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Day 9: April 13 (Fri) | Sam Houston State Park | 38
miles today / 192 miles total
"Yer not settin' up a tent,
are ya?"
Lara may be leaving stones unturned on this
trip, but she is leaving no cow unwaved to.
We go through Anderson, then stop in Richards, which
had a picnic table and trees outside the convenience
store, just what Lara wanted. We've mostly only been
stopping in towns, and their convenience stores generally
aren't too scenic. I was glad we stopped at all, because
my legs were really tired, the first time they were
really bad since we started. It starts raining a little
bit while we're at the store, so we wait under the awning
for half an hour before leaving again. When we take off
again, suddenly it's not hard for me any more. Maybe it
was the caffeinated vanilla creme soda that Lara got
me.
The scenery changes as we enter Sam Houston State
Park. Instead of rolling pastures, it's now really tall
pine trees towering over us. It would be scary to ride
through at night. We overshoot the turnoff to the
campsite by a mile, and I have to convince Lara that we
really should turn around, because she hates going
backwards. But that extra two miles (one each way) means
that it gets just too dark to see the road clearly before
we get to the campsite, and I wipe out on a pothole only
40 meters or so before the campsite entrance. Fortunately
my bike wasn't damaged.
Unfortunately, we're camping again on a weekend, so
the park is full. There's nowhere to camp. We think we
find a place and start setting up, but then an old
redneck from an adjoining camp walks over.
Imagined conversation:
Redneck: Yer not settin' up a tent, are ya?
Me: No, we're just playing with it!
Actual conversation:
Redneck: Yer not settin' up a tent, are ya?
Me: Well, we were going to, is that a problem?
Imagined conversation:
Redneck: Yeah, because I'm a dickhead!
Actual conversation:
Redneck: Yeah! I'm camped right here!
"Right here" to him is actually farther away than the
distance betwen most of the other campers to each other.
We find another spot, and ask the neighboring campers how
they feel about our being there, and they don't mind, but
they think it's not an official campsite. Sure enough, as
soon as we start setting up, the park host comes and
tells us that we can't camp there or the park ranger will
ticket us, but there's one site still available at the
head of the camp. She goes there to hold it for us while
we gather our gear, but by the time she gets there it's
taken. However, she finds some campers who have paid for
two spaces but are using only one, and they allow us to
use their unused space. They also offer us all kinds of
things -- such as a gas lantern to set up, extra chicken
they've barbecued, which of course we politely decline.
We make instant refried beans, same as the last time we
camped in a public park, and again using some of the
spice packets that Dave White gave us at the farm.
While Lara hits the showers, I find that just a few
meters from our site are concrete steps leading down to
the lake. We had no idea we were so close, because it was
dark when we got there. I was happy to find it, because
Lara really wanted to be by the water, so when she gets
back I lead her down there and she's happy.
Day 10: April 14 (Sat) | Coldspring | 36 miles today /
228 miles total
In the morning I try to pay the other campers
for the spot of theirs we were using, but they weren't
around. So we're three for three on not paying anything
each of times we've camped.
In New Waverly, many of the black residents (and none
of the white residents) are very friendly to us --
calling out encouragement as we ride by, and talking to
us at the store. One man tried to give me a dollar at the
store, to support our trip! I had to decline, because I
likely have more money than he does, but he was insistent
and I had to keep graciously declining. That was weird,
considering how blacks are generally economically
disadvantaged compared to whites, and here was a black
man trying to give me money! What made it more
interesting was that a similar thing happened to me a few
years ago, with a black woman trying to hand me a wad of
bills outside a grocery store in Austin because she
thought I was homeless. White people have never offered
me money, at least not that I can remember. Then again,
most of the people who ask me for money are also
black.
 At
a convenience store before Pumpkin, Texas I suggest to
the Indian shopkeeper that he open the doors to vent the
inside, since it's being painted and reeks of paint, and
his customers and I wouldn't want to see his customers
and employees get ill, so he does so. Wow, I affected the
world! Near Evergreen, Lara pets a horse, and we take
photos of a Jesus sign and a huge statue of a steer.
We're still averaging 7.5mph. It's generally getting a
bit easier for both of us, although Lara has some trouble
for the last hour or so. I help her up the hills,
 something
I haven't done in a while.
We arrive for the night at Coldspring. The lone motel
in Coldspring is run by an (Asian) Indian couple. So,
come to think of it, three out of the three hotels
we've stayed at are run by Indians. How does that
come about? How is it that Indians have wound up running
all the little hotels in Texas? This is beyond
coincidence. Even more so when you throw in all the
Indian-owned convenience stores along the way, too. The
proprietor tells me where the restaurants are, and I
jokingly ask if I can get Indian food there like aloo
naan, bhagan bharta, saag paneer, etc. An hour later
there's a knock on our door, and the proprietor's wife
has made for us an Indian-style dinner of naan, curried
rice, garbanzo beans, and yellow lentils! Our luck on
this trip has been incredible.
We decide to stay an extra night so I can watch
X-Files tomorrow night, and also because I really need a
break -- not for my body, but for my mind. Every minute
of every day has been filled with work of some kind --
packing, biking, planning, working on the website, etc.
And I'm way behind on this journal, emailing friends,
taking care of business back home, etc.
I take one of the bikes to go to the store to buy some
water around midnight, but the store is closed. I notice
that since the bike is unloaded and there's no extra
weight, it's fast. I've underestimated how much
the added weight slows us down. I start making plans to
ditch as much extra weight as we can. The next time we
camp will be the last, then we can mail the camping gear
home and just stay at hotels.
Day 11: April 15 (Sun) | Coldspring | 0 miles today /
228 miles total
"We're going
through the Tang but what's our option
here?"
I spend the day finishing up some of the Heartland
website work, answering emails, and updating the journal.
I send Lara an email to let her know that I'm thinking
about her, it'll be funny when she gets it. We're out of
water, so we have to drink the chlorinated tap water
which neither of us likes, but we have powdered Tang
which takes the edge off. That was Lara's idea. As she
put it, "We're going through the Tang but what's our
option here?" Around 6:00pm we meet another cyclist at
the hotel, Bob, who's biking our same route, except he's
doing the whole thing (San Diego to St. Francisville,
FL), and he's doing it to raise money for medical
research. (See ARideForAReason.org.)
We meet up later for dinner in town. The waitress at the
restaurant is wearing bunny ears (it's Easter) and I wish
I'd brought my camera. They have a piano, but decline my
request to allow me to play it because it's broken and
it's covered with decorations that they'd have to move. I
excuse myself early so I can go back to the motel to
watch the X-Files, only to find that it's not on this
week. Grrr! Also, tomorrow a group of women over 50 who
are also biking across the country will arrive at this
hotel. These little towns are used to us, since everyone
uses the same maps from Adventure Cycling and so all the
cross-country cyclists go through these same little
towns.
Before Bob, I think we'd seen exactly FIVE people on
bicycles since we left Austin. I don't mean five
cross-country cyclists, I mean five people on bicycles
anywhere for any reason.
Lara told me that I'm a fun travel partner and that
made me very happy. We're getting along really well,
which is kind of surprising considering how annoying I
can be -- especially because I talk too much. But I think
I'm getting better at being less annoying (and shutting
up more).
Day 12: April 16 (Mon) | Outside Romayor | 30 miles
today / 258 miles total
"You live here
in Shepherd?"
We get to meet some of the cycling women before we
leave. They're going much faster than we are, mostly
because they don't have to carry any weight -- they have
a tour van that carries all their belongings and food. I
find out that each of them has paid $5,000 to do this
tour! I'm spending way less than that, even if I count
the cost of the bikes, and even though I'm paying for
everything for both Lara and myself. Some of the women
are riding to raise money for breast cancer research, and
I wonder if any of them will raise more than they spent
to go on the tour in the first place?
Going out of town, they don't have any gallon jugs of
water at the convenience store, so it's either 1-quart
containers of water, or a 1-gallon container of
sugary-fruit-flavored drink. We opt for the sugar drink.
But it's nasty, and it makes Lara very ill. I find a
place for her to lie down in the meditation garden of a
church, and I go to the post office to mail back home
some of the things we don't need. Lara figured we didn't
need the rainsuits, because it's so warm that even if it
rains, it won't be bad getting wet. I also mail back the
U-lock, figuring I can buy another one in Baton Rouge
once we get there (the only place we'll need it,
probably), rather than hauling the weight the whole way.
Lara's better when I return, so we leave.
One hour after mailing the rainsuits back, it starts
raining for the first time! It's not so bad, but it's a
bit annoying and it slows us down. At least the hills
have mostly disappeared, and we have a nice wide
shoulder, so we make good time.
At a small grocery in Shepherd, Texas (pop. 1,812), a
kid who's stocking groceries notes our bikes and asks if
I live there in Shepherd. I tell him, "If I did, you'd
recognize me, right?" He replies knowingly, "Uhhh,
yeah."
We get to the private campground, and discover that
it's also a resort, with log cabins and other rooms. The
rain has mostly stopped, but we're wet, outside it's wet,
and a room sounds like a good idea, but the cheapest one
they have is $95! I notice the sparkle in Lara's eye when
the clerk describes the amenities of the room, so I
figure we'll splurge. It turns out that our little room
has no TV, no telephone, no screen on the one openable
window, a toilet that flushes constantly, dingy
fluorescent lighting, and, most importantly, it reeks
to high heaven of cat pee. It does have a stove,
though, so we're able to make dinner and dry our clothes
in the oven, though we burn some of them a little. It's
ironic, this was simultaneously the most expensive room
and the worst quality room we've had on the trip
so far.
We did 30 miles today, which is pretty good
considering the rain.
Day 13: April 17 (Tue) | Silsbee | 48 miles today /
306 miles total
"It's all
purple and wobbly and that's all there is to
it."
A squirrel visited us in the morning just outside the
door and we gave him some fruit and whole-grain cereal. I
left a complaint form at the office, explaining that we
could have lived with the poor condition of the room
(save the cat pee smell, which was overpowering), but
that $95 was too much to pay for a room in such
condition. [Note, post-trip: They never
replied.]
We decide to unload our camping gear to save on the
weight. Not only can we lose the weight of the camping
gear, but we can also lose the heavy wire baskets on
Lara's bike which had been used to haul the camping gear.
At the post office in Votaw, I mail back our tent,
sleeping bags, and sleeping pads. They don't have a box
big enough for the baskets, so I give them to the
postmaster who thinks she can give them to a local
kid.
We've seen a ton of wildflowers, but they're almost
exclusively the same three kinds: bluebonnets, Indian
paintbrush, and a small yellow flower whose name I don't
know. We've seen gazillions of cows and horses, and also
some goats. Lara has been wanting to see a live
armadillo, but unfortunately all we've seen so far is
roadkill, and they've been pretty splattered, so she
hasn't even seen an INTACT dead one, and thus probably
doesn't know what a live one is supposed to look like.
Armadillos are nocturnal so we're unlikely to see any
live ones.
 I
had told Lara to notice all the misspellings on signs as
we traveled through the South. She didn't believe me
until she started seeing them herself. I pointed out a
handwritten flier on a bulletin board at a convenience
store, and she thought the author must be a non-native
speaker of English because it was so poor, until she saw
the name on the bottom, which was something like "Terry
Jones". I explained that Americans are, ironically, some
of the worst users of English in the world. I should have
bought and kept one of the small local papers, because
the wording on the front-page story was just priceless.
On my next trip, I may keep a list of misspellings and
awkward English that I come across. All I can remember
now is a bin marked "All Idems $0.25", the printed
overhead aisle marker sign "Deoderant" in a grocery
store, and a sign for "Ditigal Cable", which also
promises that you can have your bad credit "eraced".
We stay at the Budget Motel, run by a crazy old Hindu
woman. That makes us 4 for 4 on Indian-owned hotels.
After getting the price, I always ask, "Is there a
discount for people who are bicycling across the
country?" Half the time we get a modest break -- she
dropped our room cost from $32 to $30, which is
double-good since we'll be staying two nights. This room
is simultaneously the cheapest and the largest
we've had to date. The proprietor is also very friendly,
and emphasizes how nice her hotel is and how her service
is outstanding.
I make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Lara
explains that she prefers strawberry jam to grape jelly,
because grape jelly is "all purple and wobbly and that's
all there is to it."
We did 48 miles today, our farthest ever -- thanks to
unloading most of the weight from Lara's bike. We
averaged 11.5mph once we left the post office where we
unloaded the stuff.
Day 14: April 18 (Wed) | (Silsbee) | 0 miles today /
306 miles total
"Don't even
fucking THINK about it!"
We hang out in Silsbee today for the hell of it. First
I have to pay for the second day for our room, and while
I'm doing so in the motel office I notice an envelope on
the office wall marked "Sai Baba" and I make the mistake
of mentioning to the Hindu proprietor that a roommate of
mine had gone to India to study with Sai Baba. The
proprietor then lets loose with a 15-minute non-stop rant
about how Baba has given her four visions and the Baba
she worships is not the popular Baba that most people
know about and how she saves the profits from the motel
and sends them to Baba and how she doesn't talk much to
her daughter when she calls because Baba is all she needs
blah blah blah. At least that's what I think she said --
I could only make out about 50% of it because of her
thick accent. Heck, even that 50% I think I
understood is subject to interpretation. She also
admonished me to try to get her competitor's listing
removed from the cross-country bicycle maps we're using
because her competitor is dishonest. She also wants me to
tell everyone I know to stay at her motel. (Yeah, well
exactly how many people do I know who pass through
Silsbee, Texas?) She also told me that the proprietors of
the convenience store next door are also Indian, but
they're "killers" and charge too much for soda.
I tell Lara that next time we need to deal with the
proprietor, it's her turn. Then we hit the town. First we
find a pawn shop, so I'm able to get a small musician fix
by playing some instruments. Out of all the guitars, only
one has all six strings. It's not tuned, of course, but I
tune it and play for a few minutes.
Then Lara needs her hair trimmed -- she's got 16 green
3" spikes of hair, and the rest is shaved, and the shaved
part is getting too tall and she needs it shaved again.
Lara's hair causes quite a stir at the barbershop, but
unfortunately I forgot to bring the batteries for my
camera. (I had put them in the bike light.) While Lara is
waiting to get her hair cut, I walk around the corner and
find a florist, so I buy Lara a rose. They have a piano
and say it works and that I can play it, so I spend a few
minutes moving the ceramic figures off the piano, only to
find that it doesn't work -- more than half of the
keys stick or otherwise don't play. Across the street I
find a movie theatre -- Spy Kids, a fairly recent
release, for only $1. No other movies are playing, and
there's only one showtime, 7:30pm. We'll return
later.
After the haircut we walk through town, and check out
the Goodwill. I could use another t-shirt, and Lara finds
a perfect one for me -- the Jolly Green Giant. It's great
because the giant is mostly naked and he's promoting
vegetables. I also find a shirt for my friend Monica
which I'll mail to her. Lara suggests we buy the fuzzy
chicken slippers for the hotel proprietor, so I do.
We stop into a one-hour photo place so Lara can get
her film developed. The clerk tells us that the
developing guy isn't around, so "One Hour would be by
noon tomorrow, and Next Day would be on Friday." Funny
how they redefine words to mean something completely
different from the literal meaning of the words.
On our way to the movie, we walk past a pickup truck
with some junior high-school-age girls in the back, as
their mother is loading her groceries into the truck. The
kids are wide-eyed at Lara's hair, and before they can
say anything, the mother says, "Don't even fucking THINK
about it!" The kids ignore her and start chiming, "Oh
Mom, can I please get my hair like that?!"
The movie was surprisingly good. The director, Robert
Rodriguez, is from Austin also, and is highly acclaimed,
and now I see why. Kids' movies are usually trite and
dumb, but this one was put together well, without making
a bunch of super-easy cheap jokes.
It's 70 miles or so to the next hotel, which seems
beyond our ability, but I get on the Internet and find a
hotel in Kirbyville, even though our bike map says
there's not one there. Thank you, Yahoo!
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