I’m getting to the point where it is really difficult to remember distinctive features of the landscape or of our adventures. Every day we get up according to the time that Henry sets, rush around so we can have the site cleaned up and everything packed into the van in an hour and a half, circle up, discuss the route, have morning devotion and prayer, and then ride out to wherever our next destination is. In fact, I forgot to mention on our first day in Texas, we had lights on at 4:30 am to try to beat the heat of the day. It was a bit ridiculous–Circle up was at 6:00 am but the sunrise wasn’t until 6:41 (I looked it up). It was still quite dark when we convened our circle outside. Turned out OK, though. It starts to get light a little before sunrise, and we all have tail lights on our bikes. We got to see the sunrise!
On the trip from Clarendon to Hollis, two things stood out. The first was the section of road where the shoulder had better pavement than the road! That is the best way to make sure cyclists ride on the shoulder. The other was coming up on the van and trailer and much of our gear lying in the road. I came up on David first. He was standing out in the heat waving traffic into the other lane.
We had a flat tire–more like a blowout–and it turned out that our jack was broken while trying to fix it. A hydraulic jack doesn’t work well when the fluid leaks out.
Lucky for us, help arrived.
Other than that, there wasn’t very much variation in the day until reaching the Oklahoma border and our home for the night in Hollis, OK just beyond.
