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Started: Oct 14, 2010 7:14:23
Ride Time: 6:55:29
Stopped Time: 1:19:09
Distance: 95.79 miles
Average: 13.83 miles/h
Fastest Speed: 26.56 miles/h
Climb: 1630 feet
Calories: 4718

Rolled out at the crack of dawn this morning. The entire Indian family that runs the hotel where I stayed turned out to wave me off. With all of the hotels run by Indians across the rural US, you’d think maybe one or two would open an Indian restaurant to go with it. Man, I’d be all over that.

East Texas is the land of loose dogs: I was chased by eight before I even took off my cool-weather jersey this morning—though none after, oddly enough. Connection?

Apart from a few miles here and there, I spent almost the entire way on roads with exemplary pavement. That, and the walls of trees that shielded me from winds helped me speed along and knock out 70 miles in exactly five hours, which is a good clip when touring. At that point I was in Silsbee, which has an actual Italian restaurant where I stopped for lunch. Pasta is a staple food for cyclists, and it’s a little frustrating not to be able to find it more often.

I was also in the land of the logging trucks. The westbound riders I met in Sanderson had told me about riding on roads with no shoulders and having logging trucks blast past them with no clearance. I’m pretty sure I know which road they mean—I rode on it yesterday—and I must have gotten lucky, because the logging trucks I saw passed me with plenty of clearance. Maybe it’s the trike. At one point l saw a logging truck heading one way, and a flatbed truck stacked tall with new shipping pallets. Wish I could have gotten a picture of that. Later I saw the plant where the pallets came from, its yard covered to a depth of two stories with pallets.

After lunch, I pushed on another 25 miles on US90. The riding here was less pleasant, and the wind was hitting me full-strength, so it was slowed as well. But it brought me to the home of Jerry and Carol, my Warm Showers hosts. They have a working farm, mostly raising goats for milk and chickens for eggs, but they also have horses, a burro, cows, and guinea fowl. Their home seems to function as a social center, with friends dropping by unannounced at all hours.

I’ll be crossing into Louisiana tomorrow, but I felt like I was already in a different state today, and was momentarily surprised when I saw a TxDOT vehicle on the road. It occurred to me that it’s preposterous that West Texas, Central Texas, and East Texas are all the same state. They feel so different.

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Started: Oct 13, 2010 7:24:12
Ride Time: 7:53:00
Stopped Time: 2:24:33
Distance: 109.80 miles
Average: 13.93 miles/h
Fastest Speed: 742.62 miles/h
Climb: 8016 feet
Calories: 4930

Another long day. While I was riding through the lost pines yesterday, I was riding through the piney woods of East Texas today. I spent quite a few idyllic miles riding through the Sam Houston National Forest, flanked on both sides by walls of tall pines, on a glassy road with minimal traffic. Some of the best cycling I’ve had during this trip.

Many of the roads I’ve been riding on are maintained by counties, and in Central and East Texas, I may criss-cross five counties in the course of a day. Today, in fact, I rode through six, and even if there weren’t county-line signs, I’d know by the quality of the road. I’ll just say that Montgomery and San Jacinto counties are the cyclist’s friends. Walker county, not so much.

Early in my ride today, in the community of William Penn (seriously), I met my second set of westbound Southern Tier riders, Sue and Ken from Canada. They’re apparently retired, and are very experienced cyclotourists—I think they said they’ve toured over 30,000 km in the USA. They were both riding Surlys with 2″ slick tires and a full set of bags. We traded tips and stories. They’re planning on taking a couple days’ break in Austin, and I was happy to be able to give them some pointers.

I pushed on to Navasota, the transition between Sections 4 and 5 in my maps. When I encounter a small town in Texas, I place it in a two-dimensional spectrum. On one axis is whether the town’s commerce is directed at locals or tourists. On the other is whether the businesses are succeeding or failing. It always makes me a little sad to see small towns that aren’t serving their local communities. Having seen Navasota, I think I need to add a third axis: nice or nasty place to live. Navasota’s main drag looks like most of the businesses are doing ok, and they’re clearly local-directed, but the place just has a nasty feel to it. La Grange, by contrast, is also local-directed and successful, but looks pretty pleasant.

I stopped at a café that was visible from the intersection that marks the transition from Section 4 to 5, and when I was paying my tab, got to chatting with the guy at the register who asked “are you riding east or west?”. He told me some stories about other riders who had stopped there, and told me that when I get to Louisiana, I should stop in the scariest, diviest restaurants I see—places I would never stop anywhere else—because they have the best food.

I had been riding mostly with strong crosswinds to this point (at one point, I saw a poorly secured barn roof being partly tugged off), but it was a few miles after Navasota that I found myself in the pines, and they shielded me from the worst of it.

By the time I was past the thickest of the pines, I was around New Waverly, on SH 150, a busy, chattery 2-lane road with nothing resembling a shoulder and a lot of redneck drivers who have no patience for cyclists. Not the best stretch of riding. But once I got past the town of Pumpkin (again, seriously), I entered a different county, the road improved, and the traffic diminished. I had a pleasant ride the rest of the way into Coldspring. Despite the fact that I already had a lot of miles behind me, I was feeling pretty good and still had about 90 minutes of daylight, so I thought about pushing on to the next town, Shepherd. But I decided to end on a high note.