(Fri-Sat, March 14-15, 2025)
I thought I’d wrap up this series on CANTBIRD. My last day of actual biking was Thursday, but I spent Friday and Saturday packing up and traveling home.
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The weather in El Paso Friday was lousy, as predicted: 23 mph winds with gusts up to 39. The Sun was still blotted out from the sandstorm for most of the day. I am so glad I didn’t have to bike again Friday!
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I left the hotel only twice on Friday. The first time was to find breakfast. This Hilton Garden Inn is so fancy that they don’t have breakfast like the cheaper hotels do. Fortunately, there was a McDonald’s just a few blocks away. I actually like their breakfasts, since you can order just scrambled eggs.
More important, they have APPLE PIE. It’s been years since I’ve had a McDonald’s apple pie, but this was the only place within walking distance of the hotel where I could properly celebrate Pi Day (3/14).
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The second time I left the hotel was to bring my bike to Crazy Cat Cyclery. I am trying a company called BikeFlights for the first time, and this could be a game changer.
Normally after a bike trip, I have to find a used bike box, disassemble my bike (borrowing a pedal wrench), pack it up, try to figure out how to get my boxed bike back to the hotel and then to the airport (most Ubers won’t take a boxed bike), lug it through the airport to checkin, lug it from baggage claim, and have my wife drive our old van 200 miles round trip to pick me up from the airport.
With Bike Flights, on the other hand, you simply wheel your bike into a participating bike shop, answer a couple of questions, and walk out the door scot-free. They disassemble it and professionally box it up and ship it right to your home!
I can’t tell you how much stress that saves on both ends of the journey. I’m not sure yet how much it costs (won’t know until the box is weighed and measured), but they say it’s cheaper than shipping it on your own.
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Right across the street was a Walgreen’s, so after dropping the bike off, I stopped in to collect my final batch of postcards. (My kids aren’t very good at keeping up with blogs or social media, but they do read postcards snail-mailed to their house.)
And wouldn’t you know it, right across from Walgreen’s was PANDA EXPRESS! So my last meal of the bike trip was the same as my first, way back four weeks ago east of San Diego.
My fortune cookie said, “Accept kindness from others.” I definitely did that on this trip!
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The rest of Friday was spent writing postcards and packing my panniers into a box I had bought when I walked to a U-Haul Thursday afternoon. It was tight squeeze.
I thought maybe I’d use the hot tub at the Hilton, but I walked outside to test it first. It was more of a “tepid tub.” They’re probably not used to dealing with temperatures this cold in El Paso, so I punted on that idea.
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I asked the front desk about the van I saw out front, and guess what — there is a free airport shuttle, even though it’s 15 miles away!
The good news is that this solved my dilemma of whether to use Uber or Lyft, and whether to schedule it ahead of time (higher cost) or wing it in the morning, and what time to choose.
The bad news is that the hotel shuttle leaves at 3:40 am. That’s the only one that would make it in time for my 6 am flight.
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My alarm went off at 3:10 am Saturday and I was in the van ready to roll at 3:35. I arrived at the airport early enough to check in my panniers, go through security, and enjoy a full-size Schlotzky’s sandwich at 4:30 am.
There were storms all over, as both the El Paso to Atlanta and the Atlanta to Minneapolis flights had to reroute. The second leg was late, but that worked in my favor as I had a tight connection in Atlanta.
Beth picked me up in Minneapolis in her favorite Camry rather than the old van. It was COLD! I think the frigid wind followed me. (By comparison, yesterday, it was a record-setting 77° in Minneapolis — 26° higher than the temperature in El Paso, Texas!)
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It was great to travel in such comfort all day on shuttle buses, airplanes, and a Camry. It was especially nice to see my wife for the first time in four weeks! And to walk into Arneberg Acres, which is even fancier than my best hotel of the trip.
There was a package waiting for me when I got home. It was from Bob & Mary Michels, my hosts in Fountain Hills, AZ. If you recall, the neighborhood where they live is called “Eagle Mountain,” which just happens to be the Norwegian translation of our last name, Arneberg.
The package had a nice congratulatory note, along with two “Eagle Mountain” baseball caps!
I guess that fortune cookie message could be a summary of the whole trip:
“Accept kindness from others.”
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TRANSLATIONS/BACKGROUND: “CANTBIRD” = CA-AZ-NM-TX Bike Ride, my own nickname for the 1000 miles on the western half of the Southern Tier Bicycle Route, from San Diego to El Paso, using maps from ACA (Adventure Cycling Association). (I did the 1500-mile eastern half in March 2024, which I called GUMBIRD [Gulf of Mexico Bike Ride].)
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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):