After spending a couple of great days in Dallas with my jungle-buddy Davis – who helped me with all the preparations of my upcoming trip: driving me to stores, taking me to buy a bike, etc. – I feel it is time to hit the road towards Port Aransas, to visit my friend Katie. So there I go.
I leave Dallas on the morning of the 6th of July. Set my alarm at five in the morning, got up at 7. Getting that early start: FAIL. But, no real battles lost so far. I take the DART (train) to the south side of the city, and start finding my way of of there. This turns out to be nearly impossible. I cannot believe how big Dallas is.
Luckily, there’s not too much sun. It’s only about 33 degrees Celsius. YAY. This means that I can probably ride through the afternoon, on the hottest hours of the day. Bad idea. Result: enormous sunburns, near dehydration, and a painful reminder why this side of Texas is called the Hill Country. (thank you to all of the kindhearted people that felt sorry for me and offered me water). About 6 hours into my trips I must have had 2 panick attacks, and about fifty-six breaks. Boy, is it hot in this country.
Around eight o’ clock, I realize it is probably time to start looking for a place to camp. I end up camping in the backyard of a cowboy-family, and watching bear grills with the grandfather.
Day 2: I am getting better at this waking up thing, I leave the cowboy’s yard at around seven in the morning feeling refreshed after a good night’s sleep. The biking was amazing! For the first 200 meters, at least. That’s when the bike breaks down. What to do, what to do? I decide on trying the international ‘HELP ME MY VEHICLE BROKE DOWN’ sign a.k.a. ‘wave your arms up and down’. After the first five cars pass I’m starting to get a little bit nervous, it’s going to be a walk of at least 20 miles back to the next town…. that will take me the whole day… and get me no closer to Port Aransas. Luckily, car (read: big-ass pick-up truck) 7 stops. A realty agent, who takes me to see some houses before he drives me to the nearest town, Waxahachie. Their bike shop doesn’t open until eleven in the morning, but no worries, there is a Mexican place right across the street from it, which gives me about 2 hours to stuff myself with all kinds of delicious tacos and about 3 liters of terrible coffee. Somewhere in between taco number 5 and 6, a friendly looking man walks up to me and starts asking me questions about my trip. He turns out to be a very nice man, and a cyclist! He is so fascinated by my adventure, that he decides to wait for me until the shop opens, and make sure my bike gets fixed. Thank God for this man. The mechanic cannot fix my bike, and the nearest shop that can fix it, is about another 20 miles back (by which time I would nearly be back in Dallas). Carl decides to drive me there, wait with me, and once the bike is fixed, he decides to drive me to a little town called Hillsboro, to make up for the time I lost in the morning. Bless this man. And his mother’s oatmeal cookies are probably the best thing I ever had.
That night I make it to Waco -after spending the afternoon riding down highway 77 in what is still for obvious reasons called the Hill Country- , and I camp in an RV camp a little north of the town. The owners of the camp let me stay there for free, use the shower, and even buy me a beer ! During the night I wake up because of a scary noise. No snakes or scorpions, – those things can’t get to me anymore – I wake up to the sound of my bike rack breaking, my worse fear. No rack, no way to transport my luggage, no way to bike. So, the next morning I have to rely on the random goodness of strangers again…. No biggie, the owner’s son will drive me to the nearest bike shop right away, and even gives me his number in case something goes wrong. Thank God for Texans!
The rack ends up costing me 65 dollars, which is 50 dollars more than the Walmart version cost me, but it looks like it will be more than worth it. By the time it is installed on the bike, it’s already 12, the hottest hour of the day…. I decide to hitch-hike with the bike, at least a couple of miles, and wait out the heat. This was the best decision I ever made, turns out, the Hill Country is big. And its hills even bigger. Let me shortly list the amazing people I met this afternoon: the Mexican immigrant, who told me all about his illegal crossing the Mexican border into Texas, the rodeo cowboy, the couple of tow-truckers, who bought me a burger, and showed me a great time, and last but not least: the African american dad and his son, who showed me around several antique dealers and let me camp in their yard in Yoakum, a small town just a little bit north of Victoria. And so day 3 turns out to be an amazing day after all, even though not much biking was done.
Day 4: I finally get the super early start I had been dreaming of all week, I’m on the bike at 5.30 in the morning! What an amazing way to start the day! The biking is absolutely beautiful, it feels like I am gliding through a painting. I stop for a first small break in a little town about 25 miles further, and decide to make my way to the next town, another 20 miles, where I’ll stop to wait until the heat dies down. Turns out the other small town is very small. It counts exactly 2 houses and no place whatsoever to get some lunch, and more importantly, some air-conditioning. Completely exhausted from biking 45 miles before 11 o’clock in the morning, this nearly breaks me. I don’t know what to do… the next town is another 20 miles, and it is getting hot, too hot to bike. Luckily, another saviour finds his way to me. -‘If I would like a ride to the next town?’ -Yes Please! -‘If I have money to eat?’ Yes sir, please do not worry about me – I reckon I must have looked and smelled like a homeless person by that time- Once again, people in Texas are way too nice.
In the next town, I find a subway (the restaurant). While I am devouring a meatball sub (I might have picked up eating meat in the past 4 months 😉 ), another guy walks up to me and starts asking me questions about my trip. ‘Oh, you’re going to Corpus Christi?’, well, just hop in my truck, I’m going that way!
So I end up getting to corpus on Thursday. A day early. BAM. To conclude my first week biking I must come to a couple conclusions. I was not ready for this (even though everybody had warned me about this), biking in Texas is horrible, since there are no bicycle roads (even though everybody had warned me about this), and it is hot in this state (even though everybody had warned me about this).
After a couple of days of resting, and spending time with Katie and her wonderful family, I (we) come to the conclusion that I have to admit failure. I am not going to abort mission. But I will report the mission to New Orleans. That’s where I’ll get on my bike again. There are bike roads, it is flat, and I will no longer have to suffer southern winds while riding south. I guess the first key to success is to be able to admit failure, and to find the courage to change your plans.
thebyciclediaries 