Day 2: Lampasas to Stephenville

June 6, 2005

Came in today at 91.04 miles according to Nick Bangia’s cycling computer. The day started at 5 AM since we had so much to do to get ready. Actually felt pretty good getting up with no real lag. Must have been the excitement in the room since I am not normally a morning person. I can stay up to 5AM to work, but I typically prefer to sleep in until about 9. Of course, even though I got up and started running around I would have been just as happy sleeping in.

With our organized chaos we were able to get everything put away and eat breakfast by 7 AM. Pretty impressive I think considering the amount of work that had to be done. I did have some trouble getting the route organized since all of my maps went missing that I was counting on. After a frantic search we found them in the van that was going on the coastal route! That would have been a disaster if they had left with them. We put the directions to Stephenville on a large piece of butcher paper and had everybody copy them down. It worked well today since there were only a few turns, but later on in the big cities we will need to come up with a better solution.

The big problem with the route was that the people who were lodging us for the night (Tarleton University) weren’t able to set us up for the night for less than $200. Since we are working diligently to save us much money as possible we decided that we would rather rough it than spend our funds for a little comfort. So we decided to meet up at the city limit sign and we would have the drivers go ahead and look for the public park that we would be able to stay at for free.

Before hitting the road, the two teams said their final goodbyes. I had worked with some of the people in planning for the trip so I felt that a little bit of the team would be missing. On the other hand I didn’t know that many other people on the coastal route so I wasn’t bothered too much overall. We all lined up and either shook hands if we were guys or hugged if there was a girl involved. Then we biked out together on the road. After a little bit we came up to the proverbial fork in the road. The coastal route went left and we went right and never the twain shall meet until Whitehorse near Alaska. Kind of a poignant moment and not at all unlike the famous poem of "the path less taken" fame. Two very different experiences and in my lifetime I will only know the one. Yet still our common cause and the similarity of our experiences will give me some insight and sympathy for their course of travel.

I started off real strong and was feeling pretty good for the first couple of miles. But I went too hard too fast and it didn’t take too long before I had to pull up and take a more laid back approach. In fact my left knee was in quite a bit of pain. As I went along it only got worse and I seriously considered calling it a day and riding in the van. But those who know me well know I am most definitely one of those stubborn individuals who hates to give in when I feel strongly about something. So I adjusted my gears to a much lower setting so I could spin faster, but push less. I also adjusted my foot so that it was slightly rotated counter-clockwise. Within a quarter mile of my adjustments my pain, which was excruciating, completely subsided. It was really a tremendous relief and although I would suffer later on it was a critical juncture that I was able to get past with a little bit more perseverance.

But don’t forget about being saddle sore! I won’t go into the anatomical details, but wow! The pain! It wasn’t pleasant and it is a nagging soreness that builds in intensity throughout the day so that at the end it’s almost all you can do to distract yourself enough from the pain so that you can continue to move forward.

Despite all of this the first 75 miles went by fairly quickly. In fact, the first 45 went past in the blink of an eye it seems. Of course, even at a very quick pace of 20 mph this would be a two hour journey, but still considering this it seemingly went by much faster. There were a couple of highlights though that kept us distracted.

First, Brett got hit by a car! He was biking in the shoulder and the driver of a van apparently nodded off as he approached them. He hit Brett with his side view mirror and narrowly avoided hitting him with the rest of the van. Well the mirror shattered into a million pieces he hit Brett so hard. Somehow Brett managed to stay on his bike even with all of the extra momentum given to him by the impact. He got off his bike and the driver stopped to check things out. Channing, who was riding with Brett at the time, started to throw down and was getting in the drivers face yelling and such. The driver apologized, the police came out and Brett was able to walk away with a very bruised hip and arm. In fact Brett was such a stud about it that he got on the bike not too much later and finished the route.

Second, there was a lot of road kill to dodge. There were raccoons, deer, turtles, opossum, and a whole bunch of armadillos. There was one particular deer that was all over the road, probably 20 feet in length with entrails all over the place. It took quite a bit of deft maneuvering to avoid the mess. Not too aromatically pleasing either.

Third, there was a lot of long stretches of up and down while we are on the highway. There was one stretch of uphill that lasted around 2 miles or so. It just kept going and going. You would think you were finally at the top, then take a turn around the bend and see that it was still going up. At one point I had let out a little whoop to celebrate finally getting past that beast and then I found out that I still had another half mile to go! To distract myself I started making analogies between the ups and downs in life and the ups and downs on the road. Examples include knowing that life may go down, but for all the downs there is always going to be another up, and that working hard in the rough spots makes the reward all the sweeter. There were a bunch more, but I think you get the point.

The hardest point of the day came at the end. After the last rest stop there were about 25 miles left until the final destination. The drivers that day decided not to setup a rest stop at the typical 15-20 mile mark since we were so close to the end anyways. Well I ended up running out of water about 8 miles away from the end. And it was hot with air temperatures hovering near 100 and the road temperatures being much higher than. I started baking and had already gone over 70 miles so fatigue was setting in. I was really parched and was getting quite pissed about the whole thing since I kept expecting to see a water station at any curve.

Fortunately there were enough distractions at the end to keep me from festering too much. There were some quaint little towns with "downtowns" of three or four one-story buildings. I would also wave to anybody that I came across like ranchers, county firemen, elderly people on their porches, etc. At one point I saw a farmhouse that was in the middle of nowhere (on the backroads of backroads with nothing for ten miles in any direction) They had an above ground pool filled with water and there were two boys splashing and swimming. Since this was just about when I was running out of water I started fixating on it. It was soooo inviting, seemingly calling to me to jump in. I was so focused on how great a swim would feel when I made it to the final destination that I never saw the elderly couple on the porch. All of a sudden I heard a loud "Hoo-aah!!". I was so pleasantly startled that I nearly jumped out of my seat. I waved back and smiled and went on a little bit better for their encouragement.

When I finally made it into town I was dead tired. I immediately consumed two bear claws and a quarter gallon of water. All together I drank about 3 gallons of water. I went to sleep on a concrete bench for thirty minutes and never moved it was so comfortable! Later on we met up with John Moore and his friends from FMC manufacturing. What a great group of guys! After a long, hard day their genuine charity was a tremendous morale booster. They took us out to Hard Abe’s for all we could eat BBQ! And it was so good, even by Texas standards. I ate a quarter pound of brisket, a quarter pound of turkey and a bunch of beans. I topped it off with a quarter gallon of root beer. They spent some time with us at dinner interviewing us for the paper and just getting to know us and what we were all about.

After dinner we went back to the park and Gene Goodell took me around the city in his car to show me how to get to the breakfast that they were providing the next morning. We dropped off one of the friends and his two sons were playing in the front yard. He asked me to come out and take pictures with them, to which I gladly agreed. Since they were wearing their Texas hats we talked a little football and such. We took the pictures and he pointed out one of the houses near us. Apparently the lady had the house custom built and had only lived in it for a few months before she was diagnosed with cancer and had to move to a nursing home for care.

It reminded me how much cancer can change a life. Not just bringing into play thoughts about mortality and the suffering that some cancer treatments cause, but the actual life changes that occur. Cancer affects everything and sometimes life will never be the same, even if you do survive.

After shaking hands and saying goodbye for the night Gene drove me to his place and showed me his pool, hot tub, showers and laundry he offered to the team. He and his friends had really gone out of their way for us and it was almost overwhelming. When we got back to camp I walked all around passing along the offer. Three people ended up taking him up on it while I stayed behind and took a quick shower in the public facilities.

While going into the showers I noticed that there were a group of teenagers who were loitering about. I was still wearing my bike shorts and such and they started pointing and laughing at me. I didn’t care at all and instead reflected on the importance of perspective. Would they have reacted differently if they knew I was biking to over 4500 miles to Alaska? What if they knew it was for cancer? What if one of them had cancer? It was just youth on their part that caused them to think less of me for my shorts. I wondered what would happen in their lives that will change their perspective.

Once again at night there was another meeting that took too long. More repetition, more of me trying to remind myself that I was a leader too so I needed to be patient. But still the behemoth of a beast that large group meetings represent refused to yield, even as we approached 9:30. When I got up to speak I made it brief and the meeting ended shortly thereafter. And I went straight to bed. And I was very happy to be there.