Day 15 - Staycation in Cameron

When I woke up after ten hours, I observed that my front tire was flat. It hadn't been when I rolled the bike into the room, so it must be a slow leak. Time to see what caused it...



I detached the wheel and cleaned it off, then used the tire levers to remove the tire and tube. I drew out the tube and disposed of it, then ran my fingers slowly along the interior of the tire, looking for any sharpness. Oho, look at this! An ugly thorn punched clear through the kevlar.



As I did the repairs, I had a long, introspective talk on speakerphone with Erika. It was nice to reconnect, and to work further through some of the myriad things that were distilling in my brain as I rode along.

I only left the warmth of the motel room to walk across the highway and eat at the local restaurant. Other than that, I monkeyed with pictures, surfed the web, and watched episodes of The Daily Show all day! Quite restful.

I have a lot of riding to do if I'm to stay on schedule. The good news is, the weather outlook has changed and now I'm promised two days of sun. Thank goodness!

More work?

Neal Stephenson just gave me an interesting thought, through one of his characters in the book I'm listening to.  The character is bemoaning how his friends all got rich in real estate while he did not, even though they all have the same skillset.  I can relate to this because the last 15 years are littered with examples of people in my industry earning ridiculously high weekly wages, and then seeing them accumulate or evaporate, based mostly on where they lived -- how much their rent was.  A lot of money changed hands in alarming ways.

The interesting thought is this:  My skillset is very viable, and if I wanted to make more money I could find a job in less than a month.  But instead I am riding along on this bike trip, trying to answer a question that is very important to me:  What do I WANT to do next?  I am taking this trip partially for it's own sake, but also as part of a quest to find a new sense of balance in my life.

So much of my thought is bent around what I would choose to produce, what I would be inspired to contribute to, that I am missing the forest for the trees.  There is a larger point here that should be obvious:  I am clearly not to content to spend my savings traveling around the world and relaxing, because I really like doing work.  I am absolutely no good at spending money just to spend it and going on adventures just to have them, to say I've done them, to differentiate myself from some social group.  I am constantly scrutinizing everything around me to find a deeper meaning, or solve a problem.  It's what I do.  And I don't think there is anything else I would rather do.

The entire landscape of work and exploration is accessible to me, now more than ever, because of my resume and resources.  I need to keep finding stuff that I would love to explore and have always been afraid of trying.  I need to keep pushing my own boundaries.

Day 16 - Cameron to Brookfield

Dealing with the rain on day 14 was difficult and exciting, but today's headwind was just difficult. I felt it the second I stepped out of the hotel doors, and it was with me until 9:30pm when I stumbled into a late-night Mexican restaurant for dinner.

I wore my raincoat to cut the wind-chill, but since the weather reports were in consensus that it wouldn't rain, I left the pants rolled up in my luggage. Out on the highway the traffic was loud and constant, mostly gigantic trucks with an amazing diversity of cargo, screaming by on the inside lane to courteously avoid whipping me with their jet-stream.

I think that if I ever encounter another trucking corridor like this one (highway 36), I'll spend a few hours camped out by the side of the road snapping photographs of all the flatbeds with their monstrous farming vehicles, geometric stacks of piping, corrugated shipping containers, plastic-wrapped cylinders of hay, pyramids of rocks and produce, and rattling cages teeming with barnyard animals. The diversity is impressive, but even more impressive is the organization behind it. Each of these loads is bound for a known destination on an arranged schedule, and every piece of cargo is accounted for. It's not surprising that some loss or theft or miscommunication happens... What's surprising is how little that amount is.

Why are pundits so impressed and threatened by the pace of development in China? What's the advantage in blasting people and property aside to complete a high-speed railway in less than a year, only to have it fall apart less than two, and go bankrupt in three? How can a monolithic government substitute for the adaptability of private enterprise?

Wait; wait a second. This digression is way too big for a simple travelogue! Okay, forget everything I just said. Time for some amusing photos. Look what I found by the roadside: Cat tails!


When you poke them, they go "floof"! They're very stripey.


Also, extending the theme of fuzz and stripes, I found this guy bumbling up the shoulder of the road, as though he was trying to outrun me. I picked him up, then chucked him into the weeds, well away from the speeding traffic.


I chomped snacks from my bag, including that brick of sharp cheddar I bought in Miss Kitty's store, and listened to my audiobook. The headwind was relentless.



After ten hours of riding, constituting 2000 feet of ascent over a mere 66 miles, I arrived in Brookfield. By the time I plopped down in the booth at the Mexican restaurant I was ravenous. I ordered enchiladas and then began chomping industriously through the bowl of chips and salsa and examining the other patrons.

On my left was big family, gathered around two tables. Mother, father, an array of kids from 16 to 30, and a couple of people that seemed to be in-laws, each paired up with a kid. Every one of them was dressed head to toe in camouflage cold-weather hunting gear, with a splatters of mud drying on their boots. Must be the start of hunting season.

My attention was drawn specifically to the young woman - about 25 I guessed - with her straight blond hair in a high ponytail. She wore exactly the same hunting gear as her siblings. She looked over at me a few times, showing herself to be slightly more curious than the rest of her party, but she was also intent on preventing me from noticing her interest. I was struck by her sober, serious, almost dour expression. All traces of femininity had been erased from her, even the traces that men commonly allow themselves on the west coast - warmth, playfulness, gentility. What had happened, or was happening, to this woman to make her this way? Was this her "game face" for hunting, or just the say she was?

Or maybe she just really, really hated Mexican food.

That family got up and left. A few of them glanced at me, but again, they did their best to hide their curiosity. Then a group of four men arrived, and arranged themselves at the four sides of a table in front of me.

These men totally ignored me, and everyone else around them. They, too, were bedecked in hunting gear and spattered with mud. What I heard of their conversation convinced me that I would never, ever become friends with these people, even though we were all the same age.

To amuse myself I began a tally of the ways we were incompatible:

• Different wardrobe
  
• Incompatible eating habits
  
• Diametrically opposed political views
  
• Unrelated ambitions
  
• Very different religious beliefs
  
• Different standards for raising children
  
• Different taste in women
  
• Different ways of making a living
  

And yet, we have a common language and a common stock-in-trade of respect for work, through which we conduct business to our mutual benefit. The saving grace of America. ... Without this, we would probably be at war.

There I go again with my digressions... Sorry!

Anyway, I biked from the Mexican place to a motel across the highway, imported my photos and synced my GPS and took a shower and other stuff, and then around bedtime I began to feel ill. Something was wrong with my intestines.

I laid down on top of the bed, since it was the only position that didn't make the feeling worse, and fell asleep for a few hours. I woke up in the middle of the night with a strong urge to vomit. I managed to stagger into the bathroom and lean over the edge of the tub, ready for the worst to happen, but after laying like this for a few minutes the discomfort ebbed and I felt better, so I drank some water and crawled back into bed.

I think that Mexican restaurant needs an audit from a health inspector. I wonder if anyone else got sick that evening?