I am on the road again! It feels great to be pedaling across open spaces on my last segment of the Southern Tier Bicycle Route. However, it was a pretty tough day for biking.
My original plan was to go to Tornillo, about 40 miles from El Paso. I usually like to start with shorter distances the first few days of a big tour. However, today there were simply no places to stay –– no campgrounds, Warmshowers hosts, or hotels — until I got to Fort Hancock.Now, 58 miles is already pretty aggressive for a first day, but to make it worse, today there were headwinds. My best trick to tackle a hard day is to get a super early start.
The trouble is, I forgot my chamois cream at home, apparently. So I had to wait until Crazy Cat Cyclery opened at 9:00 to go buy some. They were a little late opening, so by the time I got it and applied it, it was after 9:30 when I actually started biking from El Paso.
The first part of the day was pleasant enough, but the winds started picking up around noon. They were only 10-12 mph, but it was a direct headwind. And if you’re going 10 mph and have a 12 mph headwind, that means 22 mph in your face. It definitely makes a difference.
It was still a great day for biking, though — 70s and partly cloudy for the first part of the day. It did get hot later, with temperatures into the 90s. With the combination of heat and winds and exertion, I went through a lot of water. I’m really glad I had four bottles with me.
The last 20 miles there was absolutely nothing on the route — not even a gas station. I had called ahead and found a café in Fort Hancock near the hotel I was going to stay at, and verified Google’s claim of an unusually early closing time of 5:00 pm.
With visions of a burger and fries dancing in my head, at 3:00 I decided to go for it. I had 16 miles left, and even though I was plodding along pretty slowly in the headwinds, I should be able to make it in two hours if I don’t stop too much.
But then all of a sudden at 3:30 my watch jumped ahead to 4:30. My heart sank! After all that work to try to go faster and minimize breaks, I wasn’t going to come close to making it.
I figured I must’ve just crossed the time zone line. I knew that extreme western Texas was in Mountain Time, but I didn’t know where the time zone switched to Central Time.
Since I could no longer possibly make the 5:00 closing time, I decided to take my time and launch my drone to get some great drone videos near the Mexican border. (That’s foreshadowing.)
When I rolled into town, it was 5:12 pm. I thought, what?! How did my watch get set back to Mountain Time?
Then I googled what time zone Fort Hancock is in. It is still in Mountain Time! What the heck?
Then it hit me –– my phone must’ve picked up a cell tower from Mexico since I was so close to the border, and apparently that part of Mexico is in the Central Time Zone! This happened on the western half last spring, when I picked up Mexican cell towers. But I totally forgotten about it.
So I could’ve made dinner at the cafe after all! Dang. Well, at least there was still a room available at the hotel across the street. In fact, EVERY room was available. They would only accept cash, and there were no cars in the lot, so no nobody would ever know I checked in.
I’m calling it the Bates Motel for nostalgic reasons. The rooms are straight out of the 1950s. I don’t think they’ve updated anything since then, including the embedded cigarette smoke. And two-pronged outlets.
Oh well, the one store in this ghost town that is still open, Dollar Tree, had a meal fit for king: pistachios, chocolate, milk, beef jerky, and microwave popcorn. If I were backpacking, this food would be nirvana!
I carried it all back to the hotel, and as soon as I opened the door, I remembered –– there were no such things as microwaves in the 50s. So I guess I’ll be carrying this popcorn for another day or two.
The good news is that because I rode so far today, tomorrow should be a shorter ride, at only about 35 miles to Sierra Blanca. It’s theoretically possible that I could ride 70 miles tomorrow all the way to Van Horn, but this was the original plan anyway to stop at Sierra Blanca on day 2,.
And tomorrow, there is an even worse headwind of 15 mph straight at me. So 35 miles will be plenty of effort, especially after today’s struggle.
I only got 4.5 hours of sleep last night, so I am feeling beat up. I’m going to bed early, looking forward to a short day tomorrow, and especially looking forward to the wind shifting in two or three days –– I should finally have a tailwind on Friday or Saturday. Then I might be able to combine a day or two so I can get to San Antonio and Austin earlier.
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TRANSLATIONS/BACKGROUND: “TEXBIRD” = Texas Bike Ride, my own nickname for the 800 miles in the middle of Southern Tier Bicycle Route, from El Paso to Austin, using maps from ACA (Adventure Cycling Association). This will complete my ride of the Southern Tier from the Pacific Ocean (San Diego) to the Atlantic Ocean (Jacksonville). (I biked the 1500 miles from Austin to Jacksonville in March 2024, and the 1000 miles from San Diego to El Paso in February 2025.)
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LINKS:
Old-fashioned BLOG if you have friends who don’t use Facebook:
“Old Scouter” Facebook page if you want to follow big adventures with more pictures and video clips (but not unrelated personal posts):
“Old Scouter” YouTube page (when I get time to edit after the trip):