A good riding day and a rescue by a gallant Texan!
Today we left Kerrville after a day of rest in an elegant hotel to ride 62 miles on to Blanco, which is about 40 miles south of Austin TX, a big city. I thought this was a distance I could do so I set out and passed the first Sag stop at 20 miles, and stopped for lunch in Waring TX at 30 miles sitting at picnic tables outside a refurbished old gas station where the meter recorded the price in pennies, not dollars. Makes you think huh.
The two guys running it made hamburgers and French fries and had Cocacola in bottles. Every Wednesday night they have live music and dancing which was playing from a tape while we were there, and there's a big garden out back for more celebrating. "We've been doing this for 15 years" one of them told me, "and it's always a blast." This is Saturday so we didn't see it.
Riding on I passed the 40 mile Sag stop and felt fine, thinking we'd have some more rolling hills as we'd had before. BUT suddenly the hills got bigger, the rolls got longer, and the whole ride became far more challenging as the wind picked up - it is NEVER behind us- and the temperature soared from the comfortable 50s to the 70s as the sun swept the clouds from the sky. I womanfully struggled up the next few hills, feeling very tired. I stopped for water and a snack thinking that would help. I went up a couple more and other riders passed me. I was 7 miles from Kendalia, the next town and about 20 miles from the hotel in Blanco. I realized that I didn't have that many pedaling miles in me.
I called the Sag, Julie, but she was busy picking up people who had got lost, or who were tired way back behind me, and she told me it would be at least an hour before she could get to me. I was about to plan how to find a shady spot to wait when a man in a big wagon with a bike on the back saw me on the phone and called: "Do you need some help?" What a great question! He turned his van round and came over to where I was and I told him I was not able to ride into Blanco and our Sag was tied up. He knew all about Sags and had ridden mountain bike rides and was on his way to one in Comfort where we'd passed, but when he heard my sad story, he offered me a ride to Blanco where he lives. I thanked him profusely and he expertly loaded my bike on the back next to his, and I got in the front seat of his beautifully air-conditioned van.
Turns out he loves Colorado and has been to Steamboat Springs and skied and would love to live there but his wife likes Texas so they're in Blanco. He has twins, a boy and a girl, who are 12, and they play soccer and bike and ski, and are as outdoorsy as you can be here in Texas where there's no snow, and go to Colorado to ski and to a summer camp. I told him about my family, and how Boulder is so sports conscious that when you ask someone what they do, you don't care about their job, you just want to know if they hike, bike, ski, run, race, climb or do anything interesting athletically. I do yoga but I've learned that does not qualify as a fulltime sport in Boulder.
He took me all the way to the hotel - and then because I dropped my phone in the car, brought that to the hotel too. What a great guy! Texas is wonderful.
I then went with Carla to lunch at the Redbud Café, where the guy who took my order had lived in Boulder for 11 years, come to Austin TX and moved to Blanco to escape the big city. We had a great reminisce about how Boulder has changed in the past 20 something years. I had an excellent quiche and salad and a perfect iced coffee.
Outside on Blanco's town square they had booths and stalls for a fair. Carla and I walked around looking at booths, and I found some clip-on earrings, rare as can be in the world, from a woman who refurbishes antique jewelry. They are blue and sparkly and look terrific - so that was great. We looked at antlers and wooden barbecue holders, and hippy clothing and not much else. Then came back to the hotel where people were biking in.
Marilyn and I cleaned our bikes on the grass, chatting, and she said that she admired the fact that I knew how much I could ride and did what I could. I appreciated her saying that because I keep feeling I Should Do More....but I can only do what I can do - and enjoy that. She, on the other hand, zooms along like lightning and hardly seems to get out of breath. It must be that New Zealand vegemite again. She is on a year's grand adventure tour is going to Spain next to teach English conversation to Spaniards in a program there.
Then I had a shower, found out the wifi worked - always a surprise - and caught up on email and Facebook and all the other Internet connections. Dinner is outside in half an hour.
My room in this hotel is decorated with a variety of crosses. There's an ornamental iron one on the wall, a big one standing up on the mantelpiece above the bed, and a sign saying "Every day holds the possibility of a miracle." Which is a good thought to have when you're riding a bicycle, panting up a hill and out of breath, though the possibility of suddenly being able to do it seems a little unlikely. But I shall hope on.
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