Texas

Texas has been really interesting. Very spread out, but they make up for that with 65+mph speed limits on every road, made safe by making the double yellow line 4" wider and made economical with cheap gas prices. Needless to say, I've been doing a lot of driving the last few days.

The advantages of being owned by oil companies

On my way to Austin, I started off with rush hour through Houston, a pit stop in Giddings for laundry, and a detour to the Stony Hill Ranch for some bike riding.

What have I gotten myself into?

Rocky Hill Ranch was about 25 miles of  privately owned trails. The owners were getting ready for a race, so everything was roped off and arrowed. It was nice to not have to stop and figure out the map along the way. This place had a huge variety of soil types, trail conditions, and trail building styles. Several of the climbs were unsustainably steep and had started to erode. They were also murder on my legs.

If I could sum up Texas in one sign

From here, I went through Austin at afternoon rush hour, which was horrible, but inevitable when your city grows at a breakneck pace. It did give me a good opportunity to look around. There were tons of upscale independent businesses, outdoor aerobics in the park, lots of new buildings. The sun started to set and I was on my way to San Antonio.

From San Antonio, I had to decide on an adventure for Friday. When I looked over my atlas with Ashleigh, she warned me about I-10 in west Texas being flat and boring, when looking for alternate routes I noticed Big Bend Ranch State Park down in an isolated corner of the state and lots of mountains with 5000ft+ elevations. Ashleigh immediately warned me about it being too close to the Mexican border and all the drug violence. Sorry Ashleigh, I couldn't help myself. Afterall, its a 2000 mile long border and you figure at most theres a couple hundred smugglers actively working the border at any given time. Besides, its not like the Mexican drug cartels are going to be using the trail system to smuggle their contraband.

Fuck

The trail system was a good 7 hour drive from San Antonio. Its another 5 hours from here to El Paso. This place is as isolated as it gets. I never really thought of Texas having a panhandle and thought it was strange that people said it had one, but now I understand why. All the major cities are in the east half of the state, there is no one in the west half of Texas.

This is a very unforgiving place. Even though it was only 75 and partly sunny I was drinking a lot more water.  There were random tropical storm force wind gusts that would stir up for about 20 seconds and then disappear. The plants here are more dense than they are in the true desert. Brushing one of the plants will result in it punching, slicing, or stabbing back. Even the aloe plants looked out for blood. All the rocks are sharp and pointy so falling down is going to hurt. Slow and steady wins the race.

Stab

With that said, there were plenty of photo opportunities.

There were tons of trails down there. The IMBA epic alone has 70 miles and is considered a 2 day ride.

I've been fortunate. My tour of west Texas has been anything but flat, brown, and boring. 3150 miles so far. Its been too cloudy and hazy to see any stars. Hopefully New Mexico will be clearer.