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.

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.

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  

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.  

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? 

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. 

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. 

Crawfish—Deep in the Heart of Texas

Having ridden 1,150 miles since Daytona Beach, of about 3,050 miles total to reach San Diego, I was happy for the call from my sister.  Her son’s wife has relatives in The Woodlands, Texas, and they invited me to stop for a few days rest.  So on Sunday I plan to be there in the Jacuzzi as they say, maybe looking for poets. 

This mud chimney is about eight inches tall and stands with hundreds like it in fields along the road.  I puzzled about its origin and came up with nothing.  So I did what has become a pattern all along the deep South, I asked a question that any local citizen could easily answer, and played the role of dumb tourist, trying to avoid “Dumb California Tourist.”  But Texans are typically polite; they interact with strangers more readily that Californians do.  Usually they seem happy to say what makes mud chimneys or whatever wonderment fills my foreign mind.

“Crawfish makes ‘em.  They dig tunnels in the mud and have to stack the tailing somewhere, so they make chimneys.  Nobody knows why they don’t make piles like gophers; just a lota guessin.” 

The small town of Kountze has two motels—a very expensive one and a cheap one.  The cheap one carries a load of bad reviews on various websites.  But its own website shows nice rooms with good amenities.  So I called and asked why.  “It has been completely remodeled,” a voice with an Indian accent said.  So I reserved a room and sit in Room 11 of 11 rooms writing that the voice was right; it is very nice. 

A block away is Mama Jack’s Buffet, where I filled three plates full as the one pictured.  My goal was to lose ten pounds of belly fat on this adventure.  This way I will just lose.

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.  He keeps it current, based on information he gleans here on the blog.