February 22, 2016
It's a Damned Gypsy Village
I wake up around one in the morning to the sound of furious rain. It's the kind where there's no wind to deflect the rain's path, so the water falls straight down not in waves but in what sounds like one continuous downpour. The absence of wind also means that the storm doesn't pass through in fifteen or twenty minutes but instead hangs around for at least an hour and maybe two. It's hard to know for sure because I wake up and fall back asleep several times. Whenever I open my eyes and realize what's happening this feeling of joy starts to wash over me. To find myself in the middle of such an intense torrent of rain and feel its power all around me, but at the same time know that I'm warm and dry and have Kristen by my side, is one of the greatest pleasures of life I know.
| Heart | 1 | Comment | 0 | Link |
Smithville is just a few miles down the road from the park. It's a town of about 4,000 people that's quaint and clean. But it's almost too quaint and clean. The streets are broad from the days of horse-drawn carriages but empty. There are rows of storefronts in old brick buildings but the antique stores and gift shops and art galleries and theater companies within them are all closed. There are half a dozen cafes but most aren't open. It's this strange mix of the country and the city. Even though we aren't passing through Austin or San Antonio, this place tells us we're close. Its lifeblood is tourists coming in from the cities and suburbs on the weekend to shop and eat and bed-and-breakfast, not ranchers buying boots or the week's groceries. It's yet another version of rural America, where each town tries to survive in whatever way it can.
Even though I know all that, breakfast still feels weird. Where it seems like there should be a bunch of old men gathered around cups of coffee bullshitting it's old people in sneakers and blue jeans pecking at their phones and tablets and laptops.
Thick overcast hangs over everything, causing any object more than about fifty feet away from us to look as if we're viewing it through a filter of pale, hazy white. Combined with the rolling hills, the bright green grass at the edge of the road, all the cattle in the pastures beyond, and the wind rushing over my ears, the morning has the vague feel of the North Island of New Zealand. I even get passed by a car with right-hand drive. It's only a mail delivery Jeep, but still.
We're close enough to the cities and suburbs that any highway or main side road is full of traffic that doesn't give a shit about waiting for bicycles, so we stick to the most remote back roads we can find. One of the issues with these roads is that they're so narrow we have to pay attention to cars getting too close to us heading the opposite way. Because they're not speeding at us from behind, we decide that our go-to call of "Up yer butt!" doesn't apply. I offer a suggestion.
What about, "Approachin' yer butt!?"
No response.
"Alright, I know, it has too many syllables."
Silence.
"What if it's shorter, like, Proachin' yer butt!?"
She's still not convinced. For now this part of our cycle-touring life remains under construction.
But in fact the cars are few. Mostly what we deal with are the constant rolling hills that mark the start of the Texas Hill Country. We pass simple but attractive houses built of tan and white stone and make one-sided conversation with skeptical miniature donkeys. We look up at water towers that don't have the name of a town or a water district painted on the side of them, just a giant smiley face. We ride through the invisible cloud associated with the sense-awakening experience of riding past a septic tank being pumped. And we still talk about Chuck, that little stray dog from back in Louisiana that we wanted to take with us but couldn't.
Somehow the tiny town of Red Rock still has a healthy general store. It's like stepping back in time by twenty or thirty years, with the wooden porch and bottles of soda and the ads taped to the inside of the window next to the front door. There's the domino tournament and family fish fry at the VFW in Rockne, bingo at the Sacred Heart Catholic Church, and the Bastrop Area Livestock Show some time next month. As we're eating bananas and crackers on the bench beneath the covered porch, a small white pickup parks in front of us and a fifty-something guy climbs out. He starts to talk, not so much with us but to us. He jokes about us being homeless, explains how he's buying some beer as a reward for spending all morning pulling a stump before then, without knowing anything of our political or religious beliefs, launches into a rant about the small town he calls home.
"I'm a Democratic Jew from Chicago who voted for Obama twice," he says, "But if you say that around here they'll shut you out. People can be very narrow-minded. Take this store for instance. Last time I was here, as I was leaving, the woman behind the counter said 'Have a nice life.' I don't know if that means don't come back or what, but I come back for the beer anyway. And it's so conservative out here. What does that even mean, conservative? But anyway, we've got our politicians getting in heated arguments about who's the better Christian. Can you believe that?"
I tell him that I've noticed how so many of the election signs around here don't just say Republican but Conservative Republican, as if it's a two-party system within the party itself. I've never seen that before; I'm curious where it comes from. But he zooms right past the comment and just starts talking about how he's moving to Pensacola because his son's stationed in the Air Force there and how much he sold his rental property in Austin for and then more about why he dislikes this area. He gives us route advice we didn't ask for. He tells us he's into running. Related to nothing at all he says that we should get dental work done in Ciudad Acuna on the other side of the border from Del Rio when we're down that way.
He sums up his unprompted advice like this: don't get old, don't have kids, and don't live in Texas. It's no wonder he doesn't fit in out here. As he drones on about wondering what American city will be the next Austin, I start to feel a distinct kinship with this man's neighbors. I've only been around him for ten minutes and I'm also ready to wish him a nice life.
Beyond town we grind gravel and pound dirt on roads we have all to ourselves. In the gaps between the low muddy spots and the rapid-fire washboard we stop to feed handfuls of grass to some wary but interested donkeys, say hello to a small herd of goats, and talk of the grand dreams we hope to accomplish just in the next couple of years, all of which seem both magnificent and possible. We ride past the remains of steel and wooden bridges so old the first vehicles that crossed them might have been horse-drawn carriages. Then it's down roads lined by post oaks, whose wandering leafless branches spread wide above our heads like so many arms and hands and fingers. I don't know how many different ways I can say it; the back roads of Texas make for fine, peaceful, easy riding. We're so happy we decided to come this way.
We stop and rest at a junction miles from any town. Unprompted, I look over at Kristen with a serious expression on my face and say:
I'm sailing away
Set an open course for the virgin sea
I've got to be free
Free to face the life that's ahead of me
On board I'm the captain
So climb aboard
"Are you reciting poetry to me, captain?"
"No my dear – Styx lyrics."
With the chorus to "Come Sail Away" looping through my head we crank out miles and end up in Lockhart. It's a city of just 13,000 people and nothing about it seems all that remarkable at first. But soon it occurs to me that it might be the most diverse non-college town we've been to, if the mix of people going into and out of the H-E-B grocery store at 3:45 p.m. on a Monday afternoon is any kind of indicator – and I think it might be. Among this collective mass of faces what stands out the most is how almost half of the people that walk by are Hispanic. It's the first time we've seen such a profound demographic shift since leaving the Deep South. And we've now pedaled far enough west that it's a shift that may stick with us all the way until we reach the Pacific.
For as good as Texas has been to us, the prices charged at its state parks continue to leave us so shocked that they lead us to make strange faces and question the direction of our society. At the park near Lockhart we first ride past the campground loop set aside for RVs, the one with hookups for electricity and water and immediate poop removal. Set among the concrete pads and well-groomed grass are golf carts, barbecues, and strings of Christmas lights in absurd lengths. There are satellite dishes, leveling jacks, bicycles that get ridden 300 feet to the bathroom, tablecloths for picnic tables, and metal roofs covering those picnic tables. It's dog cages, propane tanks, and cables and cords and drainage hoses extending out from this ocean of fiberglass in intricate networks. It's a damned gypsy village. For the retired people who fill them, these sites cost sixteen dollars per night.
We're the only people and our bicycles the only vehicles in our camping loop, the loop where each site gets a picnic table, a metal grill, and a fire ring, of which ours is underwater and filled with cigarette butts. There's an electrical outlet and water spigot, of which we use about eight cents worth of resources. Our footprint here is literally a tent and nothing else. It costs us non-retired campers twenty-six dollars for the privilege. I'm not sure whether to feel more offended by this, or the fact that you can play golf all day long at the attached course, a course that requires constant maintenance and tens of millions of gallons of water each year to keep green, for nine bucks.
The peace and quiet of our own personal camping loop gives us the time and space to debate what to do about the powerful thunderstorms that could be headed our way during the night. There's the chance of massive winds, torrential rain, damaging hail, and even a tornado. A tornado! There's also the chance it could weaken or miss us altogether. And so we talk of finding a picnic shelter for cover, or taking down the tent and moving all of our stuff into the bathroom, or weathering the storm right where we are in a state of scared-shitlessness. Kristen's default state in these situations is one of what-if hyper-caution. Mine is concerned but lazy, as it is with most important decisions in my life. In the end we agree to set an alarm for midnight, check the state of the weather then, and after that make some decisions.
Today's ride: 51 miles (82 km)
Total: 1,545 miles (2,486 km)
| Rate this entry's writing | Heart | 2 |
| Comment on this entry | Comment | 0 |