How green was my cactus

Total distance: 4906.0 km

By Sundance:

Okay, I know we're supposed to eat lamb on Australia Day, but instead we wound up baking bread and eating pizza. At least, I wound up baking bread. After the yummy sourdough rye we got in Austin, I've become a little obsessed with getting the hang of making bread, and on my third attempt I finally got a loaf that rose pretty well (and could be cut with a bread knife rather than requiring a bandsaw).

Anyway, Tuesday disappeared in a relative flurry of packing, and watching episodes from the first season of Heroes, which kinda sucked us in while we were in Del Rio. And that evening we went out for "all you care to eat" pizza with Niki, had a nice chat about home (Oz and Adelaide), and retired for an early start.

We tumbled out of bed the following morning to clear our stuff from the house so Niki could go to work and leave us to our own devices. After saying our farewells and making breakfast we got on our bikes for the pleasant experience of a downhill run with a tailwind, though it didn't last. Yana's bike was making a mysterious ticking noise which led us to pull into the local bike shop. As usual, these things never take a short time to fix, and after getting a new bottom bracket installed, and a seemingly interminable fiddle to readjust the gears, the whole day was shot. In fact, more gear fiddling was still required the next morning so Tim, the guy from the bike store, allowed us to stay at his place overnight (since getting back to Niki's and then back to the bike shop without Yana's bike would have been a bummer). Tim and his wife were fun people to chat with, and the following day - thursday - a little after lunchtime we finally got to leave Del Rio. The wind was fortunately with us again, and the weather was warm, We rode past the Amistad Reservoir which looked beautiful in the sunlight, and made it into the town of Comstock where the one and only restaurant/bar offered us a place to shelter from the impending thunderstorm. One of the nice folks there helped us locate a place to put up our tent inside a storage shed which kept the rain and hail off quite effectively.

The weather had cleared on Friday morning but the wind was awful. 16 - 32 km/h straight in our faces. It took us over five hours to get the 50 km from Comstock to Langtry, arriving a bit after dark. After some hunting around we found the actual town center and were directed to the community center to put up put tent, where the two cyclists we met in Bracketville (Dani and Greg) had also camped.

This morning we awoke to clear skies and gentle winds. After some tyre maintenance, we wandered up to the Judge Roy Bean museum. JRB was "the law west of the Pecos" and would dispense his own verdicts rather than consulting his (only) law book. Since he didn't have a jail, everything was punishable by a fine, and he also ran a bar and staged at least one boxing match. Quite a character. The museum also has a great cactus garden , which is extremely interesting and nicely laid-out. Well worth the visit. We've really entered cactus territory now, which makes an change from the deciduous forest that we travelled through all the way south from the start of our journey. The change of vegetation really makes us feel like we're getting somewhere. Now we shall hit the road and set out for Dryden, and possibly Sanderson if we can push on that far before nighttime.

Nine pictures - nine thousand words?

By  Yana:

Well, time to post those photos I didn't get around to after that last epic entry.  These are basically a little sample of the last few days. 

 Sundance and me, having reached one of our little milestones: 4444.4km.

Delicious pancakes, courtesy of Jan.

 

One of the many gorgeous views that particular day threw at us.

 

Winter in Texas - just terrible!

 

Actually, the water was a little on the chilly side, but not completely outside semi-reasonable swimming temperature.

 

Sundance appreciating the pretty Rio Frio, where Mark took us.

 

Cactus landscape post scrub fire.

 

That beautiful sunrise, a little after the border patrol woke us up.

 

Dani and Greg, the champions.

Meep meep!

Total Distance: 4793.0 km

By Yana

Well, as Sundance has promised pics from Mexico in our last blog entry, I'll start off with just that, before launching into the story of what we have done since then. :-)

Wandering around a little abandoned church type thing which our awesome Mexican hosts, Jose and Lolis, took us to see.

Can't find Sundance?  Yep, he's probably climbing around on top of something. :-)

 

Obligatory "we were both here!" shot.

 

Sundance noms on a delicious potato spiral thingie... ah, the things those crafty Mexicans can do with the humble potato!

 

Oh, and they know how to make awesome sweet corn, too!

 

Paraplegics throttled here! :-D

 

The big fountain in the plaza of Piedras Negras.

 

One of the various monuments paying tribute to the greats of the past...

In retrospect, it's interesting to note that we didn't actually take a whole lof of photos of the social things we got up to.  Bother!  I guess we were too busy being sociable.  Well, hopefully the above manage to convey some of the niftiness of Mexico.

So, back to the what we have been up to since our last post.  After a few days of hanging around, we finally got ourselves organised again, and bid Leslie, Alex, and family farewell.  It was afternoon by the time we got going, but the weather was lovely, and we were in pretty reasonably high spirits as we toodled along.  We were pointing ourselves towards Johnson City, thinking it might be nice to make it there on that day, though we weren't that fussed about it.  We just kind of pedalled along, lamenting how much of our fitness we had lost over our Christmas break, especially as we were definitely in the Hill Country now.  Pretty, yes, but hilly, as the name suggests.  Still, it's a good way to practice for what is to come, as we do have some pretty high passes to get through before we hit that west coast.

We had gone a reasonable distance when we stopped to check out our map.  While we were standing there, a bloke in a pick-up truck pulled up next to us, to see if we needed anything.  He also expressed his respect for what we were doing, as he had ridden around the US on a motorbike, and could only imagine how much harder it was on a bicycle!  We had a brief chat, and then continued on our seperate ways.  We figured by then that Johnson City was probably not going to happen tonight, though partway there, there was the Pedernales Falls State Park, which did have camping facilities.  It was an option worth considering, though neither of us felt inclined to break our clean streak of not having had to pay for accommodation since all the way back in Indiana.  Still, we decided to just play it by ear, and enjoy the scenery as we went.  After a while, we were faced with our steepest slope yet for the day, which I was too chicken to go down full speed, though Sundance of course gleefully hooned down it.  As it turned out, as the bottom of the slope was a river crossing, which was actually somewhat flooded due to the rains we had taken shelter from at Leslie's place.  We took off our shoes and wheeled our bikes into the stream, but it turned out to be slower, shallower and less slippery than it could have been, and we could easily have just ridden across. Still, quite a fun crossing:

Once we had finished the crossing, we found ourselves gaping at our beautiful surroundings, and came to the conclusion that it would be an absolutely gorgeous place to put up our tent:

As there was a house on the other side of the road, we decided to seek out the residents, figuring that this was their property.  It took a bit of looping around, but we found our way to the front door eventually, and knocked.  We were greeted by a fellow named Ed, who was indeed the owner of the place, and because we did the polite thing and asked, he was quite happy for us to put up our tent in that spot.  The timing could scarcely have been better, as it was turning dusky about then.  So we got ourselves set up, had some curry and buckwheat for dinner, got some unexpected entertainment from the various people crossing the river (one car actually turned back, which we cracked up laughing about), and turned in at an uncharacteristically early hour.

The next morning, we managed to get up at a reasonably decent hour, and got ourselves packed up without too much fuss.  We did spent a little bit of time mucking around in the pretty scenery, feeling all chuffed about the fact that we had finally reached cactus country on our bikes - the jaunt to Piedras Negras doesn't reeeaallly count, as that was with the help of a bus trip.  So we hopped on our bikes again just as a gaggle of people on motorbikes crossed over the flooded bridge, and laboured uphill for what was going to be a very hilly day indeed.

After a short while, we reached the entrance of the Pedernales Falls State Park.  As we rode in, we noted the $20 tent fee, and felt quite smug for having avoided that the previous night.  We still had to pay $5 each to get into the park, but hey, pretty things to be seen.  After some more hills, we eventually made it to the Pedernales River itself.  Honestly, it seemed a bit of an exaggeration to call what we saw the "Falls", but it was very pretty nonetheless.

We spent some quality time climbing around the surrounding rocks, taking photos, and all that.  Eventually though, we had to admit that the day was moving on, so we went back to our bikes, only to discover that Sundance had a flat rear tyre!  Curses!  So we spent some more time sitting around, changing tubes, and all that.  Afterwards, we decided to make one last detour to the Cypress Pool, on the way to which we bumped into a couple, Jeff and Noom.  We chatted for a little while, and they were suitably impressed with our journey, and they offered to take us to dinner.  We happily accepted, and exchanged phone numbers.  We did have a brief look at the river a little bit further down, then made our way out of the park and towards Johnson City, where we would meet Jeff and Noom for dinner.  On the way, we established that we had not had nearly enough carbohydrates lately, as we found our energy flagging over all those strenuous hills.  We did make a few stops in the encroaching darkness to stuff ourselves with jelly beans, in the name of some quick fuel.

It was completely dark by the time we reached Johnson City, and we were completely ravenous.  Luckily, we found Jeff and Noom easily enough, and headed for the nearest acceptable eatery.  We chatted over our delightfully high-calorie deep fried meal.  Eventually, Jeff and Noom had to head back home to Austin, so we said our farewells, and headed off to find somewhere to pitch our tent for the night.  After a little bit of a wild goose chase, we found ourselves in a little convenience store, and got offered a bit of backyard space by a local lady.  We gratefully followed her to her place as she drove back in her pick-up truck, and had a nice chat with her while we got our sleeping quarters organised.  It was a beautifully clear, starry night, though luckily it didn't get too cold.

The next morning, we woke up with a dew-covered tent,  so we headed off to the convenience store were we had met our host, and bought her breakfast there.  As it turned out, they offered some very cheap and generous servings of your basic variety of breakfast tacos and pancakes and things.  Highly satisfying, especially with the delicious tamarind icy pole Sundance and I shared for dessert.  We also discovered that our host was nick-named "Ju-ju" by her nephews, nieces, and the like, which Sundance found surprising as that was also the family nickname for his grandmother. Our host then drove us around to see the various attractions of Johnson city, which is named after LBJ, as this used to basically be his childhood stomping ground.  We had a look at the local LBJ museum, then headed back, packed up our now dry gear, and hopped on our bikes to get to Fredericksburg.  However, after having battled our way into a headwind for a few kilometres, we found our way blocked by some decent-sized carnage: there had been a huge crash, two deaths, and the road would remain closed for three or four hours. 

We spent some time pondering what to do, but eventually opted for heading back, and finding a different way.  Of course, it threw a decent-sized spanner in the works of our plans of getting to Fredericksburg, meaning it wasn't going to happen on that day any more now.  Aargh!  Well, at least we found ourselves a much more pleasant road to go down, with next to no traffic, and plenty of pretty scenery.  We actually went past various places which had a bunch of donkeys in the paddock - in the case of one of them, a whole bunch of adorably cute fuzzy dwarf donkeys!  We stopped for a few minutes to coo at them, and then continued on our way.

As it got dark, we kept an eye out for a decent place to turf surf.  There were various ranches around the place, and we eventually found one with an open gate, paddocks seperate from the backyard, and people home.  The fellow we asked, John, readily agreed to let us put up our tent, assuring us that yes, no cattle would come and trample it, as long as we stayed out of the actual paddock.  We made ourselves some dinner, and then briefly popped into the house to use the facilities to socialise with John, his wife Shannon, their two sons and their boisterous golden retriever.  We also decided to find somewhere to charge up our various gizmos, namely my camera.

The next morning, we woke up to the sound of the cars before dawn.  As it turns out, John and Shannon have a decent-length commute for work every day.  We slept in a little more, and after breakfast, discovered that I had foolishly left my plastic bag full of various electronic gizmos inside the house, and we were locked out, with no idea of when John and Shannon would return!  This resulted in a few hours wasted flagging down cars, finding neighbours who would contact our people, and eventually seeing Shannon return from her Johnson City doings.  It was early afternoon by then, but it could have been a whole lot worse.  We got the rest of our gear packed up, Shannon bestowed some munchies for the road on us, and then we finally headed off.

We did a bit of a detour to check out the LBJ ranch and the particularly extreme longhorns that hang out there.  It killed another couple of hours, but we did manage to get to Fredericksburg that night.  After stuffing ourselves at a Chinese buffet there which had been recommended by Jeff and Noom, we went in search of somewhere to sleep.  There were plenty of RV parks, but we ended up getting permission from the local police to put up our tent on the fairgrounds instead.  It was starting to rain very lightly just in time for us to crawl in, and we went to sleep pretty promptly, as it had turned out to be a late night.

We got up fairly early, as the local cops had warned us they might have to shoo us off if anyone called to complain.  We stopped at the nearest petrol station to make breakfast, and then went in search of somewhere to have a shower, as we were starting to get a bit smelly.  After a bit of running around, which also involved getting some groceries, we popped into one of the RV parks on the way out of town, who were happy to let us use their shower free of charge.  With their permission, we also stuck up our damp tent to let it dry, did what needed to be done, and then set off for Kerrville.  We got there around dusk, and pondered our accommodation options.  We did actually meet a fellow, Mark, who lived in Leakey.  Too far for us to still go that night, but he offered us a warm place to stay and a good Texan feed when we did pass through, which we figured would be the next day.  We exchanged contact details, Mark wandered off to get himself a beer, and we went off to find ourselves a turf surf.

We actually ended up riding on to the next town, Ingram, which wasn't too far off.  On the outskirts on the other side of Ingram, we started knocking on doors.  Our first attempt was in a newly developed suburban-looking area, where the elderly lady at the door informed us no tents were allowed.  So we left that little neck of the woods, and kept an eye out for something more friendly-looking. 

We found it soon enough, and upon knocking on the door of the first-best abode, were greeted by a gregarious 70-something couple who immediately invited us in, let us use their stove, and pointed us to the less prickly places in their yard to put up our tent.  Apparently they, Jan and Jerry, quite frequently put up cyclists, as their house is right on the southern tier route, which they however had not realised until we explained to them just why so many cyclicsts seemed to knock on their door.  Apparently putting up weary travellers is one of their hobbies though, keeps them entertained now that their numerous progeny has left the nest.  We had a very nice chat, and found out that the German girl travelling alone whom we had heard of twice before had stopped past their place, too.  It's sort of making me wonder if we would be able to get in contact with her, as we quite frequently seem to ride in her tyre tracks.  We also found out from Jan and Jerry that in this area, a lot of people have game ranches, where they keep all sorts of exotic deer and other quadrupeds - antelopes, axis deer, zebras, and various others.  Huh.

We turned in eventually, and got to see a bunch of deer gallop (rather than prance) through the backyard just before we did so.

In the morning, Jan treated us to an enormous serving of pancakes and syrup and pecans, which was pretty much just what we needed right then.  We got ourselves all packed up, in between bits of conversation and travel anecdotes.  What we had not realised when we knocked on their door in the dark the previous night was that they were right on a particularly beautiful section of the river - probably great for kayaking, especially in summer!

We said our goodbyes and headed off on our bikes, with great plans of avoiding the big roads for as long as possible.  We had lunch under a cute ranch sign sporting a metal T-rex skeleton, and then decided to go the shorter, probably slightly less scenic way.  We found it very hard to get phone reception, but we eventually reached the main road and managed to leave a voice mail for Mark and his wife Toy, the people from Leakey.  Luckily, the road was mostly in our favour.  Lots of gentle downhill stretches, very little traffic, lots of space (due to several lanes being closed for roadwork).  That being said, after dark, we found ourselves on a rough stretch with lots of bits of gravelly junk, though we still got there okay, a little before 8pm.  As Toy had not felt like cooking, we found ourselves taken out for a very nice dinner in town instead of Mark's initial plans of a Texas barbecue at home.  That suited us just fine too, and we had ourselves a veritable feast before sticking our gear in the back of Mark's pick-up truck and being taken the last three or so kilometres to their place.  We found ourselves with a comfortable room, which was a bit of a nice change after a few tent nights.

We slept in comparatively late the next morning.  It would have almost been tempting to stick around, as the place was beautiful, but Mark and Toy had other guests coming, so we cleared the deck.  Mark did take us down to the river though, which was absolutely beautiful, and we got to see a couple of Axis deer hanging out amongst some of the trees.  It was well into the afternoon by the time Mark had dropped us off out the front of the restaurant, but we still had a decent amount of time.  Our next stretch of road would be a tough one, as going into the next town, Camp Wood, involved going uphill for 5km straight!  Hooray for switchbacks!  We hadn't had anything that intense since southern Indiana!  Still, up we went, and it actually wasn't so bad, despite heavy panniers.  We actually had a pair of cyclists on unladed road bikes catch up with us and ride along with us for a while, having a bit of a chat.  It was actually pretty nice, and was a good reminder that civility between different breeds of cyclist is a fine thing indeed.

Just as we made it to the crest of our epic hill, I caught sight of a little feathered thing dashing across the road: a road runner!  Our first one sighted for the trip, which seemed like a very apt reward for the uphill slog we had just done.  Possibly even better, we also had a blissfull downhill stretch, and basically went most of the rest of the way to Camp Wood on momentum!  Aaaaah, Heaven!

Once in Camp Wood, we got ourselves a few canned dinner ingredients, and rode onwards into the dusk.  There would be no proper towns until Bracketville, which we had basically no hope of reaching that night, but we did decide to head on to the 10,000 acre property owned by some friends of Mark and Toy's, another 30km or so away from Camp Wood.  It was a nice flat stretch with little traffic, and we reached the spot without too much interest.  After some pondering and wandering back and forth, we decided to climb the barbed wire fence into the paddock - the owners of the property were out of town, and we had no idea how far off the gate was, as the property stretched on for eight miles - and get ourselves set up.  While Sundance made an improvised, but delicious sort of Nacho stew, I got the tent set up, which involved a very thorough hunt for prickles, which the ground was absolutely covered with!

We had our dinner, and got to bed around midnight.  We were pretty much out like lights, despite the occasional car that would zoom by.  However, at one point, we found ourselves roused by some headlights pointed straight at us.  It was still dark, but a glance at the watch told us it was a little after 6am.  The headlights belonged to a border patrol vehicle, who considered a tent in a paddock so close to the border to be a bit suspicious.  We tumbled into our clothes and out of the tent, grabbed our passports, and explained what we were on about.  The border patrol guys were actually really nice and courteous, which is a incredibly refreshing after the types we have experienced in various airports!

After they had established that we were not illegally in the country, they drove off and we crawled back into our tent, watching our surroundings get lighter.  Due to our early rousing, we were treated to an absolutely beautiful sunrise, and we figured it was just as well that we had been woken so early, as we had a big day ahead of us: around 90km to Del Rio!

As we were getting ourselves packed up, another border patrol vehicle showed up, and we had an amicable chat.  When we asked if they were going to check if we weren't illegally imported Mexicans too, one of them comfortably drawled, "Nah, we were just bored, thought we'd come talk to you."  It was a good chuckle for the morning.  They eventually wandered off, and as we continued to pack up, yet another border patrol car showed up.  At this point, we had to laugh.  These guys didn't even look at our passports.  We just had a bit of a chat, and they eventually wandered off, too.  We climbed back over the fence, had our breakfast, and were greeted by one of our previous border patrol friends, telling us that there was a pair of Alaskan cyclists about 15 minutes away from us, coming our way.  This was pretty cool, we thought, but we decided to get ready to go instead of waiting, as we figured they'd catch up to us when we stopped for lunch.  We rode on into the beautiful scenery, over gently rolling hills, and in absolutely lovely balmy weather.  However, there was no sign of the Alaskans. 

We stopped for lunch in Brackettville, got some lunch ingredients, and sat ourselves at the nearest picnic table.  Just as we started to make our lunch, a pair of cyclists came to our spot, laden down in a similar fashion to ours.  However, when we greeted them with "you must be the Alaskans," they informed us that they were in fact from Montana, riding in from Portland, Oregon!  They sat down with us, and we spent a very nice couple of hours exchanging notes and war stories.  It was kind of funny how many of the little things we had in common, although they were on slightly beefed up road bikes, rather than the mountain bikes we're on.  We very quickly established that they, Dani and Greg, are a pair of champions, and the whole thing put us in very high spirits.  Of course, we exchanged blog addresses.  You should check out their adventures, they're on http://dandgtour.blogspot.com/ .

As a result of this meeting, our one hour lunch break turned into three and a half hours, but we weren't a bit sorry, even though it meant that we were not going to make it to Del Rio before dark now.  We took a bunch of photos, and eventually parted ways, delayed but delighted.  Unfortunately for us, as soon as we turned onto our road towards Del Rio, we got smacked in the face by a headwind that was quite reminiscent of the monster which got us on Christmas eve.  We found ourselves struggling along at 12km per hour, with the only consolation being that this meant Dani and Greg had a sweet tailwind, which they probably really needed at that point.

After several hours and jelly bean stops, we pulled into Del Rio, absolutely exhausted.  Luckily, our couch surfing host, Niki, lived right on the outskirts of town, which cut several kms off our trip, and she and her boyfriend William had dinner ready for us.  Let's just say that we were extremely grateful.  I actually crashed out pretty quickly after dinner, though Sundance managed to stay up for a little longer.  We eventually headed to our spare room with the air mattress, and slept like fossilised logs.

Yesterday we enjoyed the luxury of sleeping in, got driven into town by Niki to do some shopping, and Sundance experimented with baking a couple of loaves of bread. It didn't rise very much but still tasted yummy, and after pigging out on the delightful sourdough rye we got in Austin he's determined to maser the art of making one's own bread sometime this year. 

So now here we are, in Del Rio, chilling out for a little while, eating good food, watching too much TV.  But there are things that need doing now, and even though I have some more photos to post, I think I shall do so later.

Where's the Kaboom?

Total distance: 4321.2 km

By Sundance:

Last time, we had dropped in on Dan and Sarah and spent the night. We left their place after a delicious breakfast, and rode out westward to reconverge on the main road at Dripping Springs. At their recommendation we stopped into a wonderful cafe called Thyme & Dough for lunch, where the locals and staff enthusiastically quizzed us about our travels, fed us delicious sandwiches, and at closing time gave us free loaves of bread, apple turnovers, and other baked goodies. We then headed over to the local supermarket to restock a few necessary items like breakfast cereal. As tends to happen at times like this, while one person is in the store some friendly folks started chatting with the other person who's waiting and keeping an eye on the bikes and bags. A delightful lady named Leslie mentioned that the weather was going to be awful for a couple of days and offered to let us stay in a studio apartment her family owns. After a bit of thought we decided we'd prefer to be sociable than to push ourselves cross-country at a furious rate, and accepted.

On the way out to her place Yana actually saw a peacock fly across the road in front of us. I didn't see it in flight, but we did see a few of them hanging around in a paddock. Presumably someone in the area breeds the things.

Anyway, after a little winding along small roads and up hills we found Leslie's place, met her husband and settled into our new accommodations. The weather forecast claimed there would be thunderstorms Thursday and Friday, and while the weather was indeed misty and rainy, the promised Earth-shattering kabooms did not eventuate. Instead we have spent a couple of lazy days enjoying the hospitality of Leslie and her family, learning to use a hula-hoop, cooking yet more yummy food, and meeting their chooks, dogs and cats. So it seems like a good occasion to post some photos of our recent travels;

Loading our bikes for the trip back to where the grumpy cop told us we weren't allowed to ride through the rain.

Taking a break to stretch the spine, by a swampy Louisiana roadside.

The middle of a lake seems like an odd place for an electrical transformer station...

We're definitely in The South. Or possibly on the Riverworld.

A sugar cane processing factory that looks like it stepped right out of a film by Miyazaki.

All Hail hypnochook!

Yana and a teeny-weeny pony

Next time we'll try to post some pictures from our side-trip to Mexico, and further across Texas.

On the road again...

Total distance:4286.4 km

By Sundance:

We have finally made our exit from Austin. It's a nice place, but we were getting antsy and eager to head out on the road again and see new sights, meet new people, and visit new places.

We spent our last few days in Austin buying gear, changing old chains and gear clusters and brakes for new ones and trying to get our bikes tuned and ready to run. We stocked up on healthy food supplies, including some great sourdough rye bread (difficult to come by in most small towns and roadside food stops), also met some more of Peter and Crystal's friends and cooked up a storm of wholemeal pizza, and trout, and watched Little Miss Sunshine and The Cat Returns, both of which were very enjoyable films. We stayed in Austin longer than expected, but Peter and Crystal were gracious hosts, and we're extremely grateful to them for their hospitality. The weekend weather was sunny and clear and would have been perfect for travelling, but we were still a bit busy getting our bike parts changed and our bags repacked, so we didn't set out until Monday. Almost immediately it became clear that my chain was not behaving, so we pointed ourselves (in some frustration) at the nearest bike shop, and grabbed lunch while they fiddled with it. After many tweaks (shortening the chain, taking a test ride, adjusting the gear cables, taking a test ride, etc...) and finally fitting a new rear derailleur we rode out of town, annoyed that so much of the day had been blown on bike-fixing, but determined to leave Austin behind us. A little after sunset we decided to grab dinner at a Chinese buffet, which turned out to be delicious, and got talking with two different couples about our trip. Both couples offered us accommodation for the night, so we got their addresses and headed to the closer couple (Ken and Rebecca) whose home was only a few kilometers away. They'd warned us that we had to pay for our bed by entertaining them with tales of what Australia is like, so we stayed up chatting for some time before turning in for the night.

The next morning we arose, had brekky in the sunshine in the back yard, and rode out to the home of the second couple (Dan and Sarah) for lunch, stopping briefly en route to look at a Hindu temple by the road. Dan and Sarah have a property near Buda and are working on making their place completely self-sufficient and "off the grid". We were very impressed by their nice open-plan place and the surroundings, which reminded us a bit of the semi-arid parts of South Australia, took some time to fidget with Yana's bike's gears, and eventually wound up staying for the night, giving me a chance to cook up a pasta dish I'd been trying to reinvent for a while, using freshly made coriander pesto (coriander = cilantro, for any north americans reading) instead of the more usual tomato or cream sauces that people put on pasta dishes. We had a nice long conversation about health foods, organic farming techniques, and whatnot. Today we'll be setting off into a more sparsely-populated area, so the tent will probably be coming in handy, and we'll be getting out into more open country. We're both looking forward to the change of scenery and the open spaces.

In Old Mexico

Total distance: 4230.3 km

By Sundance:

Happy New Year, everyone! As promised, we're back for more blogging, and presumably more cycling adventures in 2010. When we all have to get used to writing 201 on autopilot, instead of 200 when we write down the year. At least we have ten years to get used to it.

Anyway, what's been happening since last time? Well, after a bit of fiddle-faddling trying to figure out how best to get into Mexico before out 90-day visa-waiver period expired (rent a car and throw the bikes in the back, catch a bus, try to arrange a ride via craigslist...) we boxed up our bicycles and climbed onto a bus on New Year's Eve, heading from Austin via San Antonio to Eagle Pass, arriving in the evening. When we got to Eagle Pass we were actually so preoccupied with unloading our bikes carefully and reassembling them that we left our backpacks on the bus as it pulled off! Gah! After declaring that we were idiots, we rode our bikes to the bridge across the Rio Grande, paid our nominal fee to head across the bridge as pedestrians, and decided that the wind was so strong and cold that we were going to walk rather than ride across to the adjacent town of Piedras Negras. Much to our surprise nobody from the USA cared that we'd left, and nobody in Mexico cared that we'd entered Mexico or stamped our passports or anything. Once in Mexico we tried to find a working payphone, and eventually had to borrow a mobile phone from someone to call our couchsurfing.com host Jose. He arrived soon after wards with a truck to pick up our bikes and ourselves, and take us to his home where we met his wife, son, aunts, uncles, parents, sister, and entire extended family who greeted us warmly and merrily provided us with food, set off fireworks, bashed pinatas, and generally showed us how Mexican families see in the new year. Being part of a family celebration was a nice change from the two previous times I'd seen in the new year Central America (2006/2007 in the Bay of Pigs in Cuba, and 2007/2008 in Merida in the Yucatan region of Mexico) which were much more solitary experiences. After much banging and popping and the risk of singed hair, we got back into Jose's truck and he drove us out to his family's other house where we would be staying.

On New Year's Day Jose came by to drive us across the bridge back to Eagle Pass to collect our backpacks from the bus terminal. Fortunately they'd been tagged, so the bus company knew which town they were supposed to be delivered to. After collecting the backpacks we were taken for a drive out to a run-down old cathedral in Guerrero which we took many photos of, wandered through, and climbed over. The we headed back to Jose's family home again for dinner, where the courses just kept coming. We've gotten used to being the pet Australians, and it was fun to brush some of the rust off my Spanish, even though it was pretty rusty.

The next day we headed into town ourselves on our bikes, to hand in the visa waiver cards that had expired, headed across the bridge back to Eagle Pass, and after much waiting got to talk to a Customs and boprder protection officer who was very good-natured but told us that we should have handed them in when we left the USA (To whom? There was nobody there to hand them in to! Answer: There's another bridge that we were supposed to head to. Helpful), and that if we wanted to avoid this causing us bureaucratic problems when we tried to re-enter the US, we should do so within a couple of days. Then we headed back to Piedras Negras and lookeda round the markets in town, ate some sweetcorn and spirally-fried potatoes from street stalls, and eventually headed to Jose's place again. We had decided that we wanted to make some food for his family, and show them some of the food we liked to eat in the interests of cultural exchange, so the next day we headed to a supermarket and bought supplies, then attempted to prepare Pavlova, as well as some wholemeal pizza and Pindi Chana. Unfortunately the Pavlova didn't heat fast enough and just kind of collapsed instead of setting with a nice crisp crust, but the pizza and the chickpea curry worked pretty well and were gobbled up eagerly by the whole family. Yana and I had basically decided to head back to the US and cross over to California, and do a real full-on trip through Central America some other time, so on Monday we got on our bikes and headed out for a ride out of town, north of Piedras Negras, which took us through some flat arid countryside that was vaguely reminiscent of outback South Australia. That evening we made some Pad Thai for Jose and his family, and said our farewells, and thanked them for their wonderful hospitality. Jose drove out to the house and we handed the keys back to him, and we turned in for the night.

The following morning we awoke, cleaned the house, and packed our belongings into our backpacks and paniers , and rode out to the US border to see if they'd let us back in. We had no trouble at all, despite having only been out of the country for a handful of days, and after a bit of waiting got our next 90-day visa-waiver period started. We headed to the bus terminal, found the cardboard boxes we'd used to bring our bikes down from Austin still sitting behind the bus terminal (what luck!), repacked the bikes, and got ourselves on a bus back to Austin. We had about an hour-long stopover in San Antonio, during which we wandered around town looking for somewhere to eat - and much to our dismay found that everything was closed at 6pm on a Tuesday! So we eventually gave up and settled for non-nutritious, unappetising stuff at the bus station cafeteria. At least it kept us from getting painfully hungry.

We arrived back in Austin around 10pm, reassembled the bikes, and rode back to Peter and Crystal's place. This means we can pick up the next leg of the journey from the same spot we left off, making one unbroken ride from Ontario to California (albeit with a bit of a hiatus in the middle). The last couple of days have consisted of getting replacements for some parts for our bikes, buying more cold-weather outdoors gear (riding through New Mexico will probably be very chilly) and waiting for a sudden cold spell that has descended to clear. Last night we went out to a cinema where there was a regular event called the Dionysium, which consisted of brief seminars about science and technology, a modified Dionysian wedding ceremony, and debate about whether science and religion are natural adversaries. To be honest, the debate wasn't that great - I've seen better ones done by undergrad clubs at university. But it was an entertaining evening none-the-less. And either tomorrow or the next day we should hit the road again.

Incidentally it's also 400 years to the day since Galileo Galilei pointed a telescope at Jupiter and made the observations which showed that the Earth is not the only body in the Universe to be orbited by a moon or moons, and it's my father's birthday. Happy birthday and much love, Dad!

Size does matter

Total distance: 4225.7 km

By Sundance:

Hello one and all, and welcome to our latest blog update. Probably the last for the year (but not the decade, since the decade actually begins in 2011. Sheeesh, didn't people get the message in 1999/2000?). As promised last time, we thought we'd fill you in on a few more details of what we've been up to, before moving forward to the stuff we have done and seen since our last, brief blog update.

After arriving in New Orleans to be received by our host Darryl, we headed off to Shereveport, in the opposite corner of Louisiana (by car!) for a couchsurfing.com get-together. The Saturday was spent hanging out, browsing a flea market, and cooking spicy food. The Sunday morning we spent engaging in that traditional Southern pastime of shooting beer cans and trying to get pickup trucks out of mud. We then got in Darryl's car and headed back to NOLA (New Orleans, Louisiana), stopping briefly to pick up a Spanish-English dictionary from the flea market. The fellow who promised he'd have one turned out not to, so he purchased one from another stall and gave it to us for free which was pretty nice. We then hit the highway, Yana taking her turn to drive some of the distance and get reacquainted with driving on the "wrong" side of the road. We got back to NOLA safely, but rather late at night. The next day Darryl drove us to the French Quarter and we wandered around looking at  various galleries, shops, old buildings, and sampling some local food including coconut macaroons (yum!). In the evening it started raining heavily, and Darryl came to collect us before taking us to Frenchman street to wander into a bar with a pretty good band (the Jazz Vipers) doing their thing. Actually, as Darryl arrived to pick us up we were standing talking with a busker who had impressed us, but hadn't made any money at all that day, so we gave him a couple of bucks because he definitely deserved better than he was getting.

On the Tuesday Darryl kindly loaned us his car to go driving around town and do some shopping, while he went to the pizza restaurant his is opening with a friend. We picked up some new bike tubes, and then went in search of cookbooks that would make good xmas presents, looking in a few 2nd hand bookstores as well as Borders, before finding some that we liked. This also gave us a good chance to see some of the pretty old buildings and sweeping oak trees growing in the old neighbourhoods of New Orleans. It had been a wet few days, and apparently this December was the rainiest month ever in New Orleans' recorded history, before the month was even half-over. But Wednesday was sunny and we were able to get on our bikes and ride around the main park, then down to the waterfront and catch the free ferry across to the opposite bank, where we looked around at the pretty houses before riding back to Darryl's. When Thursday came we packed our bags and headed out of town, as the rain whipped around us once again, to head towards the town of Houma, where we had arranged to stay for the night via the warmshowers.org website. We stopped for a bite to eat at a cool little Mexican cafe called The Blue Tomato, where the staff were very friendly and impressed with our ride. And speaking of food, Darryl's pizza restaurant is called MRS Pizza, and should be opening on or around New Year's Day, so if you're in NOLA, check it out. Anyway, after lunch we headed towards the Huey P. Long bridge, hoping to cross over to the other side of the river, but it was extremely busy with traffic, and a cop pulled us over before we could get onto the bridge and explained that no bikes were allowed, and that the "no bikes allowed" signs had been taken down while construction work was being done on the bridge. He was pretty friendly about it, and we asked if we could cross somewhere else. He hummed and hawed and eventually told us that the next bridge along (quite some way away) was not much better, but was not patrolled so we might be able to sneak across.

Well we could have gone the other way and taken a ferry, but we've done every centimeter of this trip under our own power, so we really wanted to find a bridge crossing instead. We'd also decided that the attempt to extend out visas was a wild-goose chase, so we just had to get out of the USA before our visas expired, making a crossing to the other side of the Mississippi essential. And although it was raining, we had a tailwind so we rode along the river levee trail until we came to the bridge. An interstate. Crap. We thought about our options, including the next bridge along (about 25 km further upstream), chatted to the folks in the nearby service station who told us that we were just as likely to be stopped at that bridge as this one, and that the nearby ferry had been out of commission since hurricane Katrina, and eventually decided that we had very little choice but to ride across. And so we did. It was a bit scary, but there was a sizeable shoulder on the road, we got to the other side, and pulled into a service station there to ask directions for the easiest way to Houma. Then after steeling ourselves for the rain again, we headed out. Sundance rode into a puddle, which turned out to be a fairly deep hole, but apart from that things were uneventful. And then a cop car pulled us over. Apparently someone driving over the bridge had called the police on their mobile phone (because using a phone while driving isn't illegal!), and the police had been looking for us. The officer in question was very gruff and told us that we shouldn't be riding bicycles in this wet weather, and that we should have found a place to stay for the night and waited until morning instead of crossing the bridge on our bikes. Why? Would a pedestrian footbridge across the Mississippi have magically appeared overnight? Here's a clue Louisiana, if you make it impossible/illegal for people to get from A to B, then people who need to get from A to B will break or bend the law - not because they want to, but because they have no other choice. And before you say we should have found a truck which could have given us a lift across the river, let us point out that that would have been hitch-hiking, which is a violation of federal law, as far as we're aware. So there!

In any case, he said we wouldn't be allowed to keep riding to Houma, so we had to pull into the local hospital, and call our host, Perry, to come and collect us, load our bikes into her truck, and drive us to her house where we met her hubby, were fed chicken curry, and got a good night's rest.

By Yana:

Unfortunately, Perry had other places to be very early the next morning, so we didn't get to chat more with her and her hubby.  A shame, really, as they really seemed like our sort of people.  In the light of all of this, we dragged ourselves out of bed pretty early, packed up our gear, and got back on our bikes.  As Perry had collected us on the previous evening, we had to make our way back to that point in order to connect the lines in our trip - considering the lengths we had gone to the previous night to ride every inch of the way, we were not about to break that clean record only a day later!  So off we went again, riding into one of those familiar stiff headwinds, back towards Luling.  We stopped at a few petrol stations, hoping to find someone with a pick up truck going the same way who would be able to take us there, as it would have been a pretty big extra distance for us to ride the whole way.  We asked a few people, but had little luck, although one nice lady donated some money to the cause of our trip.  That makes her the second person to have done so, I believe.

By early afternoon, we had resigned ourselves to our fate of having to ride all the way back and into that headwind.  Just as we got on the road, however, someone honked behind us - it was our nice lady, who introduced herself as Pat.  As it turned out, the trunk of her car was really quite spacious, so she offered to take us.  We gladly accepted, and with a bit of creativity, we managed to get everything stowed.

Pat dropped us off at the same spot where Perry had picked us up the night before, and we got ourselves reassembled and packed up.  Considering we had now already been to Houma, we decided to go a slightly different route instead.  We still had to head into the same general direction, but luckily the main highway had a smaller parallel road that we could take instead, which was a relief.  We did have to do a few smallish stretches on the big road, but by and large, it wasn't so bad.  As we started to approach the city cluster that Houma is part of, we veered off into Thibodeaux instead, at which point it was getting dark.  It was a bit irritating to note that yes, we had lost a day's worth of travel at the hands of the cop who had pulled us over the previous night, but what's done is done.  We stopped at a petrol station for a rest, pondering our accommodation options for the night.  The young man who worked there (I believe his name was Andrew, but it's a little hard to keep track of every name we come across) offered us lodging, though he was a little out of our way.  Around that time, another fellow wandered in, and also offered us some floor space.  As he was within spitting distance of the petrol station, we accepted his offer instead, with apologies to Andrew, and the promise we'd pop in and say hi before we left in the morning.

Our host for the night introduced himself as Mark, and turned out to be a cop who works in Franklin.  It was kind of a reminder of the fact that for the most part, we have had a very positive experience with the police on this trip.  We actually had a very nice chat with Mark, and he ended up donating quite a few police patches to our collection that we had started since meeting Clint back in Kentucky.  Mark also told us that in Franklin, where he works and where we were planning to head the next day, they would sometimes let weary cyclists like ourselves stay at the fire station overnight.  Very helpful indeed.

The next morning dawned bright and sunny, and we got up reasonably early, as Mark and his son Aaron had places to be.  We got ourselves out of the house reasonably quickly, and once Mark had driven off, sat in the sunny carport and had breakfast.  We popped back into the petrol station to say hi to Andrew, where we met a few curious folks.  One of them became the third person to donate to the cause of our trip.  We must be looking increasingly tired and bedraggled, if the monetary donations are becoming more frequent.

We hopped on our bikes, and high-tailed it towards Franklin, which was a respectable distance away.  We rode past various marshy sort of landscapes, which were also thankfully quite flat.  It did pose the question whether it was home to any alligators, though we didn't find out.  There were certainly a lot of vultures around though, happily processing the roadkill.  We certainly see more skeletons and rotting carcasses on the road now, which is somewhat interesting.

Although the road was flat, the road surface was absolutely woeful, in typical Louisiana fashion.  For the most part, we do like the place, as it is very verdant, and the climate is quite mild in winter.  Nevertheless, the nobbly roads are quite hard on the old knees if you're riding a bike.  Still, we made it into Franklin that night, having gone nigh on 100km that day.  Go us!  We also followed Mark's advice about seeing if we could get lodging at the fire station.  It turned out we could, and we gratefully spread out our sleeping bags on the spare beds.  Sure, there was the occasional extremely loud phone call, but other than that, it was downright luxurious by our usual travel standards.

We got up early again the next morning,  with the intention  of heading to Kaplan.  Once again, a fairly long day.  We had more rivers to cross, as you do in that kind of bayou country.  But hey, it meant we continued to have flat roads.  I guess every kind of terrain has its drawbacks in the end.  We got into Kaplan after dark, and during our obligatory petrol station stop, met a fellow named Blaine in a black Chevy Impala.  Like most black people we have met, he boggled very expressively when we told him how far we'd come on our bikes.  Even better, he had a place where we could pitch our tent for the night.  Turns out he owned a couple of properties in the area, one of them being a vacant lot of land, so we had a place to stay for the night.  It was going to be a cold night, but that only  meant that we could be quite grateful for our awesome little tent.

We got up  reasonably early in the morning, as we were once again aiming for a pretty long haul.  As we had expected, it had gotten quite cold overnight.  Not that it had made us uncomfortable, the inside of the tent had remained quite toasty, but when I went to dry off the condensation, I discovered a thin sheet of ice on the inside of the tent fly!  Hooee!

We packed up our gear and had our breakfast at the petrol station where we had met Blaine the previous night.  There were a few truckers having breakfast there too, and we got to hear them speaking in a truly funky dialect, which made it hard to keep track sometimes when they switched from English into French and back again.  At times they would speak predominantly one language, peppered with words from the other, or the other way round.  It is of course the natural thing to do when you speak more than one language and are around people who speak the same set of languages that you do, but it can be a little unnerving when you're not used to it.

We hopped back on our bikes, and rode past some more beautiful trees (if I remember correctly, Perry from Houma told us they were called royal oaks), and over more flat but nobbly roads.  It was actually quite difficult to keep going at over 20km/h for the first hour, as we were riding into a slight headwind, and the wind caused by trucks coming from the opposite direction would always slow us down by a km/h or two.  Still, we took a break in one of those many little towns with names that are hard to remember, and kept our momentum going pretty well.  Blaine from Kaplan actually drove past at one point, and greeted us.  It was kind of nice.

We put some more distance behind us, and stopped for lunch in a slightly larger town (Lake Arthur), and also put up our tent to dry in the sun a bit.  A very prudent move, as it came out of the bag pretty much soaking wet.  We then continued onwards, with the intention of getting to Lake Charles before the day was out.  We stopped briefly in the smaller town of Hayes though, for the sake of a toilet and some fruit juice.  While guarding the bikes, I also got to find out why so many Americans leave their huge whopping cars idling while they pop into shops to do whatever it is they do in there: apparently, they want to cut down on the amount of times they actually start the engine, as the starters for those big diesel engines have a limited lifespan, and are expensive to replace.  While I can sympathise with that, it still boggles my mind though how much that kind of thing must increase America's carbon footprint.

Meanwhile, Sundance got talking with Michael, the gregarious fellow who owned the little general store we were stopped at.  Michael was absolutely floored by our trip, and offered us a place to stay for the night.  That was actually a little bit of a tough choice for us, as the guy seemed really nice, and we figured it'd be great to hang out and chat with him, but at the same time, we had also hoped to get to Lake Charles that day, which was still a reasonable distance away, and we still had plenty of daylight.  In the end, we came up with a solution:  We would continue to ride until it got dark, and then Michael would pick us up from there, we'd stay with him, and he'd then bring us back there in the morning.  Certainly suited us well, so we got back on our bikes and rode on.  It was actually the first day on which we managed 80km before sundown, which we were very pleased with.  Michael picked us up at a petrol station on the outskirts of Lake Charles, and we had a very nice evening hanging out with him and his family. We even got to watch a bit of Forrest Gump on TV, which seemed appropriate since we could sympathise with the simplicity of his approach to running (in our case, cycling) across the USA; "When I was tired, I slept. When I was hungry, I ate."

We had a slightly slower start than usual the next morning, but luckily, we were helped along by a tremendous tailwind once we got back on our bikes.  Michael took us back to the petrol station, and we said our fond farewells, during which he also donated some money to our trip.  He was certainly one of those people who went above and beyond the normal kindness we have received on this trip, and we were very grateful.  Extremely nice guy.  Perhaps if you ever find yourself in Hayes, Louisiana, you should pop by the general store and say hi to him.

We rode quite steadily throughout the day, although the weather wasn't the best.  When we decided we couldn't put off lunch any longer, it was actually raining, and we knocked on the door of one of the places in the tiny little strip of a town we were passing through, asking if we could take shelter under their great big tree while we made our sandwiches.  Continuing in the southern vein, the family who lived there were a very friendly lot.  While their kid, Bryce, tore around the yard showing us his miniature pony and one of their crazy chickens (apparently it is called a "top hat"), which was black with a shock of white feathers on its head.  One of his pasttimes was catching tiny little catfish and perch in the nearby ditch, and he was doing his darndest to keep us entertained.  We also had a nice chat with the parents, Crystal and Brad, who bestowed plenty of sugary things still left over from Halloween on us.  It was one of those times when we suspected that if we had asked, we would have had a turf surf right there.  However, we were determined to get into Texas that night, so we headed onwards.

It was getting quite late as we set off again, but we still managed to make use of some daylight, and went at a reasonable pace towards the Texan border.  It was, however, well and truly dark by the time we entered Texas.

By Sundance:

We pulled into the first service station we found, in Deweyville, and devoured a pizza and some chicken tenders which tasted delicious, although that may have had a lot to do with the distance we'd covered.  We then set about finding a place to stay, by heading to the police station and asking if there was a local campground or rest area we could use. However the police seemed to be elsewhere, as the station was unattended. We did find an open wi-fi network at the adjacent library though, and a quick search of the weather forecast showed we were expecting thunderstorms, so finding an indoor area to stay seemed like a great idea. On the assumption that in a small town everyone knows everyone, we knocked on a door, explained our situation, and asked the person who answered if they knew where the local police/sheriff may be, in the hope that they would be able to arrange for us to stay in the fire station, civic centre, or the like. After a lot of phone calls and chasing back-and-forth, we met the local sheriff and deputy, but eventually were accommodated in a local church gymnasium, and were met by an enthusiastic woman named Brandy who was busy running an end-of-year social dance but took time out to ask us all about Australia. She was very friendly and said she would have loved to talk to us all night. We finally climbed into our beds and awoke the following morning to clear skies, rather than the drizzle and thunder we'd expected, so we decided to make the most of it and hit the road promptly (but not before I tried to shoot some hoops on the basketball court while riding across the court on my bike. Unsuccessfully). A short-cut we'd hoped to take turned out to lead into private roads, so we detoured north and then across through Buna, Evadale and Kountze to arrive that night in the town of Saratoga. We were pretty pooped, having done over 100 km, but we were pushing ourselves, hoping to make it to Austin to share xmas in some way with my friend Peter and his family. The woman at the local fireworks shop rang around while we ate dinner (generously donated for free by the staff of Mama's Cafe), and found us a place to sleep for the night in the parsonage at one of the local churches. We were also able to use some internet access and the bathrooms at another church (as the water was off in the parsonage). We set our watch alarms for a very early start, and retired again. 

The following morning we were up before sunrise. There were flashes of lightning, so we were glad to be indoors, but by the time we had packed our gear and were ready to hit the road, around sunrise, the rain was clearing. We intended to cover a long distance that day, so we set off, into the worst headwind we'd had to face all trip! We pushed on valiantly throughout the day, but the fates were against us. We had not quite made 80 km when my front tyre began to wear thin, the tube starting to poke through a weak spot in the rubber. We were forced to stop and pull into a driveway, and ask the homeowner if we could use his space to pull a bike apart and change a tyre. The owner turned out to be a friendly and welcoming fellow called Dave who persuaded us to stay at his house for the night, drove us into the nearby town of Conroe to buy dinner groceries, and allowed us to set up mattresses in his barn, and get online to use Skype to call our respective parents for xmas, despite the fact that we were accidentally intruding on his family xmas get-together. So we were once again very grateful for our good fortune, for the kindness of strangers, and we got to stay in a barn for xmas eve! 

The following morning we had a slightly special breakfast (Yana got bacon and eggs, I basically avoid eating mammals) instead of cereal, and then bid our fond farewells to Dave and set off intending to reach the town of Brenham, where we had arranged via warmshowers.org to be hosted for the night. It was a less windy, sunnier day than the previous day, but Yana got a flat which delayed us, and we didn't make such fast progress as we'd hoped, so that despite calling our host to update her on our progress, by the time we called her to say we were in range of Brenham she simply said she'd already gone to bed and wished us luck finding a place to spend the night! While I understand our lateness wasn't exactly convenient for her, it wasn't exactly a barrel of laughs for us spending xmas day riding 120 km in near-freezing conditions, instead of spending it with family eating turkey and ham! So in a certain amount of exhaustion, we just knocked on the nearest door and asked the fellow who came to the door (clearly out of bed himself) if we could put a tent up in his yard. By the time we'd started unrolling the tent, he came out fully-clothed and mentioned that he had a spare room in his shed which would be more convenient for us. It turned out he had a sofa-bed and a portable bed/cot in there, both of which were single beds, but we spread the mattresses on the floor, put our thermarests on top, and our sleeping bags, and had a very comfortable night's sleep. We awoke early on boxing day and put everything back the way we'd found it. Then we hopped on our bikes, stopped in Brenham for breakfast at a Mexican place, and then pushed on. I think we were a little afraid to jinx our trip, because we didn't say to each other that we would get to Austin that night, but by the time we'd pushed through the town of Giddings, then Paige, and reached McDade we didn't really want to give up, and had reached a silent agreement that it was Austin or bust. Even though the highway we were forced to travel on didn't have the same generous shoulders we'd grown accustomed to in Texas, after McDade things improved, and we powered on, the lights of Austin eventually spreading out before us. We had to pause briefly when Yana hit a large chunk of wood in the dark, which knocked her wheel out of alignment (but it was easily fixed by loosening and re-tightening the wheel) and finally we made our way into Austin, and arrived at Peter's place (to everyone's amazement) having cycled an epic 160.44 km (by my odometer) since the start of the day. Peter provided us with delicious left-overs from his fridge, a sizeable futon to sleep on, and we attempted to apologise to our legs for abusing them so thoroughly. 

The last few days have been rest days. We've delighted in seeing the food markets in Austin, buying far too many groceries, and cooking up lots of yummy Korean food. Peter and his wife Crystal are foodie like us, so it's been a lot of fun playing in a well-equipped kitchen and sampling each other's favourite recipes.

In a few days we will have to resort to catching a bus, though. Our visas expire on new year's day, and so we don't have enough time to ride out to the border with Mexico. We'll be forced by legal requirements, not frailty of muscle or determination, to break our ride and rely on motorised transport, which is a little annoying. If not for that cop setting us back after crossing the bridge out of New Orleans, or that insane headwind on xmas eve, we might have made it all the way by bike. But for now we will head into Mexico for an indeterminate length of time. If Mexico goes well, I guess we'll travel across to the west coast there. If not, we'll try to return to the USA at some stage and continue our ride to California. The weather in Mexico will undoubtedly be warmer, which is appealing. As usual, we'll make it up as we go along. But we've definitely learned that Texas really is a big place. Distances and travel times are larger than we expected, but on the plus side the shoulders on the roads are also huge. And as you may have noticed, the blog posts are bigger too. Size really does matter, in more ways than one.