Day 188: Wes Cooksey County Park, TX

With three good climbs on today's route, we decided to head out early to decrease the likelihood of having a long, grueling climb in high heat later in the day.  So we made sandwiches the night before, which we ate for breakfast just as the sky was starting to brighten up.  It was a chilly 54 degrees when I hit the road, but it was quite pleasant a short time later when the road start climbing upward.

Quite some time ago I had a front flat tire, and after I had replaced the tube it was obvious that whatever caused the flat was still in there.  But it was a very slow leak.  So for weeks now I've been starting out the day by adding as much as 70 pounds of pressure to the tire, which has kept me going thus far.  But the rough chip sealed roads finally brought the tube to the point of failure.

The sign warns that about one motorcyclist per year dies on this stretch of roadway.

I was about two thirds of the way up the first climb of the day when I realized the tire had gone flat.  I hoped that by adding a CO2 cartridge of air to it that I could keep riding on it until I caught up with Alea, but no luck.  It looked as though the summit was just around the corner, so I decided to walk up the hill a ways, in the hope that Alea was nearby.  While it was indeed a false summit, that strategy paid off.  So once I got to the van, I got a fresh tube and utilized the bike tools in the van so that I wouldn't have to unstuff and restuff my seat bag.  It turned out the culprit was a piece of steel wire, likely debris from some exploded tire, which I had acquired hundreds of miles back down the road.

With that taken care of, I was once again on my way.  It wasn't long until I reached the true summit, just as another rider coming from the opposite direction was doing the same.  It wasn't long before he had turned around and caught up with me.  His name was Casey and he lives in San Antonio.  He was out doing some hill climbing for some sort of climbing challenge that he was participating in, and these happened to be the closest hills to where he lived with any significant elevation gain.

Since the road was narrow and winding, when Alea caught up with us she decided to put her flashers on and follow us up to the summit, much to the chagrin of a few impatient motorcycle riders. 

Normally Lana sleeps while riding along in the support van, but I guess the sight of two cyclists on the road in front of her demanded her full attention.  Especially since one of them was me.  She was quite engaged by the spectacle.

Casey and I rode the ascent for the second climb of the day together, making those miles seem to simply melt away.  The only thing I remember was struggling to find enough breath to keep up the conversation - keeping the momentum to continue climbing wasn't even a part of my conscious thought.  It wasn't long before we reached his car at the base of the second descent and we parted company (I was remiss in not getting a photo together).

It was still quite early and the temperature was still perfect for cycling when the final climb of the day came along.  Despite being longer than the other two climbs, it also seemed a bit easier, so it wasn't long before we were up and over that and on our way to this evening's campsite.

We are camped at Wes Cooksey Park ($20, power, water, adjustable showers and the best free wi-fi that we have found so far).   The park is run by Uvalde County, and while it has been around for a while, it is in good shape.  We are a bit amazed that on a Friday there are very few campsites full (aside from the long term residents), but part of that is because Allstays shows this as a private campground.  And the campground doesn't take reservations, and it only accepts checks and cash.

Of all the campsites we've had in the past fourteen months, this is one of the better ones that we've encountered, in terms of both ambiance and price.

I had offered a lot of solutions to Alea on how to facilitate learning Spanish.  But she doesn't like DuoLingo because it doesn't give you the answers in advance (but if you don't know the answers, it provides them to you and gives you a second chance to answer the same questions at the end of each session).  She also got frustrated when we attempted to play a simple, non-competitive version of Spanish Scrabble (an effort to see how many Spanish words, including proper names, that we could make from the tiles we drew), where we don't keep score.  In hindsight, a Spanish version of Scrabble probably has a much different mix of tiles than in the U.S. version, so it was more difficult to make that work than I had imagined.  

So the day has ended on a sour note, and I have no idea how things will go from here.  I only know that I am incredibly frustrated.