Daily Miles: 55
Total Miles: 2005
Avg: 10.3
Max: 18.8
Time on the Bike: 05:20:40
Last night was pretty terrible and I didn’t sleep well. The dog kept barking all night and people kept driving back and forth near my tent. I’m not sure where they were going because there is nothing in Sanderson. At one point two gentlemen at 1 in the morning decided to go for a walk and talked real loud. If I had paid the ful 7 dollars to camp there I would have been pretty upset. But luckily another cycle tourist by the name of Mathias, traveling east, stopped at the campground and we shared a site.
Mathias was a cool guy and he is a writer. He has published several books and used to teach writing in Denver. Right now he is cycling to cities across the US to do something called ‘Dream Delivery’. For 40 dollars a month Mathias will hand deliver by bicycle a dream to your doorstep every morning for the month he is in that city. It’s a pretty cool idea. He’s already done this in Tuscan and Marfa. He’s going to Austin next and then Chicago. If your interested in learning more visit dreamdeliveryservice.com.
Morning finally came and I was out on the road before Mathias even woke up. It was 55 miles to the next town of Marathon and I wanted to get some cooler miles in as it was forecast to be over 90 today.
The riding today was very humiliating and hard. I had an 18 mph headwind all day. At times I was getting pushed back so hard I was going only 7 mph on flat ground. I gradually climbed all day as well and there were no descents. This made matters worse, and when I thought things couldn’t get more debilitating I learned that my rear tire was flat.
Why is it always the rear tire? It’s the harder one of the two to fix because I have to take all my bags off and screw around with the drivetrain to get it off. And I always have a hard time putting it back on because of the cog set and chain.
I pulled over to the side of the road and unloaded everything. The sun was intense and beat down on me. There are no trees over a few feet tall out here and thus no shade.
I took off the wheel and pulled away the tire to get at the tube. I found the small hole that had developed due to a small but sharp pebble that had lodged itself in my tire tread. I patched it easily and put my bike back together. In the meantime, people passed me in vehicles and stared. Nobody stopped to ask if I was okay. Not that they needed to, but if I saw a cyclist with his or her bike all apart 30 miles from any civilization in the middle of the hot desert, you bet I would slow down and ask if they were alright. Instead, people just stared and carried on. One car even slowed down just enough so they could film me with thier phone. They didn’t even wave. I was like some strange specimen in this big zoo of western Texas put on display for the recreation and enjoyment of families in thier too big RVs.
I finally made it to Marathon around 3. I stopped at the very small grocery store in town to get a soda. I was sick of drinking water and wanted something with sugar. I sat outside and watched people going in and out of the store. A real cowboy looking guy in a big pick up truck pulled up. He had two young sons, around 5 and 8. He had a few rifles strapped to the back of the inside cab, and when he got out he had a nice checkered collard shirt tucked into his Levi jeans. He adjusted his black cowboy hat and acknowledged me with a nod before walking inside.
His sons followed him in. They were young and full of life living out here in the middle of nowhere, probably on some cattle ranch. I wondered if they would grow up to hate this town and want to move away to the city one day.
I pictured them doing that and moving somewhere like Chicago or Austin or Los Angeles. Big jobs in the city with shirts and ties and nice shoes. Lots of clients to please and business lunches to attend. Lots of nights out at the bar making deals and plotting their next business move. All the while thinking back to Marathon Texas and missing the ranch and the open air, the heat of the sun and the mountains that erupt just off in the distance. Dreaming and missing it all, wanting to give up on the fast city and move back home where things operate just a little more slowly.
I wonder if this made up story is real somewhere. Maybe not here but somewhere else. I’d like to think so. I really would.
