This picture was taken on in the Gila Mountains on our 2005 summer bicycle tour.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Windmills and rolling plains
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Blowing winds
It’s really neat how the cycle of life continues. We enjoyed the opportunity to visit with our Nephew, his wife, and their little girl in Roswell. I believe that it was the first time that we really had a conversation with him since he has become an adult. Wasn’t it just yesterday we were visiting his mom and he was only a week old?
But it’s verified. If you are a motorist out there, you have absolutely no idea if it is really flat out there. We were told several times that it was flat between Roswell and Artesia--wrong. It is actually a slight uphill all the way. Even I wouldn’t have known it by looking out the car window.

As we spin the pedals round and round, inching our way across the New Mexico countryside, we find ourselves smack-dab in the middle of busy oil patches. One of the ways that you can tell that you’re in oil country (besides those giant robotic insectoids bobbing their heads up and down) is all the work gloves scattered along the side of the road. The popular colors are florescent green and orange with traditional white coming in 3rd, all having seen a hard day’s work. We've taken to calling out, "Green glove," "Orange glove," for simple amusement that helps pass the time. We, of course, had to put one on the back of the bike so that it's waving to people. At first, we had a ‘green glove’ but I, Kamala, thought that might give the go ahead to hit us, so now we have an orange glove. We even washed it!
Going to Lovington was a different trip altogether. We climb for about 35 of the 64 mile day. Halfway here, just a mere mile and a half from topping the caprock, we stop at a rest area, and just as we’re almost stopped, slip in some sand and down the bike goes. While recovering ourselves (actually it was Charley recovering me and the bike), the park caretaker comes over and tells Charley in jest, “I saw you throw that bike on top of her. Y’ll want some coffee?” We spend the next 30 minutes or so in Mack’s office coffee brewing and the conversation flowing. He tells us about this one cross-country cyclist who stopped to use the restroom. Mack got to wondering what would happen if he were to move the man’s bike 10 feet. He said the fellow came out, didn’t see his bike, ran one way in the park, then the other way, then again repeating his back and forth jaunts. Mack stops to chuckle during his tale as he recalls that the cyclist even went back in the bathroom to look for the bike. By that time Mack was feeling guilty for causing so much trauma and came clean and said that he was sorry, he didn’t know that it would give him a heart attack. All I could think of, while I smile and nod, is that is why we never leave the bike alone.Coffee now in our cups and as we drink we were treated to a joke:
An elderly man went into the hospital. His granddaughter came rushing up to visit and blurted out, “Grandpa, talk like a frog! Talk like a frog!”
The man scratched his head and said, “Huh? What you talking about?”
“Grams says that when you croak she’s goin’ take me to Six Flags! So talk like a frog!”
We bid farewell to Mack and head back out on the road with a wind at our backs. We top the caprock and it is relatively flat. The tailwind is strong. Caffeine is pumping our systems and we are flying. I look down at the speedometer and can’t believe my eyes: 27.7 mph! I take a picture because who, really, is going to believe me? Too soon though, just after that it was 30 mph!
I see a dark front moving across the plains. Soon we are caught up in it at a crosswind. Charley is fighting to keep the bike on the road. It passes and the tailwind is once again at our backs. We stay an extra day in Lovington as the wind switches around and vows to be our enemy if we ride. As we leave town a mailbox attendant waves, “So long!”
We finally get to camp out at the Brownfield city park. Mack told us about this little gem.
When daybreak comes back around, we know we have some maintenance to do: Thermarest has a small leak and the tent needs a patch were a seam is pulling loose.
Still, a tailwind persists today, good thing too, because we pedal at an incline all the way to Lubbock. Along the way, the English teacher comes out of me when I notice the misspelling on a business sign.

On the shopping list is a bicycle shop specific item and so we set out for, as Charley calls it, the mouth of the dragon (into downtown traffic of a big city). We normally try to avoid cities, but sometimes it is a necessity. While we are stopped, trying to figure out a route, a lady exiting the bank stops to help us. She says, “Let me see, if I were a cyclist, this is the way I would want to go. . .” She actually picked out bicycle routes through town but I don’t think she knew they were designated routes, just that the roads were safe. Thank you! It even has bicycle lights, like The Netherlands! Thank you! Thank you!
So here we sit an extra day hiding from the wind that is pointed and gusting at 40 mph the wrong way. Tomorrow we have scheduled our departure for yet another run down the road. Stay tuned! Comments are welcome, it lets us know you’re out there.
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Heading out






Sunday, March 14, 2010
Tandem North Texas
Friday, January 22, 2010
Palm Springs exploration
Kamala and I just got back from a two week "expedition" to the wilds of Palm Springs.Thursday, October 8, 2009
Time travelers
Sometimes the reality is so subtle that is only little things like the strength of the mid-day sun or the length of shadows as the sun sets, or that soft drinks are no longer called cokes but are pops. And then there are times when the reality smacks you upside the head and you don’t have to be told that you are in a place or time that’s really strange: you haven’t seen a tree for miles and miles, you’re passing by ice fields that are still there in late summer, or like the little town of Choteau, Montana where we took our daily bicycle ride just the other morning, which had No Pizza Hut, McDonald’s, Burger King, 7-Eleven or any convenience store/gas station of any kind. They had a well-stocked grocery store, but it wasn’t a Safeway, Walmart, or an Albertson or any big chain. They had a restaurant but it wasn’t a Denny’s, an Applebee’s, a Chili’s, or a Dunkin Doughnuts. I mean the little town was complete but it had no franchise-type businesses. Now that was a different reality.
We’ve seen all kinds of things on our little trip to the northwest. Many have been just subtle differences of our own reality back home, many have been radically different, as if we were on a distant planet, but all have had that wondrous infusion of novelty that makes traveling without purpose so rewarding. It is a regular feast for our spirits. It’s this stimulation of atavistic emotions, this buzzing attention that we will take home and sprinkle a little of the time traveler’s perceptions over our old routines and add a touch of shine to our life.
We paralleled the Columbia River most of the day and I kept thinking about an article I read on a guy swimming the length of it to raise awareness of saving it from civilization's pollution. While the bit did peak my interest in reading his story, I’m afraid that it lies outside of my empathy zone. First of all just looking at that big expanse of water is scary, but I also lack motivation in the doing good deeds for civilization. I mean, I compost my food scraps and turn out lights when I leave a room and I don’t throw trash out of the car window, but I don’t march, run, or even bicycle to bring attention to Personality Dysfunction in America (or any other societal weak point). We once had a kid, in a neighborhood in some Midwest city ride up to us as we were pedaling through his town and ask us for what cause were we riding. We told him, “No cause. We just do it because we LIKED to ride." He just shook his head. He couldn’t understand that concept and stated that we were selfish. Since the swimmer was drawing attention to the 'poor state of the river,' would he succeed more if he ended journey with one leg 3 times bigger than the other or with purple running sores over all his body?
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Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Two old farts floating around on Lake Roberts
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Mental snapshots

We also wondered if the bicycle has trained us to tour in a certain way or if bicycle traveling had just fit us from the beginning. For example, we don’t tend to go out of our way for the traditional tourist sights, (like monuments, seeing where someone died or was born, etc.). We used to think that this was because those extra turns of the pedals just weren’t worth it or were way out of our way. We were fulfilled by watching and talking to people, landscape changes, and just being together and sharing experiences. But after our last little road trip, traveling in our little truck pulling our little pop-up camper, we began to notice that we still didn’t go out of our way to look at names carved in granite or a reenactment of the good ole days of the “Founding Fathers, or see where General Stoop N Poop “lost” everything (Would that have been a statue with the General upon a horse with the horse squatting on his haunches?). What we did was watch people, talk to folks, and enjoy the changing landscapes. It was like we travel on a bicycle, but hindered by the element of speed.
Chugging down the road in our little truck allowed the landscape to change very quickly as our eyes were glued to the window watching it all pass by so quickly (even though we traveled at about 50-60 mph). Even this slow speed was often way too, too fast as one beautiful or interesting “snapshot” after another presented itself again and again to our eyes. While we were able to snap off quite a few pictures of what passed us by, many times the camera was not attainable quickly enough or a bush blocked what we had just seen by the time we did get the camera, or the camera just wouldn’t turn on quickly enough that we began to joke about it. We developed a motion of taking a picture by tapping our forehead with our finger and then with an invisible camera and called out “Mental Snapshot!” We got some really great “MENTAL SNAPSHOTS” on this trip. Can’t show ‘em to you though. Unfortunately only the two of us can see them and, you know how that is, they will fade quickly without some external stimulus. Oh some will pop up much later at the mention of, say, the Shenandoah Valley, or that campground on the Louisiana coast. Alas, most will fade like the memory of yesterday’s clouds, lurking somewhere in our minds, but with no way to retrieve them. Still we had a good time and a few laughs tapping our heads, mimicking snapping an invisible shutter and yelling “MENTAL SNAPSHOT”
Sunday, May 17, 2009
What have we been doing?

Our first trip to Capitol Hill was by bicycle. We stayed at a National Park only about 12 miles from the Capitol Mall so the distance to the "sacred ground" was not too far (there and back and around-about 33 miles) While it was nice to see all those places that I've heard about and seen in the movies, it was the streets of D.C. that were memorial. First it was just the trying to figure out where we were and secondly, the adrenialine rush of riding in crazy traffic, but even more it was the smell and sights of the neighborhoods and streets that provided more of a "Wow" factor than all the big buildings and statues of dead people.
Sitting on a bench on the Capitol Mall, watching a really diverse segment of people walk by, I was once again struck by the how much humans LOVE symbols. From giant edifices, to names on walls, to uniforms, to pagents, we really love the "dressings" as much, maybe more, than we do the substance. I know that I must fall prey to the majestic lure of symbols myself, but a good portion of humanity seem to have their heads stuck so far up their ass that they never even really see the difference and that's got to make life simpler and grander for them. God bless America, apple pie, and Nike.
Kamala and I are also struck with how much more one sees from a bicycle seat than a car seat. We are moving too fast, most of our pictures are taken out the car window and, of course, the best shots are missed. Interstates, since we hit Lousiania have been huge corridores of trees which cut out most culture with the exception of large billboards every now and then. You may get there faster, but you sure as hell miss a lot. Therefore, while we do at time take to the freeway, most of our travels have been on back roads. That gives us a bit more of the cultural flavor, but America is experiencing the homoginazation of it's local culture by all the Walmarts, Pizza Huts, Wendy's, etc . . .
emissions check that can be obtained in only the higher populated counties of the state and the nearest one is El Paso, now 250 miles away.It's decision time. Do we proceed as outlaws to a big city, which we usually try to avoid, make a run for the Oklahoma-Texas border? We choose to alter our path from slanting south across Texas to going straight east for Dallas/Fort Worth. And since we didn't get stopped and we did see some purty scenery, we must have chosen right for God to smile on us like that. But there was still one more catch. When we got to Weatherford in the same county as Fort Worth we stopped at an inspection station and, "Yes, we do stickers, but No, we can't do yours because it's a 91 model and vehicles that old have to be set on one of those thingamyjigs that you set the tires on and speed up to 30 miles an hour." Well we felt bad but the old man, who must have been an angel in disguise, sent us to a place where the truck passed with flying colors. We got our sticker and we were now legal and had gone a long way off of our original route all due to God, a few angels, and our own freewill and an UPS man that I'm still not sure about.
in Mississippi. NO PUTTING PEOPLE IN THE MACHINE. Now that's just one more thing that is sucking the joy out of life. Actually I had not thought of stuffing some little person in one of those twirlly washing machines with the window until they told me I couldn't, but now I want to and I want to even more because I know that someone else must have beat me to it for them to have put the warning label on the machine.






