Sharon Hawley

Sharon Hawley
Click on this map to open Michael Angerman's detailed map showing my current location. There, you can pan and zoom.. Thanks Michael

Wednesday, April 3, 2013

The Great Western Texas Desert

A common scene through Texas.
Ususally, I see them dead beside the road




The desert after Brackettville, Texas
This kind of country should continue with very few towns
 for ten days riding
I rode for one day out onto the west Texas desert from Brackettville.  Here at Del Rio I checked into Motel6 and checked the weather forecast.  It was terrible for the next ten days.  Then I investigated the train station which runs directly to LA’s Union Station.  The temptation was just too strong.  I am now the holder of an Amtrak ticket and should be home Friday afternoon.





The places I slept on this adventure are shown at http://goo.gl/maps/e2fS5 .  Thanks to Michael Angerman for preparing and updating this map.  He keept it current throughout the trip.

Monday, April 1, 2013

A night in a Fort





Today was a perfect day for riding through Texas.  Although the road had no shoulder, it also had almost nobody, and wind was on my back.












I stopped at Brackettville this afternoon and rode just out of town to Fort Clark.  Established in1852 and expanded during the fort-building era of the 1870’s, the sprawling military village is built of limestone blocks and marching boots.  The old fort is no longer a military base, having been converted to a resort. 










Golf course at Fort Clark

My room at Fort Clark
It makes a person wonder how it could ever have been a military base.  A big open green at its center serves as a small golf course, and quaint stone buildings circle the green.  A river runs through it, and a swimming pool gathers water from the river and provides cool refreshment for the soldiers who once trained here, and now for local school children and visitors like me.  I will sleep tonight in former officers quarters.  I think Fort Clark was always a resort, formerly for soldiers, now for travelers. 

Sunday, March 31, 2013

Bikers of Two Kinds



There was no wind this morning as I rolled the loaded bicycle out to the highway and headed up the hill toward Camp Wood, leaving Leakey, a town that claims to be the motorcycle capitol of Texas.  No cars and no cold on the road this morning.  The expected rain might come, but in the lovely dim light of dawning there was only overcast blocking the sun and later keeping the mid-morning cool.  I climbed a thousand feet in the first two miles and barely felt it.  A more perfect day in the hilly heart of Texas is unimaginable.  





Long uphill grades at three miles per hour.  Long downgrades would pass at fifty if I let them.  Brake overheating, an unexpected issue, solved with alternating front and rear pressure on the brake handles. 












My room in Leakey
Back in the outpost town of Leakey, I shared the Hog Pen with motorcyclists.  This twisty Texas country is one of their favorites, and since it was a weekend, they swarmed the hills like dissatisfied colonies of  bees leaving the home hive.









It’s a desolate country for a cyclist, made a little nicer by a full moon and bright green maple leaves of spring.




Thursday, March 28, 2013

Backwoods Resorts of Texas

A tree with an artist’s heart, shelters a cyclist as a mother a child





My last few postings here on the blog have quite honestly expressed a dismal attitude.  I worked hard to develop it in what I found to be the hostile heart of Texas.  Some of you hoped I was all right and that the wind would change, the hills flatten, and that I would become happy.  I have learned on this trip to live with very pleasant biking conditions, and with very difficult communities.  It’s a necessary learning if I’m not to give up.












Now in the mountains, I have left the big ranches behind and entered a backwoods where motorcyclists and tourists steer their way to resorts along rivers with canoes and lazy swimming holes.  Today, I gave up cheap motels and scruffy characters in run-down towns and checked into a resort along the Guadalupe River west of Hunt.  I confess that it’s nice to relax all afternoon, acting proper as normal tourists define it. 








I strolled along the river, paddled a canoe, and sat under a tree.  They have built a dam here for better swimming, and a water channel for bathers to slide in and to accommodate fish on their way to where fish go. 









My room looks down on the Guadalupe River where sunbathers and swimmers will frolic whenever it warms up.

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

The Hilly Sparse Heart of Texas

Blanco River before sunrise
Blanco, Texas

Morning begins at freezing
unseasonably unwarm
asking for clothes I don’t have

hills steeper than yesterday
steeper than ever
so steep that three
yes there, I had to walk
thanks to them I kept warm
except for hurting fingernails
and numb toes  






but the wind was kind
the sky presented no fear
and cars scared other bikers
other places 















a neighborhood of ranches
locked gates
about a mile apart
I suppose therefore
each has some six-hundred acres
high goat fences, cattle, wild deer










forty miles til I found a café
the Double D in Comfort
and comfort it was
this shack’s food was excellent
did I ask for a box?
leave some and ride on?
or did I eat it all?
you tell me
forty miles of hills and cold
forty miles of hills and cold  





then twenty more to Kerrville
and on the way I met her
rather her white ghost
leaning on a fence
plastic flowers mark the end
was she careless? drunk?
I imagine a line to its source
pickup truck Texan stopped to pick up a girl?
Texas, where the rules aren’t always clear
as Mama would say, things took a turn.
I love her like my own.  









my DNA specially venturesome
specially sick
casts its own monument to loneness 














Holiday Creek east of Comfort, Texas


cypress giants hog the water
in a thorny land
immense, sturdy, hard
like I am becoming  


Monday, March 25, 2013

The Small Towns of Middle Texas



Wimberley
Bastrop
I have left the lowlands around Houston, and moved deep into the hillcountry of middle Texas, into its heart if you will.  Hills have become longer and steeper; elevations have risen from around three-hundred feet near Houston to thirteen hundred at Blanco where I write this. 









Juniper tree


The longleaf pines that I followed from the coast of Florida have given way to juniper, but the live oaks have come with me all the way and go on living. 















San Marcos Rever in San Marcos


Rivers that ran muddy in the lowlands, flow clear now; I look six feet or more into their waving watergrass.  












Caldwell County Courthouse in Lockhart
Hays County Courthouse, San Marcos



Most of the towns are also county seats, each with a large courthouse presiding over the town and countryside like a medieval castle.













Blanco County Courthouse at Blanco



Counties will get bigger as I travel west and towns farther spaced on the way to El Paso.











To see a map showing the places I have slept, go to http://goo.gl/maps/e2fS5 .  Thanks to Michael Angerman for preparing and updating this map.  

Saturday, March 23, 2013

Seasonal Musings


Seasons

Leaves of March
delicate and green
lean southward today
springtime, coasting with the leaves
winter, pushing north  












Musings

somewhere along a shoulderless road
where snaggle trees thrive
in the grackle grass   












and Texas tacks
tackle bicycle tires
crowns of thorns 














Corey P. Wright
died on Road 20 south of Bastrop, Texas
 October 10, 1998



where too many cars
move too fast
and the trailer of a semi
swerved to the right

will someone erect a cross for me? 

Friday, March 22, 2013

What a Difference a wind Makes

A fine country road,
traveled in the morning with moderate wind


I proclaimed that spring had come to the hill country of Texas.  That was day before yesterday.  The evening forecast proclaimed a similar day for my seventy-mile ride from Navasota to La Grange in a southwesterly direction.  I took a quick look at weather.com in the morning before packing the computer and nearly fell off the chair!  The predicted wind had changed from east to south and would rise to 20mph by noon.  La Grange would be impossible to reach against that much headwind.







Burton Café,
a good lunch as the wind rose
Country store at Independence,
the first coffee-stop after 23 miles
I quickly studied maps and looked for a town in a westerly direction so that wind, though strong, would push on my left side and not slow my speed to some five miles per hour.  I knew that a 20mph wind from the left is dangerous on roads without wide shoulders because the bike often swerves in its gusts.  Passing trucks create a vacuum that can pull me into the traffic lane.  I needed a road with a wide shoulder as cushion against potential mishaps in strong left-side wind.  It must be a westbound road leading to a town with a motel in less than seventy miles. 






 Lee County Courthouse in Giddings
1898

I found the town of Giddings.  I could travel southwesterly and make Burton by noon, then head west on a road with a wide shoulder to Giddings for a total of sixty-three miles. 

I started a difficult, windy ride.  The first leg to Burton was along minor country roads, pushing against wind, but not too strong.  After a good lunch in Burton, I was on a major highway with a wide shoulder, leaning against strong wind on my left side, just as the forecast said.









Texas longhorn cow and calf




I have described one day in a planning process that has been as common in its changes as the straightforward days have been, when I followed my original maps and notes.  I don’t know how it will work in west Texas where roads are far-spaced and alternatives few. 

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Back in the Saddle



One of the many bike trails in
The Woodlands
House in The Woodlands, Texas
Home of friends and good times
I stayed with friends for three nights in their lovely home in forest.  The Woodlands has almost as much mileage in bicycle trails as it does in streets; they meander among trees and lead to all the schools and shopping areas, connect to all the residential tracts.  My friends set me back on the bicycle almost as soon as I arrived, toured me about their community.  The rides were too lovely to complain about, even though I’d looked forward to time off the bike.  It was a good visit, and now I am back on the road, rode to Navasota today. 





Texas Bluebonnet

Texas Bluebonnet
The last three days have been the warmest by far.  Fifty or sixty degrees in the morning, eighties by mid-afternoon.  This evening I write with the air conditioner on.  The warmth has awakened wildflowers.  They spring up in profusion along highways, in fields, not asking if they may.  Soon, mosquitoes will join them, not asking either.  













Even turtles and buzzards seem happy with the poetic notion of spring.  They think about warming their backs in the sun and of mating.  They look with interest at the strange creature stopped along the road to look at them.  













Evening Primrose
I began this trip in winter, thinking that somewhere in mid-southern America I would encounter spring.  It has happened, and I no longer anticipate cold.