October 15, 2008
flat, hoping it works out, iriide to iraan, chrystal
Day Twenty Four
"If you make enough bad decisions, every once in a while things work out for you."
- Geoff Ramsey -
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Out in West Texas, how far you travel on a bike in one day is sometimes dictated by how far away the next town is. Unsurprisingly, towns out here are generally spaced about as far as a person could reasonably travel on a horse in one day, about sixty miles. Excluding Bakersfield (which consists of a single gas station/convenience store), the next town is Iraan, 63 miles away, so I'll be staying there tonight.
The morning was cold and overcast, with the kind of crispness that allows you to see all the way to the horizon. I put on a couple of shirts, then a rain jacket over those, but within two miles the top shirt came off. As the morning progressed the air became thicker and heavier with a promise of rain, or at least whatever passes for precipitation in this part of the country.
That promise was delivered later in the morning when I rode through a misty wetness which didn't so much fall from the sky as swirl earthward in dancing, hypnotic patterns. It was heavier and denser than fog, with just enough moisture to find its way into every pore. It stopped after an hour or so but the sky remained overcast.
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A lot of the time, absolutely nothing happens on a bike tour, and exactly nothing is what happened most of this morning. There was no need to attend to my riding and, pedaling down the road, I scanned the browns and greens lining the hills as my mind disengaged itself and went for a stroll.
Just as I was approaching the only rest stop for 70 miles, my steering started feeling weird. I looked down and saw my front tire was almost flat. By the time I braked to a stop and got off my bike, it was flat. The rest stop was only a hundred yards away so I just walked my bike the rest of the way so I could get out of the wind.
Generally, when I have a flat, I pull out the punctured tube and replace it with a fresh one. Then, when I've stopped for the evening, I'll patch the punctured one. That way I don't have to stop for as long.
After switching tires I went through my normal procedure of inspecting the tire to make sure whatever caused the flat wasn't still there. The outside of the tire looked okay, but when I ran my fingers along the inside of the tire I almost cut my finger.
There was a small shard of glass embedded in the tire, lurking, just waiting for me to put the tire back in and pump it up. I would've had another flat within half a mile.
I pried the glass out with my pocketknife, rechecked the inside of the tire, and replaced the tube. Pumping up a tire with my tiny bicycle tire pump took a while, but after 40,000 pumps I eventually had enough air in the tire to continue.
When I tried to roll up the punctured tire to store it in my pannier, it refused to compact into the same size as the one I replaced it with... it was like there was something inside it. After a few tries, I finally realized that it wasn't going to get any smaller because there WAS something inside it. Puzzled, I worked the substance towards the valve and squeezed some of it out. A huge amount of white, viscous, gloop squirted out. It looked like I was squeezing a tire zit.
And it just kept coming out... The more I rolled up the tube, the more the goop kept squirting out. I had no idea what this stuff was.
Eventually, I saw the writing on the tube, "Self-Sealing Tube." Ahhh.... so that's what it is. I hadn’t even realized I'd bought self-sealing tubes. Since they didn't seem to work, I probably won’t buy them again.
Here are some pictures I took along the way.
Bakersfield (pop 30) is the only dot on the map to get something to eat between Fort Stockton and Iraan, so I stopped there for my lunch break, but even more so to spend some time out of the wind. It's not even a town, just a dusty gas station/convenience store combination.
There was a single plastic-covered chair sitting beside a lonely 1960s-style table, neither of which appeared to have been used since they went out of style.
About twenty minutes later, the cashier came over and started chatting.
Her name is Mary. She was raised in the area and lived in Girvin, a town about twenty miles away. Mary said that Girvin once had a large population but has since dwindled to only a handful of holdouts and is now home to a single building, a bar. She lamented about how most of the rural towns in America are dying as the children grow up and move away to find jobs, or to go to school. Girvin seems to have had a more dramatic change than the slow, insidious decline most small towns experience.
According to her, the town was featured in National Geographic magazine about thirty years ago. I'm planning on looking it up after my trip is over.
She also aid that Bakersfield (our current location), once had 4,500 residents. Looking around at the empty landscape, it strained my imagination.
After a while, Mary told me a little about herself. At the age of fifteen, she met a guy on a Harley who was passing through town. With dreams of escaping the doldrums of small-town West Texas, a week later, with nothing but a few dollars and a cheap suitcase filled with cheap clothes, she caught a bus to Florida to follow him. When she arrived in Pensacola she called him up and asked,
"How would you feel about me being in Florida with you?"
"Uhhh, I dunno," a response which was as nonsurprising as it was noncommittal.
"Well, I'm in Pensacola and will be there in eight hours so that's how long you have to decide."
She lived with him for a while but without giving specifics she said,
"It didn't work out."
Upon moving out, she got a good job with an insurance company and ended up staying there for fifteen years before deciding it was time to head back to Texas.
Then, barely thirty, she moved in with a relative near Dallas who "turned into a terrible bitch when she got drunk, which was pretty much every night." Ultimately, "it didn't really work out," and she started looking for her own place.
At about the same time, her mom was having some additional health problems. As if she wasn't already getting enough attention from the medical community, her mother somehow managed to run over her own leg with her car, so Mary decided to come back to this area to help take care of her.
Originally, she moved in with her sister but "it didn't work out" because Mary has a Chihuahua and her sister has three cats.
Clearly it was time for a fresh start, so Mary decided to move back East. She loaded up her car and, on the way out of town, stopped by her mother's house to say goodbye. Her mother saw the loaded car and before Mary could say anything, she exclaimed,
"Oh, Thank goodness! You've come to live with me!"
Mary's been there ever since.
I hope it works out for her.
Off and running again (but not like a few days ago), I made good time with a rarely seen and greatly appreciated tailwind until I turned north for the last ten miles.
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Iraan (pop. 1,229) is off I-10 a little ways so I exited on Highway 193 and made my way towards my evening stop. Curious about the etymology, I learned that Iraan was named after Ira and Ann Yates, the owners of the ranch land upon which the town was built.
I walked into the convenience store and bought something to drink. As I frequently do, I asked the cashier about the best place to eat in town.
She glanced around to make sure none of the locals were listening and for a second I thought she was about to tell me the location of the Dutchman's Lost Mine. After ensuring there were no eavesdroppers, she gave me the name of a place, then added,
“When you live in a small town, you can't play favorites.”
Most people, when they find out I'm on a bike trip, ask a few of the regular questions, then start talking about themselves. There's nothing wrong with that and, in fact, I prefer it. As you should know by now, it's one of the main reasons I'm rolling across the country.
Not so with Chrystal, the cashier. Fifteen minutes later I didn't know much more than I did when I walked in the door, except that she was smart enough to realize that she needed to leave her life and lifestyle in San Angelo. Not knowing a single person in lraan, she moved here and started a new life.
Watching her work was like watching a conductor at a symphony. The store was intermittently very busy and she was able to make every single person laugh or smile while she effortlessly juggled all of her other duties. Her hands seemed to work independently of each other, grabbing a packet of cigarettes with one while taking money and working the register with the other, and looking at neither.
We were able to talk some during the slow times. Probably more than any other person I've met so far, she seemed genuinely interested in the bike trip.
I checked in to the only hotel in town, took a long, hot shower, then ate at the place Chrystal recommended.
Back at the hotel, I patched my tube, then looked at the map and made my riding plans for tomorrow. Planning isn't too hard in West Texas. Like I said, you just look at the next town, about sixty miles away, and hope you can make it that far.
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distance: 63.4 miles
average speed: 15.5 mph
maximum speed: 35.6 mph
time on bike: 4:06:42
cumulative mileage: 1168.7 miles
Today's ride: 63 miles (101 km)
Total: 1,168 miles (1,880 km)
| Rate this entry's writing | Heart | 4 |
| Comment on this entry | Comment | 5 |
You should have given her Cecil's contact info... Maybe she could have escaped Girvin and moved in with another Chihuahua fan.
2 months ago
2 months ago
Many years ago on the now defunct "Phred" bike touring web site, I read that you can carry a wad of cotton in the patch kit and rub it back and forth inside the tire, where the offender will catch fibers so you can spot it without bloodshed. Works a trick! Carried a wad ever since.
2 months ago
2 months ago