The high point of today was passing through Crawford, Texas: "Home of the Pirates, President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush."  Oh, so they're pirates!  That explains a lot.  I have this vision of W dressed in pirate garb, saying, "Avast there!  Hand over yer booty ur prepare ta be barded!  Are ye with us or against us?  Arr!  Bring it on, ye scurvy evildoers!"

[posted to the Wheeled Migration Yahoo Group on Nov 20, 2004]

Hi, folks! I'm holed up in a hotel in Clifton, TX, while a wild and crazy thunderstorm goes by outside. I didn't have to ride through this one very long, unlike on Wednesday...

Today was pretty uneventful... I kept waiting for the predicted "partly cloudy" weather to materialize, but I only saw the sun for about 15 minutes total.  When I was a few miles from my evening destination of Clifton, rain started falling, and it got gradually more intense as I rode into town.

It was a short ride today from Cleburne SP to Dinosaur Valley SP.  I reasoned that if I felt ambitious, I could make the park just a day trip and ride south in the afternoon, and if I didn't, I could just stay here.

I woke this morning feeling exhausted.  I had gone to bed early, having stayed up late the previous two nights with Chris and Jimmy, but what with the insects buzzing around my mosquito-netted head all night I hadn't slept well.  When I looked in the mirror, I saw that the mosquitos had bitten all over my forehead, so in addition to having freckles, I now appear too have acne!

This morning Natalie was still sick and cantankerous, so Jimmy stayed home to take care of her.  Rain was falling pretty hard, so I wasn't in a hurry to leave either, but I did around 8.  The rain continued nonstop until I got to my campsite around 3, and was intermittent after that.

Because of the rain, I only stopped when I found shelter, which wasn't as often as I would have liked.  The new seat position put more strain on my Achilles' tendons, so they began to hurt even as my knees showed dubious progress.

Chris had said he would get up early, so I asked him not to leave without waking me to say goodbye, but as it turned out I was up over an hour before he got up!  It was a slow morning until around 9:00 everything started jumping...

[posted to the Wheeled Migration Yahoo Group on November 16, 2004]

Hi, folks! I'm at the home of my friend Jimmy, whom I've known since preschool, and who joined this list three months ago without knowing it was mine. :-) He's been showing me the photos from his own cross-country bike ride in 1996.

Finally, a day when I didn't have to push myself... I woke at a leisurely hour and had a long conversation with Leela while packing, then rode at a comfortable pace into Plano and met Sara and her son Jordan for lunch.  Jordan is a few days short of 3 years old, and Sara plans to continue staying home full time.  Her degree is in biochemistry.  Her husband Jerry does classified work for a government contractor.

The plan today seemed simple enough: ride from Texoma to Wiley, set up camp in a park there, and have dinner with Sara (Ballard) Moore and her family.  Two problems: my knees hurt more than ever, and the Texas maps are a smaller scale than I'm used to.  This is not to mention the rain, which was just a bother.