Day Twenty-Four
I have made my camp for the night at the Lady Bird Johnson Municipal Park in Fredericksburg, Texas. I am comfortably situated between the local airport and the baseball fields. I’ve been watching touch and go landings by student pilots, and a practice session of a girl’s softball team. Looking over this way, there are RVs. And the other way, too. One other camper is in the tent area, a guy with an adventure motorcycle. I saw Jeffery this morning for the last time at the top of the first big hill out of Lost Maples, and his plan was to camp in Kerrville, 25 or so miles behind me, so I won’t be seeing Jeffery again, at least on this trip.
Today’s effort of 72 miles was a confidence builder. The Texas Hill Country is steep, windy and tough on a bike. I’m trying to remember a single flat spot of more than a few hundred feet. It’s either up or down. Out of Lost Maples, it was a left turn onto the highway to face an immediate climb that just wouldn’t quit. Watching my metrics, for quite a while I was in the range of 2.8 mph at 112 bpm (heart beats per minute). As I’ve mentioned, at my current level of fatigue, that’s close to a maximum effort for me. On downhills I would hit 25 mph and my heart rate would drop quickly to 90 or even 85, then back up, and down, and up, like a yo-yo. Finally it was more down than up, and as I approached the town of Hunt, I was following the Guadalupe River, and the Hill Country was finally behind me.
The trade off for losing the hills is also losing the sense of wildness. As I rode towards Hunt, I realized that rural Texas, the hundreds of miles of it that I have ridden through, is now in my past. Hunt was the beginning of the Great Southern Exurbia. Exurbia may be spread out, but it’s not rural, in that the people and economies are not local. Once I reached the Guadalupe River, I was in neighborhoods of vacation homes and business that primary cater to visiting urbanites. Yes, it’s “the country”, but it’s not rural. And certainly not wild and intimidating, in the sense that if and when something goes wrong, I’m left with my wits, my planning and whatever I thought to pack in my bags. Here, and from here on to the Atlantic, I’m in built-country with people and their influence everywhere.
I am also officially out of the West. It actually happened a few days ago, but the culture has caught up with the climate and natural forces that really decide what a place is. Somewhere around Del Rio, weather began to oscillate between a Pacific and a Gulf influence. Now, weather is completely dominated by the Gulf of Mexico. Tonight’s breeze, and pretty much every breeze I’ll feel until about Orlando, will be from the Gulf of Mexico. Tonight it’s coming from the southeast, and as I ride further east, it will veer more to the south. The wind will almost always be at my right shoulder. When it’s over the front of my shoulder it will slow me down, when it’s over the back of my shoulder, it will push me along.
In the West, space is immense, mountains are high, and the mountain ranges are big. And because of the sheer scope of the landscape, most roads can be engineered, one way or another, to be of moderate grade. Efficiency may not be in a straight line, but it can be a moderate, climbable or descendible grade. In the Texas Hill Country, there are few good places to put a road at all, so they built as best they could, but with such a tangled landscape, steep roadways are inevitable. In the flat lands ahead, roads can go wherever the planners want them to (except when we get to the swamplands of East Texas and Louisiana, but I’ll get to that in a couple of weeks). For the next week or so of travel, I’ll be on roads where people said “I want to go that way”, and they just created a ribbon of asphalt from here to there. That doesn’t mean it’s all a checkerboard, because towns were settled where Mr. Jones wanted his Jonesville or Mr. Smith wanted his Smithburg. But the roads between towns are basically straight because it’s flat with few impediments.
As a cyclist, I’m all for it: more people, more infrastructure, more choices, good roads, moderate traffic, straight lines, and flat. Also, warmer, and more rain. And if I’ve gotten stronger through my Western Stress Test, it means chewing up miles faster. If I’m on the bike 9 hours, I will cover more than 100 miles, easy.
I don’t know if I’ll ride fewer hours and do other things besides riding (like writing or meeting people or relaxing). Maybe I will keep pressing to test the methods of the Center for Adventure Leadership. This ride, through me, is a stress test of what we teach at the Center. And it’s a test to see if I really know what I’m talking about, is or all my talk just “theory”. Does it really work? If not, can I modify our methods on the fly? Or are we actually not that hot after all? Or are we actually, truly, demonstrably, badasses. The ride is a test of everything we claim to stand for, which suggests that when I have to decide what the second half of the ride looks like, I’m going to push pedals harder and kick out more miles.
We’ll see. In the next 2 days, I’ll ride to Austin, then Bastrup, where I’ll rent a car, toss the bike in the back and drive back to San Antonio and Minavet’s wedding. Tahoma (Minavet’s mom) texted that her family arrived tonight. Dale and Tammy Rae arrive tomorrow night. My wife Joan arrives Friday afternoon and the wedding is Saturday. We’ll mess around San Antonio with the gang on Sunday and Monday, and I’m back in the saddle on Tuesday, after three days of rest and recovery. Joan will take home more of my cool weather gear (it will not be cool again for rest of the ride), so I’ll be lightening my load another notch. Fit Mark, decent weather, good gear and less gear = a fast crossing of the South.
I’ve been getting questions about my bike and my gear kit. I’ll have time in the next few days to lay it all out and describe what I’m riding and what I’m carrying. I’ve made some good choices, I’ve made some changes during the trip, and there are a few choices I will never make again. Watch for it.
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.
