Sunday April 6, 2008, 109 miles (175 km) - Total so far: 1,035 miles (1,666 km)
The wind gods must have had pitty on me yesterday and blessed me with the best tailwind of the trip today. I only rode 5 1/2 hours today but covered 109 miles. The average speed varied between 20-23 all day, and only decreased due to a few hills along the way and some slow time allowed to digest lunch.
The biggest news of the day was two milestones: The first was hitting the 1000 mile mark, or 1/3 of the way to Florida, and second, making it to the Central Time Zone. Now I'm 3 hours ahead of Alaska (home) but only 1 behind Michigan (where I'm originally from).
There wasn't a long enough list of highlights and lowpoints today to make that worthy, so I'll just share a few stories.
I'll start with a crazy story from last night. At 11:30pm, long after I'd fallen asleep, I wake up to the sound of my doorbell ringing over and over for my room, and giggling outside.. what! Some little kids waking me from my coma! But it gets better.. then I hear their dad telling them to be quiet, and then swiiipeee.. he slides his keycard in MY door, and hello! Welcome to my room. The door opens, and is only caught by the hoop-lock thing (what they use now instead of a chain, I don't know what they're called). They don't seem to realize it's latched, so they start shaking on the door violently trying to open it. So I jump out of bed and slam the door shut, peek through the peep hole to see what's going on, and they're standing there whispering to each other about what to do. They must have realized the front desk gave them a room that was already occupied so they left. Pretty funny. I went back to sleep and all was well after that.
On to today..
As soon as I left the motel in El Paso, I was able to stop and watch a crop duster dusting some crops. As some of you may know, I love airplanes, and watching this guy fly was like watching a bush pilot in a super cub perform slowspeed, highly acrobatic maneuvers in tight spaces. Wow! I even did a little video clip and uploaded it to Youtube since I thought it was so cool. Go here to check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eW6RjryEUOo
The next thing I saw was the aftermath of a crazy rollover accident. The second accident where speed and showing off played a roll in two days. This guy had some kind of race-car wannabee setup on his old cruiser, somehow lost control and probably flipped 7 or 8 times into a farmers field. It was pretty trashed. He was ok though, but obviously shaken up. This was also at about 9:30am. Why drive so crazy so early??
The rest of the day went super super easy. Couldn't believe it. Just flew along and only stopped for a bit for lunch and to get some gatorade in Sierra Blanca. After that I met Tom Duncan, taking the same route on his recumbant bicycle and travelling with two other guys, Martin and Gerry. They all started solo but traveled at a similar pace and got along so now are travelling together, at least to their final destinations.. Tom goes a lot slower than the other two because his recumbant is tougher to handle on the hills.
To see what they're up to, go see their journals at:
Tom Duncan
http://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/usmc
and...
Martin Thomas
http://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/MartinsRide
Tomorrow will be either 91 or 114, depending on how I feel. Chances are it'll be 91 because I want to stop at an Observatory along the way and see if I can take a tour. That should be fun :D
Lastly, as I type this at a Knights Inn, some guy just came in.. his story seems odd and I think he's trying to get a free room from these people. Claiming to have just got off the Greyhound (probably true) has no money (probably true) and is looking for a Western Union to have money wired to him. Maybe I'm being overly-skeptical, but he's totally putting on a sad "poor me" tone and trying to hit up conversation with me and be super friendly, all the while his so-called Irish accent keeps faltering and he sounds like he's from somewhere in New England instead. I think he's hoping to befriend me so I'll let him stay with me. He tried getting the hotel lady to cut him a break, no deal. Oh well.
Check the next post for photos! Yay!
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