They Must Be Some Pretty Hardy Souls

March 8, 2016

I walk out of my motel room to find a repo man knocking on the next door down to my right. It seems like if the guy inside doesn't answer in the next couple of minutes the repo man is going to pull his tow truck up behind the guy's car and take it from him. The mood in the office is less strange than yesterday, where the could-have-been-naked guy behind the counter stands behind it wearing at least a yellow polo shirt, which is a big improvement.

Then it's on to the cafe attached to the RV park. It's a decision I regret as soon as I sit down. I'm the only one there. There's no music, just the hum of a plastic heater that sits on the floor next to my table. The quiet is broken by the beep of the microwave out of which my food is coming and the stuttered laughing of one of the stoners in the kitchen as he talks with his grandmother and sister about erections. Then he starts coughing furiously. I don't know how close he is to where my food's being made. I don't want to know. When I go to pay I notice a bumper sticker on the wall next to the register. It was made for some gun shop in the area. ISIS Hunting Permit, it reads. The cook-slash-owner-slash-grandmother asks me how everything was as she takes my eight dollars. I say it was fine.

And so ends the short but weird chapter in my life that was Sierra Blanca.

Goodbye to one of the strangest towns I've ever known

Where everyone else who passes through this place on a bicycle goes east or west with the howl of the interstate I head north out of town on a quiet two lane road I'm not sure more than a handful of cycle-tourists have ever taken. The next 120 miles include one cafe that may or may not be open when I get there. That's it. No towns, no gas stations, no motels. It wouldn't surprise me if I don't see more than a few dozen houses. It couldn't be more different from the frontage roads and freeway towns and the mess of riding through El Paso. It's perfect.

It takes only two miles of riding for the depression and sluggishness induced by two nights alone in a motel room to wear off. I feel like I'm back where I should be, outside in the fresh desert air, moving slow but moving toward Kristen all the same. I see trucks on distant dirt roads kicking up a rooster tail of dust behind them that hangs in their wake long after they're gone. The trucks on the road – and out here it's all trucks – pass without a wave. Their drivers just stare with one hand resting on the top of the steering wheel, the shadowed outline of their cowboy hats visible through the glare reflecting off the windshield.

I ride alone among the yuccas, the tiny wildflowers, the odd mesquite tree, and the creosote bushes of deep, healthy green that cover the basin floor. When I walk off into the dirt between the road and the barbed wire fence I find wide, deep, fresh fox holes. The sound or feel of my footfalls cause jackrabbits to spring to life and shoot off toward the mountains beyond. Farther on a hawk with a white belly and tail feathers the color of rust does a few loops above me on the updrafts before gliding off to the south. When I stop it's quiet but for the wind. Most of the dwellings I pass aren't houses but old motorhomes and travel trailers that could in theory still move but in practice never will. Some stand alone, others in little clusters of two or three or four. They must be some pretty hardy souls to pass their days out here, I think to myself. But soon it dawns on me that most of them probably work on the huge ranches that cover all the land in sight out here. I don't think toughness is in short supply.

When the road bends it does so in gentle arcs. But these arcs are few and far between, and the path always returns in short order to due north. The weather system that moved in last night leaves the day partly sunny and sixty-five degrees with a north wind that has just enough edge to it that I never sweat, even on the uphill parts of the gentle rollers laid out in front of me. I say the same thing to myself over and over again: I'm so happy I came this way. My mind is light and free and the world seems as if it's been arranged all for my benefit. It's not like it's any great shock that wide open countryside and huge skies and empty roads won out over the freeways and truck stops and motels, but it's a wonderful shift from the last few days all the same.

The Guadalupe Mountains appear in the distance off to my right in the early afternoon. Among the peaks stands El Capitan, shrouded in haze. It's both the tallest in the range and at 8,064 feet the highest point in all of Texas. About the same time, the hills in front of me start to level out and all trace of homes and RVs and even dirt ranch roads snaking away from the pavement disappear. It's a grand scene. To the southeast I see thick gray clouds dropping heavy rain. When I stop I hear the faint but unmistakable rumble of thunder far in the distance. But in front of me it's all light overcast and patches of blue sky.

Still, I look back over my right shoulder every few minutes. At first the mass of gray seems far off, but half an hour later it has grown much darker and the lines of rain streaming down from it much thicker. More than once I stop and examine the sky and try to estimate at what point I'll need to pull off the road and create some kind of makeshift shelter for myself. I've been in this spot enough to know that out here there's no way I'm outriding a thunderstorm that's headed straight for me.

But today luck is on my side. The worst of the weather stays to my right and I ride with filtered sunshine hitting my back, my shadow cast down onto the road, and just a few drops of rain dotting the arms of my shirt and the lenses of my sunglasses.

Then the wind switches from gentle in my face to strong from behind in the span of just a few minutes, like something serious is about to happen. At the junction with the U.S. Highway that runs west toward El Paso I stop at a boarded up former gas station that sits tired and worn out next to a boarded up former motel and consider my options. To the south and east the skies have become so thick with clouds in all shades of gray that they look depthless. One way or another they'll cross paths with the spot where I stand. But I'm headed west, and whether or not they'll cross paths if I haul ass to the west isn't so certain. I know it's only five or six mostly flat miles to Cornudas, the little outpost in the desert where the cafe that may or may not be open stands. With the winds coming from the southeast as strong as they are, I think I could cover that ground in less than half an hour. But I also know that thunderstorms move fast, and that if they catch me I'll get soaked and run the small but still possible risk of getting struck by lightning.

Ah, screw it, I'll deal with that if it comes, I think to myself. Let's get going.

I crank hard in the big chain ring, rolling at fifteen up the subtle hills and bombing down the back side of them at twenty-two. The miles fly by, but I always watch the line of storm clouds dumping rain toward the southwest. It looks like it's running parallel to me but I can't be sure. Then I see a lightning bolt flash toward the ground and find a gear I didn't know I had, just in case I'm wrong and we might be on a collision course instead.

In the end we're not. I reach Cornudas just after four with the rain and lightning charging on to the west without me. My hopes soar when I see a big white sandwich board in front of the cafe with red letters that read OPEN. Then I read the small print: it's only open Wednesday through Sunday. But I also see a sign saying that they have an RV park with full hookups. No big deal then; I'll just set up the tent and sleep here and grab breakfast in the morning.

I can't find an office. It doesn't look like anyone's around. I'm not entirely sure the RV area behind the cafe is still open. But it's here and it's windy and cold and I'd rather be in the tent than waiting for someone who might never show up, so I get set up and dive into the sleeping bag. Soon huge wind gusts show up and shake the sides of the tent, whipping them back and forth. I can tell which direction the wind is coming from by looking at which side of the tent looks like it's about to cave in. The beautiful morning and early afternoon have become distant memories.

And then an hour later it all stops as quickly as it began. The tent stands idle and quiet. A car shows up after dark, but the person inside either doesn't notice me or doesn't care, so I'm left to myself. I only poke my head out of the tent once for about fifteen seconds before putting on a few more layers of clothes and settling in for the night. The sounds of cars hauling ass toward El Paso and semis idling across the highway become my lullaby.

Today's ride: 50 miles (80 km)
Total: 2,214 miles (3,563 km)

Rate this entry's writing	Heart	2
Comment on this entry	Comment	0