Friday March 20, 2015

How things change. A few years ago, when we lived in Shanty Bay we had field mice come into the house during the fall months. We got mouse traps, and sonic zappers and blocked outlets with foam etc. Our cat would indicate where the mouse was and we spent time ridding our home of the mice that wanted to make their home in our house. Why do I mention this on my blog about cycling around the world. Well, last night as we were in bed ready for a good nights sleep, we heard the tell tale sounds of mice scratching around in the walls. What did we do? – we grabbed ear plugs so that we couldn’t hear the mice or anything else that may be wandering around our bedroom, turned over and went back to sleep.

We woke up early and left the trailer at about 8:15 am. We wanted to get going early as we knew we had a long ride – almost 100 kms. We also wanted to visit the Judge Roy Bean Museum.

Judge Roy Bean was a legend in this area due to his unconventional judgments. He would often stop the proceedings of the court to serve beer as the courtroom was next to the bar he owned!

Today was a hilly ride, a steady climb up to Sanderson. Each uphill was rewarded by a downhill, then another uphill slightly higher and that is how we climbed over 900 metres today. Up and down, up and down.  The scenery was not as spectacular as yesterday, very scrubby ranch land and no major canyons.

We stopped in Dryden for lunch, fortunately the grocery/post office was open.  That appeared to be only thing in Dryden apart from a few old houses.  We ate ritz crackers and kraft cheddar cheese and drank a bottle of mountain dew.  I commented on the fact that when we were in France we had a wonderful baguette, charcuterie meats and creamy camembert cheese and an amazing cup of coffee.  Ritz crackers and cheddar cheese taste good when you are hungry and in the middle of nowhere.

As we cycled along today, we ran parallel to the rail tracks. We saw two long trains and I waved to the first driver and he tooted his horn. The second train driver tooted his horn after I waved to him as well. I never knew that if you waved to a train driver he would toot his horn, it was quite fun. I guess they get bored.

We arrived in Sanderson and were met by our neighbours, two touring cyclists that had arrived yesterday and decided not to fight the wind today to Marathon. Both Ralf and I were tired and wanted nothing more than to shower and get settled in. She chatted to us for a while asking questions and telling us about their trip. Ralf politely excused us and said we would meet later maybe for dinner.

It started to rain while we were settling in to our motel room. We had a wet walk to the local café and had fish and chips for dinner. It was quite expensive, but the food was good. We were going to visit with our neighbours, but I was tired and wanted to relax and go to sleep early, another long climbing day tomorrow.