Riding the White Line

Four Wheels to El Paso

October 29, 1982

Well, the strangest part of my journey was made without sitting atop my bike, but rather behind the wheel of a '€™63 Ford pickup. This guy, Dick, a fifty-ish, overweight, unassured man, had been through a lot during the past six months. So he told me.

He and his wife had divorced and his wife went back to a former husband. He and his son had dissolved their business to go separate ways. Two of his friends were smuggling pesos into Texas via his house (15 years if caught). And to top it off, his father killed himself because he feared being put on a life support system.

I got paid $20 plus meals for driving the truck and listening to the radio. After we got to El Paso, Dick tried to talk me into helping him out with some cross-border smuggling too. Again pesos, or at least that'€™s what he said I would be smuggling. I didn'€™t really have 15 years to give up, so I headed east.

El Capitan Peak in the Guadalupe Mountains.

Out of El Paso, I put in 101 miles to make the southern edge of the Guadalupe Mountains National Park. Lows were in the mid-40s last night but Mom'€™s knee-warmers made it a pleasure! [While at Prescott, I got care packages from Mom and from Joy. Mom sent knee-warmers she had knitted, and Joy sent home-baked chocolate chip cookies.]

Today, I bicycled into Carlsbad Caverns National Park and went through the self-guided, three-mile tour and ate lunch 700 feet below the surface. The cave is about as pretty a cave as I've seen and certainly the largest.

I'€™m now at a KOA in Carlsbad City. For $3.50, this is posh. And people keep walking past, asking, "€œAren'€™t you the boy we saw riding a bike up at White'€™s City?"€ They recognize me without my bike.

Looking at the map, I have a couple 100-milers to get to Abilene, so time to head off to snoozeville. Maybe a couple post cards before I go.

The Kindness of Strangers

Frog Rock, near Congress, Arizona.

October 25, 1982

Well, the desert has not been kind. The heat and sun have given me headaches. All the desert plants are in bloom so my sinuses are about to explode. Water is scarce, but I’ve been stocking up on Dew whenever I hit a crossroads large enough to import soda. [This was back in the days before a novelty like bottled water existed.]

Covering Arizona from the border at Blythe to Congress, the land has been much the same. Lots of saguaro, sage and cacti.

A yucca plant and all the shade available for a hundred miles.

I had my first “run-in” with the law between Blythe and Quartzite. I was riding the interstate on the inside shoulder because the outside shoulder had whump-whumps cut in the shoulder to keep dozing drivers from driving off the road. The whump-whumps are aggravating to a bicyclist. Every 30 feet, I was jarred by my wheels hitting the cuts. So the state trooper asked me, almost apologetically, to ride on the outside shoulder with the whump-whumps until I got to U.S. Highway 60. [I had the impression that he had had to ask numerous bicyclists to do the same.]

Yesterday, I had two flats. Tis great fun to change a tire in the scorching sun. That makes 11 flats altogether.

I finally made Congress and saw the mountains looming ahead and decided to pull over to spray some WD-40 on the chain. As I was getting off the bike, I leaned too much into it and then had to lean way back to compensate. As a result, I put so much torque on the rear wheel that the rim warped.

So I turned the bike upside down and started trying to straighten the rim enough to ride to Prescott. Not a chance.

As fate would have it, a man in a pickup truck stopped and asked if I needed help. He was headed up to Prescott and offered a ride. I gladly accepted.

He was headed to Prescott because his father had just died. He (I still don’t even know his name) was from El Paso. He asked if after I got my bike fixed whether I would care to drive a pickup back to El Paso for him. I pondered the question for awhile and agreed to do so.

The guy at the bike shop is going to have to rebuild the wheel with my hub. It’ll cost $30. C’est la vie. This will cut a week off getting home though and I am anxious to get home. I’m tired of this: living on the road.

Another State

October 24, 1982

So long California. Hello Arizona!