Day 29: 6 Feb, 39.3 miles today, 1,503.0 miles total, Fredericksburg, TX
Made it about half as far as we planned today. Probably not going anywhere tomorrow. Not a great start to the week.
The day began, if not exactly promising, still not disastrously. We got a later start than hoped, but the morning was nonetheless productive, with both of us taking care of a few responsible-adult type things while we had use of the RV park’s wi-fi. It had warmed up quite a bit by the time we left, and after a fair night’s sleep and a few morning stretches, my back was back to being low-key annoying and easy to ignore rather than the agonizing ball of misery it had become toward the end of the day before. I was as ready to resume taking on Texas Hill Country as I was ever likely to be.
It really is beautiful, this spiny, half-desert landscape, and I stopped briefly a few times during the morning just to take it in. But as the name might suggest, it’s hilly as fuck, and with the head wind that started picking up as the miles went by, I was definitely struggling by the time we hit Fredericksburg. Thankfully there was a Whataburger a half mile off route, so we had that to look forward to for lunch.
As we were riding the last few blocks to the burger place, I starting hearing a clanging sound, once per pedal rotation. Nothing seemed to be falling off the bike, and it still rode fine, so I kept pedaling into the parking lot. It was there that I discovered that the inner chain-ring had fallen off the assembly and was just kinda hanging around the bottom bracket. Three of the four screws that had held in place had somehow fallen out, lost to backroads of Texas. Fuuuuuuuuck.
The why didn’t particularly matter nearly as much as the what, but my suspicions were that when the bike techs in Austin were done working on my bottom bracket, they didn’t retighten the chainring assembly properly. I assume it was an easy thing to overlook, but I’d never seen anything quite like this happen in decades of cycling, and in any case it had left us stranded. It was midday on Sunday. The local bike shop, Hill Country Bicycle Works, wouldn’t open until Tuesday morning. A half hour spend combing through all the bolts and screws in Ace hardware failed to turn up anything that was even kinda sorta a little bit close. We found a backyard to camp in on warm showers, and then went to get a milkshake at Sonic.
We are now stuck here until the bike shop opens—and if they don’t have the right parts, we could be here longer.
If it ain’t one thing, it’s another, seems like. Damn, damn, damn.
Day 30: 7 Feb, 38.1 miles, 1,541.1 miles total, Kerrville, TX
The man living in the house we slept behind I’m going to call Hank. Born and raised in Fredericksburg, Hank is every inch the image of a stereotypical white Texan, native to a town like Fredericksburg, that pops into your head. Tall and thin as a rail in his tight jeans (cowboy style, not hipster), baseball cap, and American flag shirt, he has a sort of rugged masculine bearing that isn’t much affected by the lazy eye or missing tooth. His laid back demeanor and easy texas drawl put you immediately at ease, and we could not possibly have asked for a friendlier or more helpful host.
After pointing out where to pitch our tent—and which parts of the yard to avoid due to an infestation of some wily Texan sticker thorn type things—he let us get settled in before taking us down the road to show us the bath house where we could shower, and the pool-side bathroom at the nearby Inn that would be open to our use (“though if y’all have an emergency you can come inside the house”). We would even be welcome to help ourselves to what would turn out to be the best continental breakfast of the trip so far. All of which was great to hear, as we were stuck in Fredericksburg until such time as we could get my drivetrain fixed.
We settled in for the night, taking several minutes to pick out all the errant sticker thorn type things we’d tracked in with us (which were easy enough to handle until you touched them in just the wrong way and then they hurt like hell). I slept badly, waking up at what I though must nearly be dawn only to realize it was barely past 2300hrs, then sleeping only fitfully until dawn actually finally broke. Shortly after 0700hrs, I staggered down the street and was making my way up to the poolside bathroom when Hank came out of the Inn office, excited to tell me that he’d found a Chevy Suburban we could borrow, so we could take my bike the 60 miles south to San Antonio, where he had already confirmed a half-dozen bike shops would be open.
After a satisfying breakfast, Hank showed up with the SUV and we loaded up the bike and headed out. The Suburban was near empty, and though Hank tried to discourage me from paying for gas, I insisted—his compromise was to only put in maybe a little more than he figured we’d need for the round trip. And down to San Antonio we went, Hank telling stories about his friend the biker, the one who had a profile on warm showers and whom Sean Meadow had contacted when we realized we wouldn’t be biking any farther until my bike got to a shop, and who had replied to her with an address and the vague direction to “ask Hank if you have any questions.” Hank clearly thought a lot of this guy, who was something of a self-styled adventurer and who had made Hank is sort of unofficial sidekick. When he motorcycled the Great Divide route, he took him along on a second bike. When he decided to bike the southern tier from Fredericksburg to the Mississippi and bailed to rethink the route because the roads were too dangerous, Hank was the person he called to pick him up (he did complete that trip after picking a safer way to New Roads, LA—but that story did a lot to confirm for me the sadism inherent in the official Adventure Cycling route). And he encouraged Hank, a skilled handyman and carpenter, to travel and to see the world on his own.
We started by going to the REI, which seemed the most likely place to have the parts I needed, but all of the bike techs were gone for the morning, leaving only a very friendly but very confused cashier to try and help us. She actually did, as she directed us to a bike shop almost directly around the corner. The mechanic there was able to find the bolts and spacers I needed almost immediately, and he had them installed in under ten minutes. The job (and a few extra bolts, just in case) ran me all of $17. Just like that, we were done.
The way back to Fredericksburg was a lot foggier, and the hypnosis of riding shotgun worked in tandem with my fatigue from the night before and I started dozing off here and there. I wished I had slept through an anecdote Hank shared about going with his bike friend to a hotel in Harpers Ferry, WV, where the other clientele had mostly been poor, black, and “thuggish,” and Hank had worried “am I gonna half to kill some gangbanger tonight?” I thought a lot about a post I’d seen by Ibram X. Kendi in reference to the horrific murder of Amir Locke while I was having trouble sleeping: “to racist logic, Black people can’t be scared; only scary…can’t self defend; only engage in violence. Meanwhile, to racist logic, White people can’t be scary; only scared. White supremacists never engage in violence; only self-defense…”
I know that I should have spoken up then, but I didn’t. I’d seen the kindness this man have given to Sean Meadow and me without a second thought, and I froze. I should have found a way to help him find that kindness for strangers of color. A recurring theme in this trip for me is how accessible the country is for Sean Meadow and me because of our lily-white skin, when it isn’t that way for everyone else—and I’m not even a full-blooded gringo. Here was an opportunity to address that fundamental disparity, and I failed. I fucking dozed off.
When we made it back to Fredericksburg, I told Hank that I didn’t know how to thank him for everything he’d done—which was true regardless of anything else. He said, “don’t worry about it. It’s just basic Texan hospitality.” Then he gave Sean Meadow and I each a giant link of venison sausage he was curing in his kitchen. He was so ridiculously kind to us, really. It hurt to think that our skin color could have anything to do with it.
He left to return the SUV while we were packing up our bikes and changing clothes, so we left him a note at the Inn and started out to make what we could of the afternoon. And man, what an afternoon it turned out to be. Not long out of Fredericksburg, we hit probably 30 miles of totally empty country roads, small, quiet, utterly lovely. We ride the wild hills with the wind, for once, at our backs. The biking was smooth and fun, for all the ups and downs, and the scenery was spectacular. It was a hell of a way to finish out the day—with probably the best stretch of riding we’d seen so far in 1,500 miles.
We rolled into the KOA in Kerrville right at sunset. I’d never stayed at one of these places before. I will say the fact that they left the heated rec room unlocked all night just because we two tenters were there was a super nice touch. It gave me somewhere warm to write all this blather down.
Day 31: 8 Feb, 47.1 miles today, 1,588.2 miles total, Vanderpool, TX
Our night at the KOA was not the blissful sleepfest we had hoped for (and that I kinda needed after barely sleeping the night before). We were right by a road that turned out be busy throughout the entire night, campground lights shined into our tent, and the condensation was so bad everything inside got soaked—and since it was well below freezing, we spent the night being uncomfortably cold in damp sleeping bags under a growing layer of frost.
So it took us a while to our act together in the morning. We spent a fair bit of time drying things out in the sun while we warmed other of our possessions (and ourselves) in the heated rec room, and in the end didn’t get rolling until quarter after 10. Not a super terrific start when you wanna make miles in hill country.
And we had to work for every one today. Not only was the terrain challenging, but the wind had picked up since the day before and was really working against us. On top of that, the roads we spent nearly the whole day on were almost entirely aggregate with hardly any asphalt holding it in place, which made for a really rough ride. Most of the day it felt like we couldn’t build any momentum whatsoever, and we had to work going downhill almost as much as we did going up. Even so, today’s scenery was even more spectacular than yesterday’s had been. We found ourselves in the middle of nowhere. No cars, no cell service, no evidence of civilization beyond the road beneath our wheels. It’s the nearest thing to being in the backcountry we’ve experienced on this trip, and it was kind of wonderful.
But we were not making great time—with the exception of the last seven miles where we basically rode down a mountain and coasted all the way to the RV park where we got sodas and talked about the remains of the day. We only had 15 more miles to go to reach our planned destination, but we’d still have to climb and descend not one but two more mountains to get there. We weren’t convinced we could do that before the sun set, and furthermore we weren’t sure where we’d be able to sleep once we got there. The prospect of trying to find shelter in the dark was the deciding factor in choosing to stop here at this lonely and empty RV park, but I think it was the better move in any case. The nearby roads are much quieter than any we’ve camped near in recent memory, the surrounding lights are dimmer, the environment is pretty, peaceful, and chill. It’s already cold, as per usual, but I’m hopeful of finally getting a half decent night’s sleep. Lord knows I could use one. Hopefully soon we can put these small mileage days behind us and start making some real progress westward—but that’s not likely to happen for another day at a minimum. Oh well, at least this is a truly beautiful place through which to crawl.
Day 32: 9 Feb, 39.8 miles today, 1,628.0 miles total, Camp Wood, TX
Another short day, in terms of mileage, but not in terms of elevation gain. Went up (and eventually down) the three biggest climbs I’ve ever made on a bicycle, period, let alone on this trip. Started the first one almost immediately, and it was apparent right away that although I’d been chilly at camp, I was way overdressed to be biking up a mountain in direct sunlight. Got to a little shaded picnic area at the top and basically stripped so I could spend the rest of the day in shorts and a t-shirt. All but the last 3.7 miles were on tiny, windy two-laners with zero shoulder but also nearly zero traffic. The scenery was truly spectacular today, with green-shrub covered mountains rolling away in every direction, and it all felt like ours.
After two big climbs/descents we rolled into the tiny town of Leakey just in time for lunch and spotted a nearby circle of food trucks 100’ from the route. BBQ brisket sandwich could not have been better timed. Really glad we stopped when we did yesterday, as it set up today like a perfect line of dominoes.
After stuffing ourselves in Leakey, we went out to tackle the biggest climb of the day, while the sun was at its highest and most brutal. It’s pretty crazy that we can be shivering in our sleeping bags at 0500hrs and baking alive by noon—with swings between night day of 30° or more, this pseudo-desert climate doesn’t fuck around.
Anyway, a little more traffic on this road, but nothing terrible. We got passed by a motorcyclist who yelled “y’all are tough as nails!” as he rode by. By the time we got to the top, I was sweating sunscreen into my right eye so badly I had to keep it scrunched shut the last half mile up. The moment the road leveled out, I pulled off into the shade. I knew I was edging into dangerous territory, especially when I started fumbling taking off my helmet. Spent 10 minutes cooling off in a gentle breeze, and I could feel my temperature drop to a more reasonable level. Lots of ups and downs along the ridgeline, and then we coasted down out of the hill country and into the little town of Camp Wood, where we hopped on an obnoxiously busy state highway.
Which is where I got a flat—my fourth, I think—one mile away from our destination.
Oh well. It’s not an adventure if everything goes smoothly.
Day 33: 10 Feb, 76.2 miles today, 1,704.2 miles total, Del Rio, TX
Relatively flat day, at least compared to the terrain since we left Austin. That being the case we decided yesterday to push the 75+ miles to Del Rio today. Up before dawn, it was certainly warmer than it had been lately, but it was definitely still chilly. We started riding with the sun barely above the hills to the east, bundled against the chill. The next 15 miles was an exercise in slowly stripping off pieces of outerwear until we hit the day’s first full stop and reconfigured our outfits.
From there it was 30 miles of empty, dry, scraggly country between us and the next small outpost of human civilization. We saw no cars, which was nice. But there was also nowhere to stop and rest the entire way. We stopped a dozen miles out from Brackettville to cool off in the shade of a road sign and peel off the remaining underlayers now rendered useless by the overwhelming midday sun. I stood in the road and stripped to my socks and chamois so I could avoid getting sand or debris in my shoes. I don’t think we saw a car the entire time we were stopped.
In Brackettville we stopped at a local place for burgers and a shake and refilled our water from a spigot sticking out of the adjacent lawn, then we headed west to do the remaining 30 miles to Del Rio more or less in one go. It’s brutal not to have anywhere to just sit and rest for a few minutes in the shade. It makes it the day that much more of a slog when you can’t just take a couple of minutes to recuperate.
We must have passed a USAF base coming into town, as we saw fighter jets doing maneuvers directly overhead. That was a little bit of fun in what was otherwise a manifestly unpleasant stretch of road, stuck on the shoulder of US 90, broiling in the pitiless sun as cars and trucks roared close by. I can’t believe how hot this area is this early in the year. And it looks as if this is what the rest of the state of Texas will be like, all the way to El Paso: desolate, dry, open, parched, blindingly hot, and unforgiving.
Yee haw, y’all.
Day 34: 11 Feb, 58.5 miles today, 1,762.7 miles total, Langtry, TX
It came on us suddenly—at least that’s the way it felt. We had a few blissful days out of Austin, riding empty hills from tiny town to tiny town, finding solitude on the lonely roads, but still never more than 15 or 20 miles from the next water spigot or cold soda. Then one day we found ourselves baking in the desert like ants under a magnifying glass, without hope of water or even shade for the next 30 miles. Then it happened again the next day. Tomorrow it’s going to be 60 miles—without even the niceties of solitude and quiet contemplation. We’re back on the shoulder of US 90, and though it’s less busy in west Texas than it was in Florida, it’s still a highway with a fair bit of traffic. There’s just also nowhere to stop and no services of any kind. A monotonous hour for any of the truckers blowing past us at 80mph, but a day’s ride for us. And a hot, uncomfortable one at that.
My upper back/shoulder situation seemed to have plateaued for several weeks, but was noticeably worse today. At this point it bothers me when I’m not riding, as well. My knees and my palms have also settled into a constant ache—nothing so bad as to require direct attention, but a perpetual discomfort nonetheless. This kind of constant low-grade misery is a part of thru-hiking as well.
I’ve changed up my riding outfit somewhat, adding a white long sleeve polyester shirt I picked up at Walmart for $11 in an attempt to keep the sun off my arms. I’ve also started wearing my buff so it covers my ears, neck, and all of my face by the eyes—what my friend Cricket called the “hollow man” look on the PCT. I don’t particularly like the way all this extra fabric feels in the heat, but it’s still a huge improvement over getting blasted all day long by the cruel, heavy sun.
Langtry, TX is a little blip about a mile off of US 90, which seems to have one store that may or may not be open. We located a spigot and a bathroom for the morning—a museum dedicated to Judge Roy Bean and his old west style of law-keepin’. Not to be dismissive of a figure clearly important to local history, but really we just a place to poop and stock up on clean water for tomorrow’s long, dry push. We found unserviced camping beside a community center than seems currently to be in some level of disrepair, and this is—by far—the darkest and quietest spot we’ve pitched a tent yet. A true benefit to being in the middle of nowhere.
Day 35: 12 Feb, 61.2 miles today, 1,823.9 miles total, Sanderson, TX
And it was quiet. Even the occasional freight train—frequent bane of sleepless nights camped close enough to the tracks to feel each horn blast rattle our bones—was far enough away that the sound was muted and actually soothing. As the night came on, I succumbed to the peace of the evening and slept like a goddamned log. Until the wind picked up shortly before midnight, and shook the tent with such violence that I was almost certain it would carried off into the canyons carving out the US/Mexican border, with us still inside.
Dawn found us already packed up and working our way through a cold breakfast so we could be on our way before the wind gathered too much strength. It really was a beautiful location—even the rustic-chic property next door bordered by a fence made of unevenly sized and spaced sticks had its charm. The owner had stopped by the evening prior, pulling up in front of the steps where we were eating dinner in his diesel pickup, the engine of which was too loud for us to hear 70% of what he was saying to us. He was friendly, offering us a place to shower and an alternative place to pitch our tent. The three confederate flags in his yard made me wonder how hospitable he’d have been to anyone with a skin hue darker than copy-paper white, however. The same story as always.
We stopped by the museum promptly at opening for a quick poop and, in hiker-speak, to “camel up” before starting the 60 miles to Sanderson. All this means, basically, is to fill up all of your bottles at the source and then drink as much as you can stand before leaving. It’s good practice before any long water carry; this day, as it turned out, was indeed a long one.
The wind was an issue immediately, and it made us work for every inch of those 60 miles. After an hour we’d gone only 8 miles, but still needed a quick moment to rest. We were stopped only about 5 minutes, but it was enough time for Sean Meadow’s bike to topple over in the wind, snapping the cell phone mount right off her handlebars.
It was slow, excruciating, and exhausting riding, and despite the early start, it took us until after noon to reach the halfway point. I made it to the little concrete picnic area first, and after several minutes with no Sean Meadow, I rode back along the route until I found her walking her bike. She’d gotten a flat. Of course she’d gotten a flat. We spent an hour at that little stand fixing her tire and making some adjustments to my derailleur that I would then need to fix when we stopped 10 miles later at the complex of dilapidated metal buildings called Dryden to buy sodas at an unexpected general store. My bike seemed to be doing better, but as we pulled out of Dryden, a strap from one of Sean Meadow’s panniers came loose and got wrapped around her axle until it (the strap) broke. We got it out and headed back into the wind.
By the time we hit the picnic area 3 miles east of Sanderson, the sun was setting and Sean Meadow was not doing well. A pain that had been dogging her all day had steadily worsened until it had become increasingly difficult to ride. I was wiped out and aching all over and my hands felt like someone had been working on them with hammers, but she was having a much worse day. We pretty much crawled the last few miles into town.
After the last 24 hours, setting up camp seemed like too harsh a punishment for either of us to contemplate, so we opted for a motel. The woman at check in smiled wanly when I asked where we could find something to eat and she explained that our best option was the gas station across the street. “Welcome to Sanderson,” she shrugged. It didn’t matter. The weird, lovecraftian geometry of the shower tiles, the broken glass and large dead cockroach behind the bedside stand I had to move out of the way of the outlet I needed to use, the door that seemed not to unlock and the handle that I could barely turn, none of it mattered. It had been a slog, a truly awful, miserable, and long, long day, but we were finally out of the fucking west Texas wind, and that, for now, was enough.
