Day 13, 14, 15: still Texas

Valentine, Texas. Everything is closed except the post office. 

Mike and I talk often about what it means to have adventures. One theme that resurfaces from time to time is the idea of keeping yourself uncomfortable. Doing something that keeps you stretching your limits, something foreign, something that makes you think, that shakes up your routine. Texas is doing that. 

The city of El Paso threw us into some uncomfortable cycling situations: urban traffic, road construction, narrow lanes that we, as cyclists, had to exercise our right as a vehicle on the road, to take the lane. Riding on highways with morning traffic, and even a little navigational mishap that had us looking at the border fence from the southern side. We were politely escorted out of the "restricted area", and then I asked the construction crew if I could use their port-o-potty. (They said yes).  Downtown El Paso is not in any danger of gentrification any time soon. Our lunch stop required me to remember every bit of my rudimentary Spanish to translate the menu and order our lunch at a true hole-in-the-wall taco shop. There's a true sense of accomplishment from rising to the challenges thrown at you. 

The long stretches betwen towns in West Texas have been something. A 74 mile stretch of road of nothing, just what we left at point A, our destination at point B, hoping all of our supplies in the bags are enough to get us there. On a day ride at home, most routes are usually an out-and-back or a loop. You know when your uphill climb will be a downhill coast. Out here, at the end of your second day of nothing but uphill, you really hope that the downhill will come tomorrow. And it did, but it was negated by a strong headwind. That was frustrating. That was testing some limits. 

Small town Texas. You take what you can get. One motel in town. One diner in town. In many cases, nothing left of town- too far off the main roads, too close to a bigger city. Traveling by car, it's not a big deal to drive on another 30, 40, 50 miles down the road. By bicycle, 30 miles is 3 more hours. But I don't think the few cyclists will keep these way station towns around much longer. 

Sanderson, Texas. The hotel manager cooked us a hot Indian breakfast of some sort of grain (barley?), lemon, peanuts, yellow curry and a thermos of chai, because there is nowhere to eat in the morning. The next place with food was 60 miles away.