 45.8 miles today, 2,184.2 miles total, Las Cruces, NM
It is difficult—if not impossible—not to gorge yourself after biking 75 miles, if presented with the opportunity. Well, maybe it’s easy if you’re a person who is very much not like us, but for Sean Meadow and I, it was never really a question. We stuffed ourselves silly and then marveled at the fact that we hadn’t given ourselves massive tummy aches, though the meat coma that threatened to follow the meal made the prospect of walking the half mile back to the hotel seem all but impossible—and, in fact, I have no memory of it now.
Having a planned a relatively short day, we spent the morning lounging around the room and eating ridiculously fancy artisan donuts from a store around the block while waiting for the word that our bikes were done. When it came, we made the short walk to reclaim responsibility for our finicky kids, both of which now had tubeless tires and brand-new chains. We stopped at the Whataburger around the block from the hotel, worried that as we were leaving Texas we may well not see another one before the trip was over. And so we left El Paso with stomachs once again filled to capacity, and maybe a bit beyond.
The 10 miles out of town were dense with traffic. In all honesty, the drivers around us were pretty reasonable, giving us the full lane and waiting patiently behind us to pass as we pedaled up the long hills toward the north. But even so, riding a bike in six lanes of heavy traffic just plain sucks, even when the motorists aren’t throwing tantrums the way others had in Pensacola or East Texas. It didn’t help that I’d spent part of the morning reading a newspaper article about how drivers had become increasingly reckless since the start of the pandemic—an assertion based on the horrific 22% increase in the number of pedestrian fatalities in the US. I continue to be unnerved by the fact that we have to share space with these oversized death machines for most of the remainder of our long ride, but the intensity of that specific anxiety has started to diminish somewhat when we’re not trying to cope with the congestion to which cities are prone.
All told, we had to wrestle with traffic in El Paso for 30 endless miles, before we finally were able to turn onto a bike path for a while. Running besides the sandy and utterly dry bed of the Rio Grande, the path wound through grass and shrubs that had all been parched and withered by the sun, giving the area the over-saturated color of a world from a low-budget science fiction show. We popped out onto a country road so small and forgotten that no one had bothered to place even a small monument to mark the state line. After 1,000+ miles miles, we passed out of Texas without even knowing it.
25 miles isn’t much by which to judge a state, but so far New Mexico seems a lot, well, like Texas. However, we’re going ti start climbing soon. The hard part of this trip is coming up, and soon.
A little coda to the day: we were setting up camp at an RV park when another bikepacker came walking over with her bike. A section biker heading to El Paso from Phoenix, she was friendly and a good source of information about the stretch we were heading into. Sean Meadow did most of the talking, of course, with me awkwardly chuckling and dropping in the odd the bit of commentary. I may never be at ease around strangers, but it really is nice to connect even briefly with someone else living in our weird, surprisingly isolated world. It’s comforting to know that there is at least one other person who knows what it’s like to be here, now.
