Daily Miles: 34.5
Total Miles: 2278
Avg: 12.7
Max: 21.3
Time on the bike: 02:44:41
I slept in because I wasn’t in much of a rush today. This lasted all until 6:30 AM, which was really my biological 7:30 AM, on account of that time change thing that happened yesterday.
I packed my things and was out riding by around 9, after having breakfast at a nice freeway exit diner. The air was 27 degrees and cold and I quickly regretted not wearing my jacket. I pulled off to the side of the road and into a McDonalds parking lot and put my jacket on. I felt better and the wind didn’t sting as much, and I pedaled onward and out of Fabens, passing a variety of pecan farms, with neat rows of trees that repeated a patern for a long time.
After 10 miles the traffic started to get heavier and there appeared more business and restaurants and fast food chains. I was entering the outskirts of El Paso and needed to switch my alert levels to city riding. I pedaled mostly on a nice road with a very generous shoulder and it wasn’t bad. I stopped at a laundromat to use the restroom and texted my warm showers host of my arrival into El Paso.
I checked to see where the nearest Wallmart was because I needed to buy more fuel for my stove. Walmart is pretty much the only place that carries the fuel I need, aside from an actual outfitter like REI, but they don’t have a store in El Paso. I rode the two and a half miles to Wallmart and got what I needed and sat outside waiting for a reply from the warm showers host. It had been over an hour and I hadn’t heard back. I checked my text message and sure enough I had sent it to the wrong number. I sent a new message to the right number and she responded within a few minutes, telling me she was home and to come over whenever.
I hopped on my bike and within 40 minutes was at Erin and Kristys place, Massachusettes and Alabama transplants to the El Paso area, as of last August. Erin was home and Krisy was working. It was fun talking with Erin. She is a free spirit and down to earth and has done a lot of cool things, including a cross country ride of her own with on organization called Bike and Build, where they stop at city’s aling the way and help build houses, kind of like habitat for humanity. She’s also served in Americorp and spent a season at Big Bend as a trail builder, even though she is a proclaimed non-hiker. She was very welcoming and even drove me to the bike store so I could pick up a new patch kit. On the way to the store I asked her what people thought of Trump’s proposed wall in El Paso.
“Well, they don’t like it,” she said. “A lot of people come over from Juarez to work in the States, so it would be pretty bad for the economy here.”
Juarez is El Paso’s sister city just over the border. It has a population of over a million people which is more than twice the population of El Paso. You can see it from El Paso, too. There is a gigantic Mexican flag that flies over houses and buildings. I’ve never seen a flag so big. If it weren’t for the flag you wouldn’t be able to tell where El Paso ends and Juarez begins.
“There was a protest not too long ago where people linked hands across the border. Bridges not barriers,” she added.
After riding my bike for a good while in close proximity to the border, it struck me at how monumental of a task it would be to build a wall across the entirety of it. In many places the geographical landscape appears to be an adequate barrier. There are canyons and rivers and mountain ranges all over the place, which are very difficult things to get across, especially in the warmer parts of the year, when temperatures soar over a hundred degrees and all that’s between borders is space and desert and lack of water. But what do I know.
“It’s mostly people in the north that have never seen the border that want the wall.” Kristy said.
Back at the house I cleaned my chain and relubed it. It makes me happy when I do this, because tomorrow’s ride will be quiet and smooth.
Tomorrow I cross into New Mexico.
Texas, it’s been fun, in a strange way, but I can’t say I’ll miss you too much, or at all really.
Actually, I will miss your wide shoulders on your roads and your overall good driving. It’s been the best yet on the trip and I do want to thank you for that.
