1st day on the highway, cruising toward a personal all-time bike mileage record of 95 miles…
Knowing that it was going to be an especially hefty day, the biggest bike mileage day of my life, as a matter of fact, I started out from my yearlong Austin home, rolling just yards down to US 290, to take the tour out of Austin and into Texas.
The mission of the day was to bike more than I ever had before, ~95 miles, to reach Bryan/College Station, where my very cool couchsurf host Patrick lives.
I basically had 4 major stops including the final one, all about 20-something miles apart from one another. The stops were in Elgin, Lexington (where I met a nice couple of ladies who gave a small tour donation, at Matador Mexican Restaurant), Caldwell & Bryan/College Station.
The climate was quite chilly, as that dark early morn start was around 38-43 degrees i believe, although it settled at a nice, pleasant high of temps in the 50′s later in the day.
The route was pretty confusing for a while as my route had me roll north of 290 about 20 miles into the trip, at which point I had to string together a string of various Texas farm roads in rapid succession.
Once the general route confusion subsided, the farm roads through these very sparsely populated regions in the miles east-northeast of Austin proved to be nice in many ways…
The roads, just small roads going through not much else but farmland, winded quite a while in & around pretty woody areas that dotted the largely agricultural landscape.
These roads were amazingly well-paved & the shoulders were very ample. Perhaps the most rewarding aspect of these roads is that they’re very devoid of any traffic; after living in very fast-paced Austin for nearly a year without getting out of it very much, the car-free peace was quite liberating.
Also, I was pleased to be reminded of a long-ago 500-mile bike tour, due to the fact that cows were plentiful, and the ones against the fenceline by the highway would stare at me in some sort of state of muted confusion. This bovine reaction to a human biking down a desolate road had stuck with me 15 years after that other long-ago trip.
After an early morning start of decently descending roads & even some tailwinds, many of the miles till nightfall would be marked by the appearance of a steady stream of small hills & significant headwinds hovering around 10mph right at me.
Lexington
Lexington was halftime for the day, where I sat at the Matador Mexican Restaurant in the adorable, tiny, leftover downtown, where they actually did have blips of business afoot, which was nice to see. This is where i first noticed what felt like some kind of allergic reaction to what i assume was the climate, as East Cen. TX might as well have been a foreign country, to my experience, as I’d never really been there before, at least this part of it. It was a glandular swelling that i only now really feel myself coming out of as of this writing, on this Jan. 7 morn.
Caldwell-Bryan/College Station
As i rolled down toward Caldwell and made it there, I felt the need to eat a bit again, although I knew that I would now in no way make it to Bryan before dark, as dusk was upon me before i even got back on the bike.
Caldwell-Bryan: Exhausting 28 Mile Road of Peace, Mercy & Action Scenes:
A gentleman at a gas station, one who struck me as a genuine Aggie (I’d always heard nothing bad about Aggies; I found nothing at all wrong with this one), gave me a way to workaround yet another confusing web of farm roads, pointing out that i could take FM Road 3050 to FM 60 (if memory serves correctly), which eventually turns into the main drag into & through Texas A&M.
The long 28-mile trek through mostly all dark skies to Bryan was perhaps about one of the most surreal bike ride experiences I’d ever had…
3050 alone seemed to never end, it was around 12-15 miles i guess, but it was a nice sloping downward terrain, and my time was definitely efficient on it. The headwinds were virtually nil, and the mostly tranquil, very well-paved road with adequate shoulders began to feel like a vehicle for a peaceful deliverance from a physically taxing day.
Out there, you could see the stars pretty well, on that very clear, rural night. It was definitely my longest night bike ride ever, which might have added to what felt like a magical experience. I think it was indeed magical, as the peaceful, easy downward slope, in the cool, starlit breeze as the bike’s gears & guts & rubber hummed & purred, was great comfort at the end of a strenuous day.
As pleasant as 3050 was, I was beginning to wonder if it was going to dead end at 60 like the man had told me at would. Naturally, it did.
FM 60 to A&M
FM 60 was a bit more hectic, although luckily the terrain & headwinds cooperated fairly well. The hectic aspect arose from thr fact that the shoulders started to vanish to a sliver, and as Bryan was more closely approached, Ii literally had to eject from the roadway for safety’s sanity’s sake a decent many times, in the pure dark night vision in this vast farmland only partially lit, mostly by the moon & stars.
After what was a process of multiple bailouts from the road in deference to the childlike indifference of what was surely A&M youth (assuming the inconsiderate speed demons were Aggies; that’s probably wrong to do) speeding down the road, the road finally began to widen, with more lighting.
Along this stretch, incredibly, incomprehensibly vast tracts of farmland lined both sides of 60 for many miles, was a much more serene, comfortable stretch. My couchsurf host let me know later that A&M owned much of this endless aggie territory.
At long last, it started to become obvious that we were about to land at our destination, finally, after a 95-mile day that’d begun at 6:15am, as the highway now merged with a vast network of highways leading into town, past signs for the airport.
We soon began to lose shoulders on what were still broad roadways, as the first bits of A&M complexes started to materialize, but the traffic was still pretty light, probably because school hadn’t really come back into session yet from the holidays.
Finally, finally, finally…final 4 miles or so, bigger signs of approaching campus, as 60 soon turned into the main road rolling through Texas A&M.
A couple turns later, finally reached my couchsurf destination where Patrick and his lifelong family retriever dog greeted me with as much warmth & kindness as i could’ve possibly expected.
Settling In…What a Day
So it was…a new personal bike mileage record for a one-day period…95 miles. This for one who’s had an extremely bike centered-life for about 17 years now. One of those feelings that i’m sure most of you can appreciate…exhaustion mixed with elation.
And my host Patrick? An ecological restoration major at A&M who was about to graduate. He really was cool, nearly impossibly so, as he literally made some of the best breakfast tacos I’d ever had, his own creation…sweet potato & black bean…that’s saying something after having lived in Austin for over a year, where you’re never but ~50 yards away from the nearest breakfast taco.
We had a very great conversation for an hour & a half or so, and then it was time to put this record-breaking day in the record books.
My tailwinds were supplied by numerous friends online, who’d electronically & spiritually pushed me along when i thought i could go on no more, and i’m truly, eternally grateful. All of us pedaled the bike home that night.
