March 6, 2014
Day 61: Brackettville to Comstock: Peaceful, easy feeling.
The romance of sleeping under the stars in the desert may stem from some sort of cowboy mythology. Or maybe it stems from the earliest days of prehistory. For us, it may stem from the line in the Eagles song "I want to sleep with you in the desert tonight, with a million stars all around"
Whatever the source of the mystique, the stars were all out in the desert last night and looking up at them was one of the highlights of the trip. We had left the fly off the tent, because of the clear sky. The temperature was 5 C which was easily handled by our sleeping bags. In fact it adds to the enjoyment when it is cool, but you are warm.
Because we had stopped early, and gone to bed early, we got up at 4:00 a.m. We enjoyed cooking breakfast and hanging around our concrete pad, and finally set off down the road at 5:30 a.m. The number of giant trucks roaring by had tapered off (but never stopped) overnight. With our various lights, flashers, and reflectors we felt almost safer than during the day. Although it had been comfortably cool in camp, it felt cold on the road. But it was only an hour to hour and a half before the sun came up. The light at least made it seem warmer. As happens in the desert, the day did become very warm and Dodie now even sports an all new sunburn on her leg.
We knew we were approaching Del Rio when we began to see planes buzzing around the Laughlin airforce base there. At first it was fun to watch them, but these were training flights and they just kept going around and around adding to the truck noise in terms of blocking out conversation. Although Del Rio has many many stores, we did our shopping at Dollar General. They carry the type of lower quality easy to prepare shelf stable foods that we need for this stage of the tour.
Our next chore was to find the bike shop. The bikes are working ok, but we have taken warnings about thorns to heart, and want to carry more tubes and patches. The shop, Lakeside Sports, is on US 90 in town, where it is called Veterans Blvd. This is actually slightly off route, relative to the ACA way. All the services are on Veterans, so it is a little perverse for ACA to try taking you off it.
The bike shop, while modestly sized, had what we needed. The owner, Tim, was well aware of 20" touring wheels, and had tubes for us. He was also well aware of the problem of thorns. One tube he was carrying was a slime filled extra thick one that was easily as heavy in itself as a tire.It also cost $15 each. We deemed thisto be overkill and overweight, so we are taking our chances with our six spare tubes and three patch kits.
Interestingly, when we asked Tim where the thorns begin, his answer was Here! That's because while the Goathead thorns may be further west, the mesquite and other thorn bushes or trees are here now. As naive Canadians, we had to ask Tim what a mesquite looked like, so he went out an brought us back a sample.
Although we had told ourselves that we had to get on with cycling pronto, in order to make the needed kms today, we naturally found ourselves chatting a bit with Tim, the only cyclist we have seen for some time.The conversation turned to road safety, and naturally the traumatic case of Cindy Weber came up. Tim was outraged about what had happened, amd also by the lack of even a citation for the friver at fault. We were gratified to hear Tim, a local resident, assuring us that the driver was in the wrong and that the duty of giving right of way is first the responsibility of the driver - towards bikes and pedestrians, and then that of the bike -towards pedestrians.
Tim saw us off down Veterans, which contains Walmart, Home Depot, 2 McDonalds, and several hundred other stores and motels. Our final chore was to eat some real food. We chose IHOP for this. Surprisingly for a national chain, they have good quality and selection. They were also fast. We chose dishes we had had before and frankly just inhaled them. Later I asked myself what vegetables had come with my sirloin tips, and though I did remember the mashed potatoes and corn I had to think about it. They had just gotten, as I said, quickly inhaled.
From Del Rio to Comstock and beyond is about 60 km. We set off on this leg well after noon. Naturally we had head winds for much of the time, and chipseal for much of the time. Oh, and quite a few long long hills, some of which were fairly steep too. We just went into long distance crank crank mode that special state of "no mind" you need to move a heavily loaded bike over a long distance.
A lot of what we were passing through, though, was interesting and exciting. First off, we had reached the Rio Grande. With the flood control Amistad Dam a few km out of Del Rio, the Amistad Reservoir was created, around 1969. The reservoir supports the Amistad National Recreation Area which has a number of campgrounds and is mainly a playground for boaters. There are lots of desert plants and animals including Ocotillo and Mesquite, Armadillo, Javelina, and Roadrunner. There are alsolots of poisonous critters, like tarantula, scorpion, three kinds of rattlesnake, coral snake, black widow and recluse spiders, etc.
The reservoir is not as big looking as expected, but it does have a lovely shade of blue waters.
We stopped in to the visitor centre for a flying visit, and wished we had a car, so we could buy all the books on offer. The books also helped us realize how interesting this area, and the area of the Big Bend national park, are. With several weeks to spend, we could come to appreciate it better. As it was we flew out the door and set to cranking up the next hill.
After a few hours we ran into another Border Patrol roadblock site. They had narrowed the road to one lane, and Dodie (just a little tired and testy) took the whole lane and cranked slowly up to the waiting officers, while the line of traffic behind revved their engines helplessly (not really too feasible to run down a cyclist in a police lineup). The officers had a large German Shepherd, which jumped at Dodie, barking, and had to be heavily restrained by its handler. Needless to say Dodie was unimpressed by this performance, and would not talk to the officer until she could hear him properly, with the dog silenced. We got pulled aside and had to show our passports. Must look too Mexican.
As we cycled away, I said to Dodie "How can the dog identify an illegal immigrant? Does he smell mole on yor breath?". Dodie said "It is looking for drugs", to her credit, without adding "silly" even as a word or in tone of voice. It is remarkable that I am that dumb as to have to be told this, though!
In the end, we could not make it past Comstock, and in fact barely dragged ourselves up the last hill to town.We have not really seen a town, actually, but so far only the motel It was recommended as decent and reasonable, and though it is clean, we had to unload our bikes to get them into the small room. The $60 cost brings just the basics, and so certainly reflects being the only show in town.
Because it took so long to get here, our bedtime is late, so tomorrow's start will be late. This puts into doubt how far we can get tomorrow. We will likely have to give up trying to reach a certain destination each day, and try to wild camp, though good spots seemed hard to find. Even without a fixed daily target, we have to be able to make distance in order to reach resupply spots. Oh well, we'll see how it goes!
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Today's ride: 90 km (56 miles)
Total: 3,684 km (2,288 miles)
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