Day Seventeen
Today was an epic ride, 109.5 miles from Sierra Blanca to Marfa, Texas. The road surfaces continue to be beautiful and clean. Traffic is considerate. The route included a 65 mile continuous uphill stretch, and an unhelpful sidewind, which had a helpful side effect of keeping me a bit cooler on the hottest day of the trip so far, with a high of 86. The diurnal temperature swings here in the high desert (Marfa is at 4,700 feet elevation) are significant. Even with highs in the 80s, night lows are in the 50s, so I'll get a comfortable night's sleep.
My day started with a flat front tire (what’s new??), and I really had to search for the leak. A steel wire was the culprit. I couldn't see it on the outside of the tire, but it was ever so slightly sticking into the inside of the tread casing. Had I not found the wire and pulled it out with pliers, it would have re-punctured the tube.
I had an interesting conversation with Charles, the co-owner of the Sierra Blanca Historic Lodge. The lodge has been open since 1939. He and his wife bought it as a run-down derelict, and have steadily made improvements that both keep it authentic and up-to-date. Charles is retired military and has seen the world, but he and his wife feel a commitment to this part of Texas. He's concerned about climate change, and water, and people who just can't make ends meet. They've put their stake in the ground here and are making a go at balancing all sorts of forces.
For breakfast I headed back to Delfina's restaurant and had a good chat with Erika, who now runs the place. Delfina is her mom. Erika's world is the Texas of Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants. She hasn't travelled much. She moved her family to Fort Worth for a while, but was the brunt of so much loathing for people of Mexican descent that she moved her family back home, to Sierra Blanca, and the life of running a restaurant. Like so many people I've met on this trip, deeper conversations move inevitably from "performative politeness" to anxieties and concerns that are real but they have a hard time really explaining. People want to work at getting along, but they cannot find a way other than keeping connections shallow and polite. Okay, that's enough puzzled insight.
Back to the ride.
It was mostly flat or downhill the first 34 miles on the interstate from Sierra Blanca to Van Horn. And a second breakfast at Gilbert’s.
Then a mostly uphill 39 miles from Van Horn to Valentine.
I thought I would take a nice break in Valentine but there wasn’t much there so I just kept riding.
Although there is a library in Valentine with stone lions.
A blooming cacti
About 10 miles shy of Marfa, I crested the hill I had been climbing for nearly 6 hours, and started a nice 18 mph descent to Marfa. It was a long day, and my approach to hydration and eating are paying off. I'll be a bit sore tonight and just a little stiff in the morning, but tomorrow's 65 miles to Marathon will feel like just going to the office to get work done.
Puzzling evidence
The country here is wide open, a very broad valley, with trees only where they have been planted by a person. There is regular traffic on US 90, but I think the highway is the only place where there are any people at all. They are coming from somewhere else and going to somewhere else. I'm crossing it just as the temperatures begin to rise to where one really needs a life strategy to deal with the heat, and a real effort to not get caught out in it for too long.
Today was something of a crux day for the entire coast-to-coast ride: a very long day, with the greatest distances between anything at all, in a part of the country I have zero experience with, that has a well-earned reputation for killing people who are not prepared. After today I start down in elevation, through communities that are increasingly closer together, with more and more people, pretty much all the way to the Atlantic. Starting tomorrow, the West begins to fade into the South.
I’d love to hear from you. Donate to the ride and send along your words of encouragement and tell me why getting kids outside matters to you.
