Destiny Look Out For Me

February 29, 2016

After the unique joy of finding Kristen's front tire flat, replacing the tube, inflating the tube, going eight feet and finding the tire flat again, pulling out the long thorn that caused both flats, replacing the tube again, and inflating the tube again, at last we're off and running. The overcast hangs so low and so thick that even close hills are bathed in pale white and a light mist falls down onto our heads.

We crank up a long hill, away from the Rio Grande and into the bottom of a cloud. The world around us is calm and still. The only sounds are bike tires on chipseal when we're moving or the wind over our ears when we come to a stop. The hill keeps rising, like a series of huge steps. Soon we rise so far up into the cloud that I can hardly see Kristen a quarter of a mile ahead of me, even though she wears her bright red-orange rain jacket. The mist also grows stronger, to the point that it makes the hairs on my forearms stick together in a series of thin lines that have the vague look of stripes on an animal's fur. It's nothing like what we expected to find out in this dry, harsh country, but we both agree that it's one of the most wonderful things we've experienced on this trip.

Bathroom breaks are tricky out here. Any tree or bush that might provide cover from the eyes of passing drivers sits behind barbed wire. And even though traffic is light, it's inevitable that the moment one of us decides we're ready to take a leak or put on some chamois butter the roar of tires from an approaching car or truck always appears three seconds later. I find myself forever imagining a semi rolling by, the driver giving us a look of surprise, and then reaching for his CB radio and calling out something like, "Breaker breaker one-niner, we got a white lady's ass hangin' out at the picnic area eleven miles west of Langtry. Come on back."

But we almost always ride alone.

"Ah, I just love this so much," Kristen says. "It looks like it's uninhabited by people. Like when you're on a plane and look down at a place like this, you think, 'What's down there? Who's down there?' You see maybe one road going through and you wonder what it'd be like to be out there. I've been on airplanes so many times over the West and seen places like this and wanted to be there. And now we are. We're just out here. It feels so adventurous and fun."

Soon we give back what feels like all the elevation we gained since leaving Langtry. We bomb down through long, steep, sweeping bends that spit us out onto the flats at the bottom of a broad canyon where the unnamed or at least unsigned riverbed sits empty and gives only the slightest hints that water ever flows here. Climbing away from the canyon sends us up and over rolling waves of earth that take eight minutes of diligent work to crest but no more than sixty seconds of easy coasting to speed down and away from.

And then the hills that have been with us all day just disappear.

"Where'd all the canyons go?" Kristen asks.

"I don't know, but I'm glad they're there."

The adventures in roadside hygiene continue. We stop at a picnic area next to the highway to eat lunch, but before we get back to riding I decide to put on more chamois butter, because of the seat issues from yesterday. We've been in this place for half an hour and all of one truck has stopped there, and that was just for a couple of minutes to let the dog wander around and piss on the side of a garbage can. So perhaps you can imagine the surprise and shock I feel when I have my bike shorts halfway down off my ass, rubbing my cheeks with mysterious but magical white cream, and see a giant RV crest the hill off to my right. And perhaps you can also imagine the surprise and shock I feel as I watch that RV slow, steer off the road, and come to a stop just beyond the picnic bench behind while I pull up said shorts in what I can only described as profound panic.

Thirty-four miles after leaving Langtry we see the first lived-in house, but even then it's in such rough shape that there's doubt. It's about this time that the thick clouds that have protected us all day at last start to give way to the sun that's been looming above them for hours. The cloud shadows created by this collision of the sky's past and its future charge toward the west and make it look as if they're chasing after Kristen.

We have high hopes for Dryden: cold soda, iced coffee, food that's made from something other than six kinds of sugar. But our hopes have no basis in fact. We have no idea what we'll find when we get there. For all we know it's just a name on a map, a memory of a town that was once alive but now is no more.

Instead we find a general store that had been shut down but has since re-opened, where the smiling owner works behind the counter and a Border Collie and Miniature Schnauzer roam the concrete floors. Five minutes after rolling up, the first cross-country rider we've met since Dauphin Island in Alabama shows up. Tom's a little older than us and has the kind of thick, well-shaped beard I could only hope of growing. He's riding from San Diego to Key West and has the unmistakable energy of someone who's riding on their first long tour and has come to realize what a life-changing experience it can be.

Tom's from Ohio. We're quick to tell him how much we love Ohio, how it's the friendliest state we've ever ridden in, how we had the best time traveling through there last summer. Like us, a few years ago he realized he'd rather be working for himself and going after his own dreams than the dreams of someone else, so he set out to try and make that happen. Now he runs a series of outdoor events in the summer, the biggest of which is called Canoegrass, a weekend event with bluegrass bands where instead of sitting on land and sweating you float or kayak or canoe in the river fronting the stage instead. This leaves his winters free for adventures like riding the Southern Tier and the thirty-day kayak trip he took through the Florida Keys last year. Before we know it an hour is gone. It's so different from the usual round of questions we answer and ask when we meet people who don't ride. Instead it's all What's your story? Where do you live when you're not traveling? Where are you going next? Aren't you glad you took the risk to leave behind a normal life? Isn't cycle-touring just the best?

It's interesting and life-affirming and fun, and all of it passes in the shade of the awning in front of the store. Kristen and Tom eat big grapefruits homegrown by the family that owns the place. In between raving about semi-nomadic life we talk to the locals that filter past and even the FedEx delivery driver. The contrast between the country store and the chain gas station, and the profound positive effect these stores have on small towns like Dryden, is on full display. We give thanks that this place somehow bucked the national trend and reopened. We're also grateful for our timing. If we hadn't had those flats to fix this morning, or if Tom had left Sanderson earlier, we still would have seen each other but it would have been a shorter, less meaningful conversation in the way that roadside meetings with cars howling past eight feet away tend to be. Today the magic of the road is on our side.

With some extra power in our legs pushing us on we stare out into extreme flatness. When I scan the horizon from left to right it's goes: endless plain of green and brown creosote bushes, fence, highway, rail line, fence, endless plain of green and brown creosote bushes.

And then the canyons return, like they always do out here. It's fast down, slow up. Bobbing in the wind at twenty miles per hour, then thick lines of sweat down the neck at four. But the effort is entirely worth it. The texture of the landscape, the vastness of the sky, and the swishing sounds made by the yucca and creosote and ocotillo on the heavy late afternoon breeze come together to create a place and a moment unlike any I've yet experienced. It's a moment that could only ever come into existence on the seat of a bicycle. By car or by train or by foot it would only be some different fraction of itself. I had high hopes for this part of the country. It's a place I've wanted to ride for many years, ever since reading about the Southern Tier in the journals of other riders. So far it has exceeded all of those hopes. I revel in the victory.

The squish of an almost-flat rear tire guides me into Sanderson. It holds on just long enough to drop us at the end of the parking lot for the Budget Inn. Behind the front desk stands Danny, an older Indian man in a polo shirt and a red Morehouse College hat. He has the look of a regular hotel owner or manager, but it turns out Danny is anything but regular. He's taken the fact that his motel sits on the Southern Tier and run with it. He gives discounts to cross-country riders. He lets people who don't want to stay indoors camp on the property. The wall next to the front desk is a patchwork of business cards and handwritten notes of thanks and appreciation left for him by riders who have passed through over the last few years.

"My father, he died fourteen months ago," Danny says with a waver in his voice as he points at a picture of his father next to the counter. "He help people all the time back home, bring them food if they need it. So here, I try to do the same, I try to help the cyclists, do whatever I can. There were these two, they were riding in cold weather, very cold, wind and freezing, so I send them some hot Chai tea. I have friend get in car and take the tea to them, maybe thirty miles that way."

He points toward the east.

"How did you come to live out here?" Kristen asks.

"I live in New York for years, in a bad neighborhood, a long walk from my apartment to the subway, early in the morning, you know? But nothing happen. Destiny look out for me. But then I move to Houston. I run liquor store, get robbed four times. Then a, you know, chain liquor store, they move in next door. They buy billions of dollars of liquor every year. They have low prices. I can't compete. I lose a lot of money. Destiny not looking out for me. I want something more peaceful, so I come here."

"It's beautiful out here," I say. "Very peaceful and quiet."

"Yes, quiet, but sometimes too quiet, you know? I grew up in Bombay!"

We're all checked in and about to go our room when Danny asks, "Would you like dinner? I can make you dinner, Indian food. It's all vegetarian, no meat, just veggies. Is that okay?"

Indian cookies and more, courtesy of Danny.

We haven't had one home-cooked meal on this trip, let alone a home-cooked Indian dinner, so we say yes. An hour later there's a knock at our door. Danny appears with two bowls of rice, two bowls of soup, a stack of papadams, and fresh yogurt. We thank him over and over again for his kindness and generosity, but he never gives more than a quick head nod or a quiet "Yes, sir." For as big of a deal as it seems to us, to him it isn't. It's just what he does. It's just part of what he sees as his purpose in this new life of his at a cheap motel along U.S. 90 on the outskirts of Sanderson, Texas.

The chidboy down the street doesn't sell single beers, only packs. I come away with a sixer of Lone Star. It starts out okay, but soon the fact that we almost never drink more than one beer at a time comes to bear. Neither of us finish our third bottle before sleep rushes in and takes over.

Today's ride: 60 miles (97 km)
Total: 1,938 miles (3,119 km)

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