Day 21: Amarillo to O’Donnell

175 miles

Sometimes you just have to let the bad days be bad so the good days can be that much better. Today was one of those bad days. It had all the telltale signs of a bad day from the gun. I think I knew that before I even got on my bike , and with that thought in mind, not only where the conditions primed for a bad day, mentally I was primed for a bad day. I’m tired of the flat plains to be honest. Part of the reason I pushed so far yesterday was so that I could get out of here. I kind of thought that today, I would enter into a more desert territory, but it was mostly more of the same. On the whole, today was definitely my least favorite day of the trip so far. I didn’t have any moments that really stand out as make or break, do or die, on the verge of crying on the side of the interstate, but the whole day just kind of sucked. I kind of just want to forget about it and remember the few positives from today so after this paragraph I’m just not going to talk about it anymore. The TLDR is it was hot and windy and boring. The official high was 98, but in the sun my bike computer got up to 109. On the asphalt under the sun, I would assume my bike computer was reading pretty accurately, it certainly felt that hot. The wind was against me all day. It maxed out at a 20mph sustained wind. I’ve had plenty of days in this trip with 20 mile an hour headwinds, in fact of the 21 days I’ve been on the bike, 14 of them have had a headwind of 15 miles an hour or over. The thing about the wind today was that it was consistently 20 miles an hour for the entire day. Usually, I have all morning to pad my mileage and before the wind really picks up, but by 10 it was already 87° and the wind was at full force for the day. There also is truly nowhere to hide as today was my flattest day of the trip so far, and potentially for the whole thing? it was also the definition of a block headwind, it was coming from the south the entire day and just absolutely battered me. In terms of the landscape, there was truly nothing to report. I didn’t think I could get more boring than yesterday, but it did. If you’re wondering what it looks like then just read yesterday’s blog and imagine it even flatter and more arid. OK, enough complaining let’s move onto some more interesting things.

I stayed in a hotel in Amarillo last night, it was quite nice. The AC had been set to 58 when I got into the room which seems like a massive waste of energy, but it was great sleeping conditions. I turned off the AC and got a nice, seven hours of sleep. That’s more than I’ve gotten in almost a week, but I figured I would need it with some long days in the future. Unfortunately, for the hotel, they had free Continental breakfast. I haven’t been eating big breakfast on this trip. I usually just wake up and start snacking on the bike. This was definitely my first time sitting down for a meal before riding. I ate for about 30 minutes, which felt like an inefficient use of my time since I can usually eat breakfast on the move, but it was an enjoyable little break and I got down probably around 5,000 calories for breakfast. I also had a pint of ice cream in the hotel room that I ate as soon as I woke up, so I was probably approaching 6,000 calories consumed on the day before I even did anything. I’d gotten 2 pints of ice cream last night and only managed to eat one before I fell asleep. The other one had been out all night and turned into a milkshake which I drink upon waking up. Even though it was just a pint, it was 1200 calories. Not only was I able to get a nice breakfast from the Continental buffet, I was also able to stock up for the road. I got some bananas, granola bars, and even managed to strap two Belgium waffles to my seat pack. I ate them before I got out of the city limits. Upon taking off from Amarillo, I immediately jumped on interstate 27. When I left Wyoming, I said that I probably wasn’t going to be on interstate again, but I hadn’t made it a superlative. I knew there was a chance that I would find myself on a limited access freeway again. I thought riding on the interstate in Texas was strictly forbidden, but it turns out, it’s just highly discouraged and only forbidden where signage says it is. I’d asked an officer about it yesterday at a gas station and he said that in rural areas it was technically legal, but heavily frowned upon. In urban areas he said there should be signs telling me that it’s illegal. When I got to I-27 in downtown Amarillo there weren’t any signs so I hopped on the freeway. Is downtown Amarillo considered a rural area? The consensus answer would probably be no, but no one was there to classify it for me and there was no sign and stopping me, so I had a lively start to my morning with four lanes of cars to my left. After about 15 miles of interstate I was able to use frontage roads and the old highway 87 Road, but throughout the day I hopped on and off I-27 as the frontage road was a little bit disjointed and often potholed or covered in high resistance aggregate that only furthered my frustrations in the headwind.

Because it was so incredibly hot out, I had to make frequent stops, much more often than I would’ve liked to. My first stop of the day was in the small town of Tulia. It was 11 AM, but it was already sweltering out. The town was one of the sleepiest I’ve ever been in. A four-way intersection marked downtown with a gas station on one corner and a Ford dealership on the other. It was like I’d pedaled into a ghost town. Nothing stirred except for the wind. Big grain silos loomed over the town. Their white paint was peeling away to reveal a rusty under body. You could see that the silos had been repainted many times and each time the paint had peeled back to reveal the rusty scars that were telltale of a town that was once young and vibrant and shiny, but has since lost its glow. The wind whistled through the town, but nothing else moved. It was like the wind carried away all the life. The car dealership offered bright display of shiny new trucks and vehicles for the whole family, but nobody was around to drive them. I pulled into the gas station and was met with melancholy music playing out of speakers above the pumps. It was the sad type of music you would expect to hear at a diner in the 50s, the type of music I would expect to accompany Hopper’s painting “Nighthawk”. Cars stood still in the parking lot and even at the gas pumps. The absence of people almost eerie. It felt like someone had set up a prop town for a movie shoot, but they had made a mistake and accidentally put in a car dealership from the present day in a set that otherwise belonged in the 50s. None of the actors had shown up. Like the director had forgotten to hire extras. I sat for a little bit outside the store drinking as much as I could. I thought about my day ahead and how it already felt so hopeless. I didn’t really want to get back on my bike, but there wasn’t much else to do.

As I went through Plainview I decided to ride on the frontage road for a little bit because on my map I could tell that it connected to an on-ramp a couple of exits down. There were some small houses right on the road, and as I passed by one of the houses two dogs ran out to greet me. I’ve been chased by about 10 dogs by now on this trip, some of them friendly, some of them not so friendly. Since entering Texas it’s been an increasingly common occurrence to be chased. I’ve been chased by enough dogs while riding in the South that I can usually tell right away if one wants to come out and play with you, or if one looking to take a piece out of you. These two dogs were not here to play. They were more interested in how I tasted. The leader of the two got right up next to me and started snapping on my heels. I pulled out my water bottle in anticipation and sprayed him in the face a little bit. Usually this scares away some of the pretenders. This dog was no weak warrior though, he was seasoned. My water only made him more mad and he lunged up at my hip trying to get a solid bite at my wrist. I hit him with a little uppercut with my water bottle right under the chin. I’m not in the habit of hitting dogs, it pains me every time I’ve had to do it. It’s pretty uncommon where I actually have to hit a dog to make it go away. This is probably only the fifth time I’ve had to do it. As much as I hated making contact with the dog, I wasn’t really feeling in the mood to get bitten either. My little jab with the water bottle was effective and the dog turned its heels and slinked away in embarrassment. His buddy kept chasing me for a minute, but without the leader there, I knew he was all bark and no bite. He lacked the backbone to really do anything without his friend.

I really enjoyed the company of the many prairie dogs over the past couple of days. Unfortunately, it seems that I am now out of prairie dog country, or at least they have wised up and decided to get a little further away from the road. They’ve been replaced by grasshoppers. The only wildlife I saw all day was grasshoppers . But what the wildlife lacked in diversity it made up for in number. These grasshoppers were absolutely everywhere on the shoulder of the road. The little guys are huge, two or three inches some of them. They’re always frightened by my bike and jump or fly away, right as I get up to them. Unfortunately, they always seem to jump or fly right at me instead away from me. They seem to do the same with cars because at every gas station the grills of cars are smattered with pulverized grasshoppers. I don’t mind when they run into me or land on me by accident, but it’s sad because a lot of the times they jump straight into my wheel. My spokes are like a giant fan and even if I was only moving at 13 miles an hour in the headwinds today, that’s still fast enough to slice and dice a grasshopper. I don’t know how many grasshoppers my bike decapitated today, but it was quite a few. It made me a little sad. Luckily there are seemingly millions more to take the place of the ones that decided to take a gander at spokes. Sometimes they don’t move, and I accidentally end up running them over. They can be really hard to see until you’re right on top of them. I really do not enjoy that. It makes me feel a little guilty. But for every one that met their maker at my hands, 100 others flew around me and provided a little bit of entertainment.

I ran out of water in between towns in the late afternoon. Even though the next town was close mileage wise, I still had several hours to get there. I was thirsty, but there were obviously no natural bodies of water around. There was however a trough for the cattle in a field I was passing by. I decided it was worth a taste so I filled up a bottle and kept riding. It was repulsive. The water was predictably as hot as the air, so 100°. It had a repugnant taste of algae and brine. I didn’t finish the whole bottle but drank probably 500ml of the stuff before getting to the next gas station.

I needed to pick up my ground pad at an outdoor store in Amarillo. I’d sourced an outfitter that carried Big Agnes and they were holding one on reserved for me. I also knew that they had hydration vests which I’ve been planning on picking up for a while now. My water carrying capacity of 2 L in my bottles is simply not enough as I go into the desert. At the start of the day I only had 120 miles to get to Amarillo and the store closed at 6 PM. On paper I should’ve been there at around two in the afternoon. As we all know, things don’t always work out as one would prefer, and since the wind was retarding my progress to an average of about 12 miles an hour at 2 o’clock I found myself with 51 miles to go in only four hours. Normally 51 miles should take 2 1/2 hours to cover, but at 12 miles an hour that math is pretty easy. I wasn’t going to make it. I’d been stomping on the pedals most of the day to stay upright in the wind, but now I began pressing onward with renewed urgency. For the next four hours, I put in an effort that is the strongest of this trip. I may have only average 14 miles an hour over that period, but I was absolutely hammering. I held myself just under tempo, essentially the hardest effort I could do for four hours straight. I was on busy roads, but I just kept my head down and kept grinding. Unfortunately, I’ve had some rapid bowel movements in the past 48 hours which led to a couple unplanned stops which only heightened my need for speed. At 5 o’clock I still had 15 miles to go and the headwind was grinding me down. I really laid it all out there. I managed to make it to the Outdoor store about four minutes before they closed,. I got my gear thanks to the incredibly friendly staff and was ready to get back going again after a quick photo op in front of their store. Shout out to Mountain Hideaway of Lubbock, Texas, you guys are awesome. However, as soon as I hopped back on the bike, I realized that my expenditures to get to the store in time had left my legs feeling pretty shot. It’s not really surprising that after 20 days of riding and then a four hour all out effort in 100° heat that my legs didn’t feel great. That kind of makes sense. Still, I was a bit down on myself and wasn’t really feeling like riding at all. Lucky for me, I had some absolutely horrendous roads that I got to ride on. A friend had jokingly suggested that I take the 289 loop around Lubbock. Not an interstate,  but this is a limited access freeway that runs the perimeter of Lubbock. It was five lanes each direction at times and the shoulder was littered and sharp debris, just waiting for me to make a mistake so that some glass or sharp object could jump up and give me a flat. While my friend had been joking about me riding on this road, it was the fastest way out of the city and I was absolutely ready to get out of Lubbock. I wasn’t too enamored with the city. I’ve been hating on Texas and the plains a lot recently, so I don’t feel the need to beat a dead horse, but man, Lubbock was a rough cycle. It’s safe to say I won’t voluntarily be moving there anytime soon. On the 289 expressway for the first time this trip I felt like I probably shouldn’t have been riding that road. Signage or no signage, bikes really should not be on the 289 Expressway. I knew that people must’ve be calling the cops off the hook with complaints about some idiot riding on the busiest highway in a several hundred mile radius. There wasn’t really much the cops could’ve done even if they wanted to do something. Still, I was expecting to get pulled over, but I knew I could weasel my way out of a ticket if it came down to it because they had failed to put up any signs prohibiting cyclist and I had Texas Code Section 545.065 pulled on my phone, ready to present to them which laid out my rights to ride on any road in Texas unless prohibited by signage. I managed to make it off the freeway without getting hit or pulled over, and on the southern outskirts of Lubbock I decided to stop for dinner at a gas station. My legs are feeling absolutely gelatinous and my mood was down a little bit. Even though the sun was setting, the wind was not abating and I knew it wouldn’t until multiple hours after sunset, at which point it would only decrease to 10 mile an hour headwind throughout the night. The gas station soda fountain had horchata as one of the dispensing options. I absolutely love horchata, but I never thought I’d see it come out of a soda fountain. I was a little apprehensive at first, but I tried it and was pleasantly surprised at good it was, although undoubtedly way watered down. I noticed that the machine was spitting out mostly water, and the concentrated horchata was only being injected on one side of the water stream. On the wall behind the soda machine a sign laid out the calorie count of each drink and one bottle of horchata was about 400 calories. I wanted the extra calories and the concentrated taste of the horchata, so I put my bottle under only the third of the stream that had the horchata concentrate in it. I was able to fill my bottle with about 1200 calories of straight horchata concentrate which was incredibly sweet and very cinnamony, but I quite liked it. I found some hot food and was able to get some vegetarian burritos for dinner. I allowed myself to sit down on the concrete outside and lean up against the building while I drank my horchata, ate my burritos, and licked my ice cream cone. I had the opportunity to call my good friend Jacob. Always thoughtful and uplifting, we talked for an over an hour on all different subjects, including the wind and some of my struggles with loneliness recently. He had some really beautiful advice to give me and as we finished our conversation while I continued riding south, I felt much more at peace with my progress on the day and the conditions that I am continually fighting. The beauty of having all this time to think is that over the next few days I’ll be able to reflect on some of the things we talked about and really extract the truth behind our conversation which will help me be better prepare for the next time I have a less than ideal day in the face of the wind or whatever other obstacle I may face. Every day I get a little bit more fatigued both physically and mentally. Each time I have a bad day I’m starting from a slightly lower baseline then I was at my previous bad day, so each bad day gets a little worse. If I can keep my spirits high and keep thinking critically and engaging in conversations with people who I care for back home, then hopefully I can slow the deterioration of my baseline. I can hopefully make the bad days a little bit more tolerable for the time being. My fatigue and strain isn’t linearly declining. I have good days and bad days at random, seemingly. However, if you were to draw a trendline through the days I’ve spent on the road, I think it would show a little bit of decay in a lot of aspects of my life, from weight, happiness, physical freshness, and so on. There are some really awesome things that it would show an increase trendline in. My fitness, my mindfulness, my growth of thought, and general development of character. I had the realization that today marks three weeks on the road and over a month since I’ve seen anybody I know. The longest conversation I’ve had in the past month was the 10 minute conversation I had with fellow bikepacker Tim. Other than that, my longest in person conversation is probably about 60 seconds. It’s pretty cool. I’ve been out here for three weeks, that’s a milestone in itself. It feels like infinitely longer and I feel like I’m already so much different than I was left. I can see it in my writing. I haven’t gone back to read my blog post yet, but I feel like the things I talk about in my blogs and the way I choose to describe things have evolved over the past 21 days. I can’t wait to finish this project and give myself some time to recover before coming back to reflect on how I am changing every single day. I certainly hope I’m only changing for the better in the long run even if I’m decaying in some aspects at the moment. For the time being, I really do think that I’m getting a lot of positives from being out here all by myself. It sucks sometimes, especially days like today to be all alone. Today was awful. I don’t really want to talk about it that much because it would just sound like I’m complaining. It’s not like I had any breakdowns or any moments where I felt truly miserable and lost, there was just nothing to look forward to today. It was just not fun at all at any moment. The highlights of my day were my phone call from Jacob and realizing that horchata can be served out of a soda fountain. Those are pretty much the only silver linings from today. That being said, I still grew as a person in ways which I probably don’t understand yet. The good days are more memorable, but perhaps the bad days are subliminally more impactful. Even though today was absolutely awful, I managed to stay relatively grounded. I’d been expecting the wind so it didn’t throw me for a loop, it was just really incredibly annoying. As much as today sucked, I think I actually did a pretty good job at tackling the day. There’s not much you can do when conditions are this abysmal. I would love to say that I’m looking forward to a better day tomorrow, but in reality tomorrow looks like a copy paste situation of today. The terrain isn’t going to change, the wind is only going to get stronger,  and it’s only going to get hotter as I go south. I just need to grit my teeth to the Mexico border and then I’ll be in a new country which will present a change of scenery, which is absolutely needed right now. Even if the wind follows me in Mexico, it is my hope that I can continue to find the good in the bad. Perhaps I will find my time in the deserts of Mexico to be much more enjoyable than my time in the plaines of America. Speaking of silver lining, as slow and demoralizing as today felt, I still put down 175 miles which is 12 miles further than the world record average daily pace. If my worst day of the trip so far is still a win on paper then that is something to be proud of. I would love to be in Stanton, Texas right now with only 230 miles to the US-Mexico border so that I might get there tomorrow night, but I’m not in Stanton, I’m in O’Donnell and I have about 290 miles to the border, so I’ll get there sometime on Sunday. It is what it is. On to another day tomorrow.