Back in Boulder

Traveling again!

Then I went to Austin where my dad's freind Larry Wells picked me up, and I stayed at his house 20 miles out of town for a couple of nights. He took me back the next morning to get my bike and I rode around Austin. It's a cool place. A huge river runs through the center of it and there are dirt paths along either side, and the capital and this other building that looked like the capital were around. I remember those buildings from when I lived there. There are no skyscrapers there or highways running through the middle of it, so it kind of had a town feel to it. To the west are the hills that rise like a thousand feet up. I rode up into the hills on windy roads that get as steep as possible for some parts and saw my old house. It was up for the market so I couldn't go in, but I went to the back and saw the tent platform and pool. It is one of the coolest houses in Austin, you can see downtown from the living room. Then I went to my original house that I don't remember, but it was two blocks from lake Austin which is cool. Then it got late and I got a flat and I decided to stay in the youth hostel. But it was full and the cheapest hotel is like 60 bucks, so I was going to ride 20 miles to Larry's house but this guy told me that I would get a 50 dollar ticket and my bike confiscated for not having a light, and it was too late to buy one. So I took the bus like 15 miles out of town and rode the rest of the way and got back at like twelve.

We were a couple days from the full moon and the temperature was perfect at night and I noticed I was riding like twice as fast as I did during the day because it was cooler. That day it was hot and I was drinking twice as much water as in Colorado and sweating like a boar. I didn't feel that hot but stopped sweating and totally crashed when I ran out of water. The next day I didn't want to ride to town in the heat so I just hung out and was going to leave that night, but played in the pool with Larry's ten year old daughter. She wanted me to listen to N´syncs album and sing the songs with her. She thinks the short black haired guy is the cutest.

I had all these flat problems, so I ended up leaving the next morning and got the biggest ass wuppin I ever saw. The biggest mountain (hill) range in Texas is in between Austin and San Antonio, so there were all these ups and downs. I didn't have my shirt on to keep cool, but the next thing I knew I was barely making it up the hills because of the heat, and having to get a Popsicle and just rest at every chance I got. It was so hot I was planning on mailing my bike home and taking the bus the whole way, thinking every day would be like this. I was sitting at the station and this guy said ´you look tired, want a ride to san Antonio?' I was like ´thank god'.

He was just babbling away about how he misses his girlfriend who he was married to for 20 years and dumped him three years ago because he was a coke head punk. He said he had a bad attitude about life since then, but then decided everybody just needs to be good to each other and relax. We parked on the side of the road and he lit up a joint for us and I was like, ´I love to get stoned and travel, its the best´. Then he decided he was going to take me the long way to san Antonio via the lake and the river road. At the lake I swam for a half hour or so and he just layed on his pickup and blasted hard rock like KBPI music as loud as it would go. Then on the way to the river road he told me how he wanted to find someone to teach him how to read and that he had never been out of the San Antonio area and he wanted me to write him to inspire him. I said he should scream that he wants to marry his ex-wife from outside her house and make a fool of himself, and he liked that idea. The river road was cool, three were all these houses along the river that you could take a boat down. It seemed like a cool place to live in.

When I got to San Antonio I stayed at a hotel for 25 bucks. I hung out in San Antonio the next day, because I wasn't about to ride in the day any time soon. My back and face were redder that ever and I had a fever from the heat. San Antonio is dope. I went up the tower and took pictures. The sky line isn't as good as Dallas but is is bigger than Austin. The neighborhoods are right next to the downtown area which is interesting. There is a river that they made this big detour out of that goes thought the center of town through the shops and skyscrapers and has tour boats going along it, and canals sprouting off and going into the mall and the convention center. There are even little canals going through buildings that you can walk along. I never saw anything like that and it was classic, a city planners dream. It probably kept them pretty cool too.

I started riding at like seven in the evening and it took me an hour to get out of the city because it was so big. I was psyched because I had a little pack of weed leaves that Marky gave me. It was like a full moon and I rode until about two in the morning with my jersey off. It was the perfect temperature. I put my bag down and just laid on top of it. It was the first time I could just lay there naked all night and not get cold. At like six I started riding and got to corpus Christie at two in the afternoon and toured the USS Lexington, which is the most decorated aircraft carrier from WWII. It looked bigger than the sky big buildings in the city from a long way away, but it is much smaller that the ones today, which would be cool to tour. Its like a thousand feet long, and the hanger area underneath is as big as the deck on top.

Then I had a burger and slept in the bushes for a couple hours until the sun went down and I rode until three in the morning. I started at seven the next day and bridged this 55 mile gap in the heat of the day against gale force winds. I was hot and muggy and sticky and was thinking ´I can't wait until Mexico where I can stay in hotels'. After getting to the next town I rested for a bit in the bushes and then rode into the outskirts of Brownsville and slept for a few hours, but the mosquitoes were bothering me so at like three in the morning I rode into town and slept in the burger joint until sun rise and did my errands.

I bought a pump and a tube and stuff and then went across the Rio Grande into Mexico. The river was a little non moving creek. I rode over the bridge, and when I got to the half way point on the bridge the trash started. Now I was in Mexico, how exciting.