Trip Summary

Day 52: 2929 miles completed, 8 states, 7 flat tires, 4 flat mattresses, 40 new friends and Bruce #1, 8 rest days

Sunday, March 24, 2013

Day 17: Cone of Silence

We are preparing to leave El Paso this morning on our way to Fort Hancock (population 1700), referenced in Shawshank Redemption.

We will be traveling through some remote parts of Western Texas. We will probably have cell service thanks to Verizon network, but blog and facebook updates may not be possible. So we may be incommunicado for a few days.

We have had Verizon cell service when all other providers have been unavailable. Once again, Thank You Verizon!!

Since our day’s ride was a short 58 miles and we were staying in a hotel, we slept in and didn’t leave until 9am. It wouldn’t have been a hard day, however once again we had a headwind. We opted not to participate in a pace line,took our time, and fought the wind for the first 48 miles. I was exhausted, not sure what Lisa thinks, but I prefer the benefit of drafting. We had to be “pulled” in by our fellow riders the last ten miles. Thank you Mark,who found after we were in for the day that he had a flat tire! Lisa had a better day today, adding shoe covers and extra gloves helped a lot. From Lisa, I don’t mind drafting, it takes a lot of concentration though and you end up in the saddle pedaling constantly, those are the drawbacks.


As we approached the last sag\food stop at mile 48, I noticed something blue and glimmering. It looked like water. I must be hallucinating because we have been biking through the desert and haven’t seen any significant bodies of water in weeks. It disappeared as we passed a grove of pecan trees and rounded a corner.

To our surprise it was a lake, a man-made lake to retain water for irrigating their pecan trees. This little area is famous for its pecan tree groves and we talked to local grove owner at lunch who said they were worried about the crop budding properly if it stayed cold much longer.



We are back to tent camping tonight—brrrr–its supposed to be in the mid 30s tonight again; extra clothing handy and stocking caps on our heads and wool socks on our feet and hands too!

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