The day started ominously with a light rain, a first for the Brothers Bike Ride. But the rain wasn’t the issue today. The wind was. It was coming out of the northeast which was the direction we were going. We went east for 21 miles; then north for 25 miles, almost always dead into a stiff wind and then northeast for 30 miles. A little wrong turn and some backtracking gave us a total for today of 79.7 tough miles.

We are whooped tonight. Tomorrow is 65 plus mile day. No rain expected but the direction of the wind is unknown as I write this post. The highlight for me was biking thru the Texas Hill Country. The hills are challenging but the scenery is worth it. No wonder so many famous people have ranches in this part of Texas. And all these ranches have lots and lots of cattle.

Thats it for me. Beddiebye time. We are staying in a B&B so breakfast should be quite nice.

The start of L4 seems to be a continuation of the headwinds of L3. Our accommodations at Fort Clark, in army barracks converted to a motel, were different. The building was named Patton. I wonder if Gen. George Patton was ever stationed there.

The ride today was noteworthy for the last Border Patrol checkpoint on Route 90 we will have to ride thru. We talked to an agent for a while about his job and the recent influx of children crossing the border. I don’t want to post his observations on the net, so ask me when you see me. Also visited the “Cactus Jack” aka John Nance Garner Museum in Uvalde. He was FDR’s VP for his first two terms. Uvalde is his hometown and they done good with this museum.

As predicted the weather is hot and humid. We are sweating a ton, so fluids are important. Today was a short one–42 miles–to get us ready for longer rides to come. I continue to marvel at how lucky I am to be able to see the USA from a bicycle. We learn so much about the regions we bike thru from talking to locals.

Tomorrow is predicted to have more headwinds and thunderstorms all day. It could be our first day of rain on the Southern Tier.

Not much you can say about relentless headwinds other than “they suck”. We had high hopes for today but all things considered, we did pretty well. Unfortunately, same forecast for tomorrow. I am fighting off a cold, so I’m a little under the weather. Got a lousy night’s sleep last night. Can’t wait to turn in tonight. I feel like I can beat it if I can just get a good night’s sleep.

The plan, at this hour, is to finish today’s ride tomorrow. 30 more miles to go in the ferocious headwinds/crosswinds. Gusts were getting up to 30 mph. It was a tossup whether the headwinds beat out a 30 mph crosswind gust or vice versa. We were really getting blown around. At least we are in a nice motel tonight and not a dump again.

Marathon to Somewhere East of Dryden

I am sitting outside our motel in Sanderson, TX, looking at the sky as the sun is setting. The puffy clouds are orange and purple against a blue sky. Another spectacular day in West Texas.

When we pulled out of Marathon this morning, Mark announced that he was going to entertain Brian and I today. (He entertains us every day). After passing a herd of deer and a few elk during the first 15 miles, we started seeing cattle grazing along the fence next to the road. (Point of interest, there has been a fence along both sides of the road this entire trip.) I don’t know what possessed Mark but he started yelling and whistling at this one herd of cattle as we road past. Much to our surprise, they started stampeding away from the road with more and more cattle joining in the stampede. Needless to say, Mark was scanning the fields on both sides of the road looking for more cattle to practice his stampede techniques.

At one of our stops, we were visited by a tarantula. I wondered out loud what a tarantula eats. Mark, who has an answer for every question, replied “bicyclists, preferably old ones.”

This was our longest ride this trip. We were trying to do some of tomorrow’s miles today to make to make it more manageable. We did 85 today and have another 90 to do tomorrow. Beth will drop us off where we left off and continue on to Del Rio to wait for us at our next motel. Should be a gradual drop in elevation tomorrow like it was today. I’m hoping.

Walking back to our rooms last night and again going to breakfast this morning, I enjoyed a panoramic view of a night sky with more stars and planets than you ever see on the East Coast. Apparently West Texas is famous for its night sky because there is so little light pollution. There is an observatory on the top of the Davis Mountains, called the McDonald Observatory.

Mark had a brilliant idea at breakfast of going to Fort Davis and riding to Marathon from there instead of Marfa. Simply brilliant Mark. Much more interesting scenery including a tarantula crossing the road right in front of the bikes. I was too scared to stop and get a picture. No mechanical issues today with the bikes.

I am very impressed with the Gage Hotel. We are staying in the Captain Sheppard House which is a block or so from the rest of the hotel. It has 5 rooms and we have 4 of them. No one is in the 5th so we have the house to ourselves. Definitely our nicest accommodations of all three legs. Hopefully some one else will post pics. As you might have guessed by now, I haven’t figured out how to do that.

We planned to meet at a free breakfast at our hotel at 6:30 and get on the road by 7 am. Slight problem–when we switched to Central time coming into Van Horn last night, we didn’t realize sunrise wouldn’t occur until 8 am. OOPS. So we killed another hour before we left Van Horn. Good thing–it was freezing for the first hour or two of our ride until the sun warmed things up.

I found the ride very enjoyable for the first half. When we left Jeff Davis Co. we also left a smooth road and found ourselves on a rough chip seal road. Then a head wind picked up making our ride tedious. Today I had energy and set the pace, sometimes too fast, and had to be coaxed to a slower pace. We met Beth in Marfa and split a pizza before loading the bikes in the truck for our drive to Marathon. The next two nights we stay in another historic hotel called the Gage Hotel.

The road paralleled train tracks almost our whole ride, so we occupied ourselves counting cars on freight trains and one Amtrak train. We also picked out lone trees and antenna poles and one stationary blimp in the distance and quessed how far away they were from our present location. Things are a lot further away than we thought in this wide open country. What can I say–it passed the time on a long ride.

Tomorrow is a 60-mile ride from Marfa to Marathon. We pass thru one decent size town called Alpine which has a state university called Sol Ross State Univ. Can’t say I ever head of it.

We are staying in an old, historic Hotel in Van Horn, TX called the El Capitan. It was built in 1930 as part of a chain of hotels to help the tourism industry in New Mexico and West Texas, We’ll see another one tomorrow in Marfa called the Hotel Paisano. Very elegant features and completely restored about 10 years ago. I guess it is the classiest place in Van Horn.

Yesterday’s ride was very peaceful once we got out of El Paso. We were on what is called Farm Roads on the street signs and there was very little traffic since everyone takes I-10. Flat roads, light traffic and a tail wind. Bicycle Heaven!!!

Beth picked us up in the SAG Wagon which is a Chevy pickup truck for this leg. We drove back to our hotel in El Paso and then got dropped off this morning at Fort Hancock. We have felt like the minority several times so far and Fort Hancock was one of them. We didn’t see any anglos but everyone is friendly, even when they don’t understand us.

Today was harder than any of us were expecting. We were spoiled by the easy ride yesterday. Had a head wind a large portion of the day and we were climbing. We also were on I-10 for maybe 20 miles. When we weren’t on I-10, we were on what is called a frontage road which parallels the interstate, The surface is rough but tolerable and no traffic. We were on frontage roads for 40 miles and only two vehicles passed us and both were Border Patrol. We went thru a Border Patrol checkpoint on I-10 and were able to talk to the officers. They aren’t getting paid because of the shutdown but were promised back pay when the shutdown is over.

We have gone almost 130 miles so far. We have a ways to go this leg. I have a charlie horse tonight in my right hamstring and Mark may be coming down with a cold. Tomorrow’s ride is supposed to be 73 miles on flat roads. Hopefully easier than today. I’ll be taking some Advil tomorrow for sure.

This was a great day of riding, that is until we got to the city traffic in El Paso. The road we took from Las Cruces is called ‘the farm road’ and is aptly named. There were miles and miles of farms on both sides of the road, especially pecan orchards. It is all irrigated agriculture. We saw dozens of road kill dead skunks, perhaps attracted by the pecan trees. We saw several wineries for the first time since leaving California.

The road was flat and smooth and had a nice paved shoulder most of the way. This trip has been remarkable for the lack of other cyclists we have seen, but today we saw dozens of other cyclists on the ‘farm road’. I guess it’s a haven for cyclists in the area. A let down was when we realized that we were in Texas. There is no ‘Welcome’ sign. That has always been a photo op for us. Oh well, we’ll get over it. Texas, our fourth state, four more to go. I guess I am getting ahead of my self. The combined mileage of the trip so far is less than the miles we have to cover (1124) just to get across Texas.

Some observations about Leg 2 of our trip:
The roads were a little better.
Scenery was spectacular because of the mountains.
Litter along side the roads in Arizona was depressing. Miles and miles of broken bottles and trash that no one picks up. There weren’t any trash receptacles either.
Perfect weather, again. I hope carmaker doesn’t get even.
No flats, pretty amazing.
Other than Brian’s one fall, no mishaps.
Last but not least, the best and most entertaining Sag Lady anyone could ask for. You done well, Brian and Nancy.

Thanks for all the support from you guys back home. It really helps. Until the next leg….

There is one word that would describe today–LONG. You forget how far 90 miles on a bike is when you are doing this much cycling. Fortunately the weather was excellent. Our trend continues, cool in the morning and warm in the afternoon. In fact it was in the 70’s this afternoon.

The shift in terrain was probably the most dramatic of any day. We started in the mountains. Then dropped down into dessert-like terrain. Then into irrigated agriculture and finished in suburbs. I haven’t seen downtown Las Cruces. Maybe we are in it.

It was great to be greeted at the door to the hotel by Mary, Nalla and Souk and of course Beth. They finally figured out why Brian’s GPS tracking device wasn’t working this afternoon. I assume that was how Beth knew exactly when we would arrive. I am sure Beth wishes she had figured that out sooner. One more day: Las Cruces to El Paso. Supposed to be about 56 miles and flat.

What a day. It was our coldest start yet, but as usual, we started shedding our extra layers at each stop. For some reason we made good time despite all the climbing. I guess we all had extra nervous energy stored up for today. We all seemed to have a mindset that we didn’t want to hit any downhills. We earned that elevation and we didn’t want to give it back. The only consolation to a downhill was the distance we were covering when we did get a coast.

The road you take to go over Emory Pass has almost no traffic. It seems that most people avoid it because the driving time is increased with all the switch backs. You are in the Gila (pronounced ‘HELA’) National Forest for most of the ride. The scenery was the best yet. The air in the Natl For smelled so crystal clear. You felt like you we’re breathing some of the cleanest air on the planet. Beth caught up to us at the perfect moment, about 5 miles from the summit. I was out of water and snacks and Brian and Mark were pretty low.

When we reached the summit, we rode another 150 yards to get to the vista. I highly recommend stopping to check it out. You can see for 30 miles on a clear day. We could easily see the town of Kingston where we were stopping.

Then the scary part starts–the descent. We all had both hands on our brake levers and took one break just to rest our hands. A little tricky when cars had to get around us. Thankfully it was minimal on the switchback portion of the descent.

The destination was the Black Range Lodge where we cooked dinner for ourselves and the proprietors. Or should I say Brian and Beth cooked dinner. Mark and I did the dishes. Then we played pool (Mark and I against Beth and Brian). I bet that doesn’t make it into Beth’s blog. Absolutely our most exhilarating day of biking since we started in San Diego.