Wed, 10/15/2025; 41 miles, 1491 feet of climb,
Holy cow — talk about unmet expectations! I had envisioned an easy day of 35 miles, starting with a great pancake and egg breakfast at the café across the street and culminating in an arrival so early that I’d have to kill a few hours before checking into a hotel.
But the day turned out much differently. Through a myriad combination of misjudged mileage, meandering mountain climbs, and mechanical mishaps, I ended up dragging my sorry body into Sierra Blanca just before sunset. It was a very tough day.
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I was really looking forward to a great breakfast at Cowboy’s Land Restaurant, the only place still open in this ghost town of Fort Hancock. I was disappointed that I didn’t make their closing time last night, but I should’ve asked what their opening time was when I had them on the phone yesterday.
Google said they open at 7:00 am. So I waited in my room until 7:00, but there was no sign of life across the street. Finally, at 7:15, I walked over and looked in, and there was nobody inside. Actually, the sign on the door said they open at 6:00 am! I concluded that maybe they just took the day off. I went next door to the Shell gas station and bought a 540-calorie muffin, a cup of coffee, and a cliff bar. Breakfast of champions!
I went back to my hotel and ate my makeshift breakfast, packed up the bike, and took off. Guess what? As I was rolling out at 8:00, the restaurant was open! There were pick up trucks out front, carrying the people who are eating my eggs and pancakes.
Oh well, at least I got started an hour and a half earlier than yesterday. It was a pretty nice morning. But the winds picked up early. At 8:20, as soon as I turned east, I could feel the wind slowing me down quite a bit. It only got worse throughout the day.
The ACA (Adventure Cycling Association) maps routed me around a reservoir. I wouldn’t have known it was there, except for Google Maps. But I sent up my drone got some good aerial videos.
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At mile 22, I discovered a restaurant that I didn’t realize was going to be on the route. This is the point where the ACA route leaves lonely country roads and joins interstate 10 for a bit.
I enjoyed a great three egg omelette at the Traveling Tiger Restaurant –– the first real meal I’ve had in over 24 hours.
I had received a message from Bill Ladd, a biker from Cambridge, Massachusetts, who is riding east to west, from Florida to San Diego. He said he was currently in Sierra Blanca, only 20 miles to the east. But that meant I would pass him on the highway on the freeway when we probably couldn’t stop to talk.
What I forgot to consider, however, was that he was going downhill with a tailwind, so he was really flying! He actually got to the Traveling Tiger just as always about to leave. So we compared notes and shared a couple stories before I took off.
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I don’t really mind riding on the interstate, because you have such a big shoulder, and it’s usually pretty smooth. What I didn’t realize, however, was that it was uphill. And up and up and up.
Turns out we were climbing out of the Rio Grande Valley into the Quitman Mountains.
All told, it was a 9.5-mile climb! I was not prepared for that. The ACA maps have a new app that I don’t know how to use properly yet, so I didn’t predict the elevation gain that I experienced.
Not only that, but my distances were off too. I thought I had 34 miles to ride today, but it turned out to be over 41. This double whammy of extra distance and climbing exacerbated my already tough day with the headwinds.
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But the story gets even worse. Right in the middle of this monster nine-mile hill, I stopped and straddled my bike to catch my breath. And all of a sudden, I heard a loud bang! My tire had popped!
I felt my front tire and it was pretty soft, so I figured that was it. Then I noticed that my BACK tire was going flat fast. And it had a big visible GASH! Is it possible I have TWO flats!?
I was really at a loss. I do have two spare tubes but no spare tires because they’re both fairly new. I’ve never needed spare tires before in my thousands of miles of bike touring.
I started walking my bike without a plan, since there was no shade anywhere. Maybe someone would pick me up!
Then I realized that because I was on a service road, even if a car on the interstate saw me, there would be no way for them to help me out because they couldn’t get to me.
My heart was racing, and I almost panicked. But when I finally came upon a tiny bit of shade from a scrub brush, I decided to take off the back tire just to see what I could find. I took off the tire and tube, and when I pumped up the tube by itself, I found a pretty big hole in it. Good news — this hole was NOT near the gash. So maybe the gash was just cosmetic damage.
I had marked where the hole was, and then I was able to find a sharp thorn piercing the tire. These Schwalbe Marathon Plus tires are almost bulletproof, except for this one type of thorn (“goathead”) that’s common in the south. The same thing happened to me in Arizona last March.
So the good news is that this was fixable. I pulled out the thorn with my little multitool pliers, m installed the new tube, and in only 90 minutes (sarcasm) I was able to get the tire, the tube, the tire back on.
Now to the front tire. I pumped up that tire too, and it seemed to hold. Maybe it was just a slow leak in the front.
I continue my climb and once I finally got to the top, I had only five miles to go to Sierra Blanca, which was thankfully downhill.
Oh, and I ran out of water today! I had filled all four bottles at the Traveling Tiger, which I thought would be overkill for only 20 miles. But the monster hill, vicious headwinds, and the extra hour and a half changing tires on the hot pavement each took their toll. I think I will add a fifth bottle from now on.
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I pulled into the Sierra Blanca Historic Lodge just before sunset. I was hot, thirsty, and completely exhausted from the headwinds and climbs and sitting on the pavement so long, so it was such a relief to arrive! It was fun talking to the owner, Leti. She said that Chuck likes to talk, so maybe I can get him on video at breakfast tomorrow.
After rolling my bike into my room, I walked a half mile to Delfina’s Mexican restaurant. On the way there, three dogs had a barking fit as I walked by. One of them was a pit bull and kept charging me. I was actually pretty scared. I yelled, but had no weapon to defend myself.
The Mexican food was great! The waitress told me it was mild, but it was much spicier than my “three times spicy” Chinese food back in Wisconsin. My lips were actually burning. But it was really good, and a lot of food –– three enchiladas, salad, lots of beans and rice, chips and salsa, all for $10.50.
Then I had to walk back past the pitbull again. I found a large rock that I carried with me. If he happened to latch onto my leg, I planned to bash his skull in. Fortunately, the dogs were locked up this time.
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My Very Bad Day saga continued as I tried to order new tubes and tires. I had tubes and tires already in my Amazon cart, and they said they could be delivered as early as Friday, only two days from now.
So I called the hotel I might be staying on my rest day in an Alpine, Texas, Saturday or Sunday. I got the runaround, but I eventually talked to a manager and got permission to send the Amazon box to them.
But when I went into Amazon and changed the delivery to the hotel address, it then said the tires would not be there until Tuesday. ARGG! This would not work, because I would be gone from there by Tuesday.
By the way, the Internet here is extremely slow, so everything I did took ten times longer than normal. Sometimes it didn’t work at all.
Then I contacted the pastor‘s wife of the Baptist Church I’m going to be staying at on Tuesday in Sanderson. She gave me her address and her permission to send a box to them. I figured that would be perfect since Amazon said they could be delivered Tuesday.
Well, 20 minutes later of slow Internet, I was able to type her address in there and send the package to them. But now it was not Tuesday, the delivery estimate was Thursday! Apparently, the more remote the towns are, the longer it takes for deliveries.
So I guess I might try to send them to Del Rio, but I’m going to wait till tomorrow when the Internet is better before I tackle that. It’s almost midnight again, and I haven’t even updated my blog yet.
I am getting tired of three days in a row with really no downtime, getting in late, very hard biking, and not enough sleep.
Tomorrow, however, really should be an easy day. The winds are shifting, starting out as headwinds, and then shifting to tailwinds later in the day. And it’s only 35 miles, and there are decent hotels in VanHorn, unlike the last two nights. I’m ready to get a hot tub!
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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):
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100066334039590
“Old Scouter” YouTube page (when I get time to edit after the trip):