Good Company

"So Papa, what are we going to eat for lunch tomorrow?" I asked the evening before we set off from El Paso on our first day.
"I was thinking of getting some Mexican food," my dad replied.
"You mean, like at a restaurant?" I asked with bewilderment, the thought hadn't even crossed my mind.
"Yeah, I want to get a taste of the local cuisine as we bike!" He insisted.
"Oh," was all I could muster. Things are different when you've got company.

My dad joined me in El Paso and his companionship over the past 700 miles or so of my journey has been a total blessing. I was getting very tired of cycling, of waking up early, biking all day, and not knowing where I am going to sleep at night. I missed my friends and family, my oboe, school, work and our dog Lily. Indeed, I still do, and the longing I feel whenever I listen to oboe music or talk to my friends is no less intense, but my dad has reminded me why I am doing this trip in the first place while also putting my fitness level into perspective.

See the observatory in the background?

"Go easy on your dad, he hasn't done much training," everyone has been telling me, "he will need to go slowly the first few days as he gets in shape." I was looking forward to those first easy days when my dad was exhausted and I was pedaling along like it was nothing, but they never did happen. As soon as we got out of El Paso where I was leading because I had done the research for directions, papa zoomed ahead. During the next few days, I found myself following meekly behind my 51 year old father who had only done a few 20 mile training rides while I biked 1,500 miles from San Francisco. Needless to say, it was humbling, frustrating even, for one would hope that in 1,500 miles, one would gain some level of increased physical fitness.

 I injured my Achilles tendon during the 90 mile ride from Kingston to Las Cruces and churning slowly behind my dad's ever diminishing form, I began to notice twinges in my knee again. Between the renewed physical pain and the reality check of barely being able to keep up with my dad, I was forced to accept that I am not going to be able to bike the whole way home. It was a very difficult thing to do, but since I have let go of biking all the way home, the rest of my trip is looking a lot more exciting. I have not decided where I will take a train/bus, but I know it will happen at some point and I am not going to worry about putting in 100+ mile days repeatedly, rushing home without taking the time to appreciate the places I visit.

My room in Loma del Chivo.

However, I won't say that I wasn't excited when papa and I completed our first century mile ride! After a fabulous rest day at the McDonald Observatory in the Davis Mountains where we got a VIP tour of the telescopes from our wonderful warm showers host and participated in a "star party" during which we sat in an outdoor amphitheater for a tour of the constellations and looked at various planets, galaxies, etc. through many different kinds of telescopes, we headed down the mountain to Marathon TX. In Marathon, we made ourselves a hearty dinner at Loma del Chivo, a collection of artistic buildings that form a sort of hippy commune which is available to touring cyclists on Warmshowers.org and gratefully slept a sound night's sleep. The bed I stayed in was a mattress in an alcove on the roof that opened to a wide porch which faced a beautiful sunset that evening, definitely the best sleeping spot of my trip so far.

The open air kitchen at Loma del Chivo

The next morning, papa and I rose at 4:30, and after meditation, yoga (my dad has been inspiring me with his knowledge of yoga and it has been a great compliment to my habitual morning meditation) and a quick breakfast, we left Marathon in the dark. We were hoping to make it the 43 miles to the road block 10 miles outside of Sanderson by noon because there were time trials for a road race going on and we knew that we wouldn't be able to bike through to Sanderson until the lunch break at noon.

 But as the sky slowly brightened, we found ourselves moving much faster than we had anticipated, and by the time we arrived at the road block, it was only 10:45. Bummer, we thought, we have to wait for 1:15 until the time trials closed down. But it quickly became apparent that the officer organizing the road block had different plans for us, and before long, our bikes were packed up into the back of a sheriff's truck and we were zooming down the road at 50 miles an hour. We were probably the only people who would have called it zooming though, the race car driver who was also getting a ride with us seemed to think that anything under 200 mph was slow.

When we arrived in Sanderson, papa bought himself a huge lunch consisting of half a chicken, a tortilla, beans, vegetables and home fries which he devoured while I struggled to finish the container of brown rice pasta, quinoa and zuchinni I had packed for both of us to eat for lunch. We had to take a break to digest after the feast, but since we had been driven the 10 miles from Sanderson, we were ahead of schedule. Well, sort of. We still had over 60 miles to get to Langtry, the next town on the route, but after such a perfect morning, 105 miles suddenly felt possible. So we filled our water containers and hit the road again.

As the afternoon dragged on, fatigue set in. The heat didn't help, and by 6:00 we were exhausted, but the barren desert and fences lining both sides of the road offered no refuge to camp in. We took a long break at one of the many "Picnic Areas" in Texas, one of the best uses of Texan tax dollars I can think of, and ate tortillas with avocado, green pepper and hummus and carob energy chunks for dinner before wearily climbing back onto our bikes for the last 15 miles to Langtry. At the end of the day, we had covered 115 miles, 105 by bike and 10 by car, a feat well worth the effort.

The next day couldn't have been more different. We woke up late and by the time we got on the road, the wind was howling. In the wrong direction. This was not just a breeze, or a blustery day, but a steady wall of air that slammed into our little bikes and bodies incessantly. The constant battering reminded me of a basketball drill where some one stands under the basket with a pad and smashes you as you go in for a lay-up. Except that basketball drills don't last eight hours.

Needless to say, it was a brutally difficult day even though we biked less than 40 miles. It made our prospects of reaching Austin by Wednesday morning look very grim. The winds abetted slightly the day after though, and we made it past Del Rio, the first large town since El Paso. In Del Rio, I rejuvenated our food supply, perhaps a little too zealously, at the HEB, a large grocery store. The selection of food was a bit much for me to handle after a week of miniature general stores with only a few wilted, non-organic vegetables and canned beans among the shelves full of heavily processed foods. I even bought a can of coconut milk.

In all the excitement of the grocery store, we completely neglected the hardware store though and forgot to buy foel for our stove! Thus, 20 miles East of Del Rio, I suddenly realized that our coconut curry wasn't going to happen. But papa and I are a resourceful team and soon had a solar cooker set up on the back of my bike to cook macaroni on our way to Bracketville. We considered making a cookbook about bicyle tour solar cooking but the pale, rubbery paste we ate that night at the RV campground in Fort Clark Springs was considerably less brilliant than the idea of strapping a plastic bag filled with water and macaroni to the back of my bike.

Yep, we're in Texas

The coconut curry dream did not die however, for I was able to cook in a microwave at the RV campground. We ate our curry with carrots, broccoli, scallions and cashews partway down the hill before Leakey (pronounced Lakey) with a gorgeous view of the tree covered hills later that evening. The moment was too perfect to think that we would have been any better off had we remembered to buy isobutane in Del Rio.

Hills? Gorgeous views? What are you talking about? Texas is supposed to be flat, dry, hot and desolate, a dreary monotony of ranches, oil rigs and fracking stretching endlessly into the desert. Or at least that was the vague impression I had of Texas before I entered the state. I was surprised to find however, that some areas of Texas are actually quite lush and very hilly. That is not to say that our ride from El Paso did not include several very long days through ruthlessly hot and boring desert, featuring nothing but creosote bushes and little boxes which, we assumed, house cameras for border patrol (we spent much of our ride from El Paso to Del Rio less than 50 miles from the Mexican border), but the day after we stayed at the RV park, the landscape changed dramatically. There were many steep hills and...trees! As we continued East and North to Hunt, we climbed countless hills which provided an interesting change in landscape as the elevation changed.

And when we arrived in Hunt, it was like entering a different world. Pedaling along the river, there were trees that hung over the road, big, lush, hardwoods like nothing I had seen in, well, months. I have been biking through desert since the California coast, and being in a place with at least some moisture and trees makes me happy. I forgot how much I love trees.

Swimming in the springs!

Our hosts in Hunt were truly incredible. Lou and Linda did everything they could to make our stay enjoyable, and the beautiful apartment we slept in was the perfect place to reorganize before my dad left from Austin. I went through all of my gear, doing repairs and sending a large portion of it home with my dad. I was only able to have this space and time to prepare for the next section of my journey because Lou drove us 80 miles towards Austin on Tuesday, allowing us to make it into Austin Tuesday night so that we could have the whole day on Wednesday to explore Austin. The ride was a total blessing, for it gave us a chance to see Austin, which is an awesome city.

On Wednesday morning, papa and I went swimming in the natural springs right in the city which was a treat. Swimming in live, fresh, cold water was a visceral way to mark my emergence from the desert, and it was so cool to see the city's skyscrapers from the beauty of a natural spring. Later that day, my dad went on a scooter tour of the city with our warm showers host while I worked in the library at the University of Texas at Austin and that evening, we did a bike tour of Austin after dinner. Palmer, our host, was an awesome tour guide and made sure that we didn't leave the city without seeing the basics at the very least: the capitol, a graffiti park, a skate/trick bike park, the east side neighborhood where most of the houses have been turned into bars and restaurants, an outdoor food court, and the University of Texas. I'm not much of a city person, but I have to say, Austin has a great attitude and I wish I had had the energy to stay up and go to a drag show or listen to some live music.

 Austin is behind me now and I said goodbye to my dad this morning. It was sad to see him go, but I know that in the month to come, the memory of the boyish grin he held on his face nearly every time I looked over at him when we were riding together will carry me through the hard days. I am still a long ways from home, but I have no doubt that the next month of biking/travelling will be rich with adventure and good people, and I will continue to learn from the places I pass by.

Love, peace, and appreciation,
Sonya

PS. I am thinking about trying to find a way to help with disaster relief in the South from the tornadoes, but I don't know where to start. If you have any ideas for how I could get involved, please let me know.

PPS. I'm going to the University of Vermont in the fall!

This was the sweetest calf! He came over to greet us when we biked by, and then ran alongside us as far as the fence would let him!

Austin has some great art!

The makeshift tent. This was set up after we were kicked out of our original spot by the railroad police because we were camped too close to the tracks.