Chasing City Lights
Written by Jon on 03 April 2010
I woke up to another flat tire and changed the tube. We had to backtrack about a mile from the campsite to town for breakfast. The heavy winds pushed us along without pedaling, but we knew it was just going to be extra work for us on the way back. After breakfast we filled up extra water bottles and packed food as we had a 75 mile stretch with no food or water stops. While riding my new tube continued to lose air. We pulled over, took the tire off, and found a thorn in the tire.

With the heavy 40mph winds we weren’t sure we would make it to Van Horn and prepared ourselves to camp on the side of the road if needed.

We pedaled on battling the winds until sunset and made it to a little town called Va lentine, TX. It had taken us 7 hours to ride 37 miles the winds were so strong.

We were both wore out, but there was nowhere to eat and it didn’t look like we could camp in this town so we pedaled on to Van Horn. Fortunately, the wind died down some, but not totally.

We pulled over to put our headlights and taillights on, but could only find one of each. I used the taillight and Andrew used the taillight. As we got closer to town we could see the city lights ahead and it seemed like we were getting close. We pedaled on for another hour and thought we were within a few miles, but a sign told us we were still 10 miles away. I started getting a flat, but it was too dark to change the tire so I pumped it up and pedaled on. The batteries died in the headlight and we had to tape a flashlight to the handlebars just to see. We descended as we got closer to the city and the temperature dropped drastically. About 2 miles from the city we pulled over and called some local motels. We found one for a good price and pedaled on in search of the first decent night’s sleep of the trip. On the way there we stopped at a truck stop and had some dinner. I couldn’t even see straight as I sat there and ate. The ride today had taken a toll on us both and it was definitely the hardest ride of the trip so far.