Today was the longest day distance wise of the ride so far with 111 miles to travel between the Outback Oasis in Sanderson, and the Del Rio suburb of Amistad.
It was still pitch dark at 6:30 when I took my luggage out to the van. Linda the cook, Michelle the guide and Lois the sous chef were all wearing small bright blue white headlights which made them look like aliens performing some strange pre dawn ritual while they made breakfast and prepped the van.
It was quite cold so most of us grabbed a cup of coffee and trundled back to our rooms to mentally gear up for the ride. For most of us it is now a trained pavlovian response to wake up at 6:00 and start double thinking ourselves on what we laid out to wear, wonder what the weather will be like and try to mentally gear up for the ride. None of us really want to talk to each other very much until the breakfast is on the table. Then there are brief conversations and greetings, and by the time breakfast is cleared and the snacks are out, most of us a quite awake and even getting anxious to be on the road. The anxiety to get on the road was especially noticeable today as the wind started to pick up even as we sheltered in our rooms, eating breakfast.
By 7:30 it was almost light enough for safety and everyone was on the road. We rode out bundled up in all our layers and praying that the wind would continue to come from the southwest as a quartering front side wind instead of from directly in front of us. That wish held true for the first 20 miles or so as we climbed gentle slopes and rolled down the back sides. At one point as Janet and I rode along with the sun coming up over the mountains on the left front, we had a herd of deer leaping over the sage brush and small bushes to our right. They veered off , but a couple of miles later, several trotted across the road right in front of us.
By the time we reached the first SAG stop at 20 miles we were an 1 ¼ hours into the ride and the sun was up. Unfortunately, so was the wind which was now blowing at a gusty 20 miles per hour directly into our faces and starting to develop some interesting little side gusts.. The next 20 miles took 2 ½ hours because by now the wind was blowing so strongly that it was making climbing tiring and difficult. By this time the traffic had become heavier as well. The highway shoulder was wide but all the paving was chip seal which made for a very bone jarring, hand numbing ride. There were also a lot of west Texas “yee haws” indulging in that favorite Sunday in Texas activity of drinking beer and driving fast. About the third time a three wheel motor cycle crossed the white shoulder line to see how close he could come to one of us without really hitting us, we had all spaced out to leave space for ducking and dodging. Shortly later a motor home came even with the big dog pace line- a group of four women who always ride together and go a bit faster than most of us care to go- passed Jan too closely and came within a couple of inches of hitting her helmet with the side view mirror. She swerved to avoid the mirror which she saw out of the corner of her eye and went down while the other two riders swerved into the lane in front of another yee haw to avoid running into Jan. A group confab of about 8 riders was held, and by the time we came up, Jan was up, scratched and shaken but undeterred and the group was waving everyone by. I don’t know if one of the other riders called back to the guide in the van or whether it was that we were only a couple of miles from the Mexican border at this point, but suddenly the presence of lots of border patrol vehicles on the road and on the side roads on either side, seemed to calm the traffic down.
After that excitement it was just a long hard slog into the wind. By this time it was blowing so hard that pedaling was required on the downhills to maintain any momentum while all of us were climbing the gradual uphill rollers in our granniest of granny gears and barely maintaining momentum to get up the hill. The next 20 miles took 3 hours as the wind gusts got strong enough to bring the bike to a momentary halt while pedaling down the inclines, and the side gusts were bellowing through highway cuts strongly enough that swerving into traffic became impossible to avoid. We scraped into lunch at 1:45 with 15 minutes to spare before the van had to pack up and head back down the road to rescue tail riders. Janet sagged out and I took a 10 mile jump with the SAG wagon, both to get across the Pecos River bridge which was under construction, and just to get out of the wind for a few minutes.
The Sag dropped me off just past the bridge and after having made sure that I had two full water bottles is headed off into the fray again. 2 hours later and 15 miles further along, I was out of water and thinking that I wouldn’t make it to the SAG stop at 80 miles any time soon. Fortunately, the ever present border patrrol had a manned control point on the highway. I rode through and doubled back in the correct traffic lane to beg some water off of them. They were very friendly, apologized that they didn’t have any ice and offered me some coffee for energy. I took the coffee, black and sweet and downed a couple of gu shots as well and headed off again into the wind with full water bottles. I never did see another SAG stop.
By this time my hands had totally lost any feeling as had my crotch and seat. My elbows were sore from digging into the aero bar pads trying to get into a more aerodynamic position against the wind. I had been thrown into the guard rail of several gullies by gusts and every time I looked up there was another ***** hill on a route which had been identified as having 2,000 feet of elevation loss and having the last 20 miles listed as relatively flat. Maybe on a day with less wind I would have been able to enjoy the relative truth of this assessment, but as it was, I was not amused.
By the time I reached 95 miles I was chanting to myself, “just another 15 miles, a short ride to the coffee shop, I wish I had some water” and imagining the taste of an iced latte. At the point the van whizzed by and I had just enough presence of mind to pat the top of my helmet to indicate that I needed them to stop, thinking I could get some more water, but when Michelle hopped out and asked if I needed water or a ride, both my mind and mouth said a ride so I pulled at the 95 mile mark with 85 ridden and 25 sagged.
Because of the unpredictable arrival times of the riders, dinner had been moved to 7:30 and Michelle had ordered pizza in order to give Linda a night off. By the time the pizza arrived all but five riders had been sagged in. We took turns looking up the road for the last riders, They rolled in at 7:45 exhausted physically and mentally after 12 hours of riding. They were met by a cheering, whooping, hollering group of women who helped them off their bikes, checked them into their rooms, moved their luggage from the vans to the rooms and took their bikes in for them. Their comments varied from “I think my crotch is broken”, to “ west Texas is now on my short list of places never to revisit or consider retiring to.”
One of them rides with sever diabetes and has to test her blood every half hour, one of them is a 20 year ovarian cancer survivor and the other three are older women who ride. They are all heroes.
Today’s stats
Miles ridden 85
Time ridden 9:45
Average speed 9.8 mph
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