Check out our new gallery from Texas on our Photoshelter site! It contains a bunch of shots we never to to share on the blog from our trek across the state.
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Category Archives: Texas
Goodbye Texas!
Today we crossed the border into New Mexico, got ourselves to a campground and are staging here to head out early tomorrow morning before the sun and wind pick up. But we needed to pay some sort of tribute to Texas- a state which we were much warned about before visiting (“it’s all hot and flat and boring”, “you’ll be there for months”, “there’s nothing to see in Texas”), but which turned out to be one of the most beautiful, hospitable and all around wonderful states we’ve visited so far. So, in tribute to that vast, gorgeous state, here are a couple shots we took yesterday and today (we’ll put the full sized versions on our Photoshelter account in the next week). Soon we’ll also have up a short video compilation of Texas Hill Country riding!
To the desert!
On Sunday we pushed a huge 77 miles to Del Rio, Texas. It was a big day- there are still good sized hills going that way. It was a pretty interesting day because, riding right near the Mexico border, we kept seeing big Border Patrol cars all over our route. We actually got pulled over by one of them, who questioned us and, upon learning that we were not smuggling drugs, seemed pretty concerned for our safety- adding that the road was a major drug trafficking highway. No problem. We pushed on and finally hit Del Rio where we split a hotel with our friend John (from Savannah) who had recently finished his internship with photographer Lauren Greenfield in LA. He was driving home to Savannah and conveniently, we crossed paths. It was awesome to see him, though we were all pretty tired and passed out early.
The next morning we made the executive decision to rent a car for the section between Del Rio and El Paso for the following reasons:
1. We have been warned over and over in the past coupe weeks about the danger of riding so close to the border because of the recent increase in kidnappings of kids who look like they have rich parents. We fall pretty squarely into that category with all our nice gear from our sponsors and since we look so young. Even Border Patrol warned us about that.
2. The route between Del Rio and El Paso is rural in a way we haven’t hit yet. The opportunity for interviews would be pretty few and far between and we’ll still be able to hit them by car.
3. We lost a week in Austin when Alan had to fly home, so we have to make up some time in order to make it back around the country before the cold weather hits the Northeast again!
So we rented a car (with great gas milage, of course) and headed for the desert! 
And wow! It is breathtaking out here. We can’t get over how far it is between towns, or even houses, or even cars! We barely saw anyone all day yesterday. In fact, we stopped at one point to try to show the vastness of Western Texas:
That’s me standing in the middle of a 60 mile stretch of nothing. You lose all perspective out here. The mountains are huge, but look pretty small because there is nothing around them to give them scale.
Finally, after a long day of driving we hit Marfa. 
It’s a tiny town of 2,121 and is known because it has 13 art galleries. That’s pretty unusual for the types of small towns we’ve been passing through. We’re taking today to find an interview and poke around the town a bit. Then we’ll head out to the McDonald Observatory and do an interview there. Tomorrow we’ll drop the car off and keep on going by bicycle- through New Mexico and Arizona to California!
More hills… this time bigger
We’re still riding hill country… we haven’t had cell service for a couple days so we haven’t been able to update the blog, but we found a library today here in Leakey! Leakey is a tiny town nestled between BIG hills. Over 2000-foot hills to be exact. Here, this should give you an idea: 
This is already about a quarter of the way up our first mountain this morning. See me? The tiny bright yellow spot?
So we started super early and rode 20 miles before noon. In this area the sun comes out of the morning fog around 10, so we tried to get a good chunk done before it hit us. The sun is so strong here! We’re applying SPF 30 a few times a day to keep from burning, but we’re still getting super, super tan. You can feel the sun just cooking you all day. It’s been in the high 80’s here, and when you’re cranking up mountains like this… well, lets just say you’re pretty sweaty at the top. But it’s worth it for the view!!
That’s looking down the pass from our first climb of the day. Pretty breathtaking scenery.
Here’s Alan enjoying the view from what we thought was the peak of our second big climb today. Turned out to be a false peak. Oh well. We pushed on and treated ourselves to delicious mexican food in Leakey as a reward for our climbing efforts. Tomorrow we have one monster hill to climb- a little bigger than either ones we hit today, and then we’re out of hill country! Whew!
Up and up
Today we continued to climb! We knew that today was going to be a rough day because we were introduced to a new color on our topographic map: Grey, which means elevations of 1500-2000′. The significance of this elevation is that the hills rolled between 1200-2300′ the entire day making the 46 miles seem like 100+. I think the images can explain a little better the size of these “hills”:
Here Mo is climbing our first real hill of the day. It ended being about a mile long in length. This was the first time on the entire trip that I had to put my bicycle in the lowest gear.
Yeah… that’s what it felt like.
Exhaustion set in early! Notice in the back of the last image how the road disappears.
If you follow the image back you can see the road cutting through the hills. I also got a chance to make new friends with some of the colts along the road.
Even harder to describe than the steepness of the hills is the beauty of hill country. Ranches dot the terrain, with horses and longhorns grazing the fields. As we climbed, the plants changed from low shrubs to large oak trees, and a number of cactus species ranging in size and shape.
Tomorrow we continue to climb so we are heading to bed early hoping that we wont be to sore in the morning.
More hill country
We took off this morning from the beautiful Inn Above Onion Creek after a power breakfast of eggs, tortilla, veggies, scones and coffee. Sound good? Well it turned out we’d need the power for the hills we were about to hit: 
This is a good photo to show what our day looked like. A lot of hills with another hill on the other side. If you look closely you can see how tiny Alan is in comparison and also you can see the future hills looming in the distance.
Fortunately we got a chance to meet up with Alan’s friend from high-school, Cassie!
She treated us to a delicious lunch of tex-mex and we got to catch up which was tons of fun. It was really nice to talk about the northeast with someone who has been transplanted and compare stories about adjusting to the differences (good and bad!) down here.
We got another taste (literally) of some great differences when we found a beautiful farm stand on the side of the road jut outside Blanco, our final destination today. The farm stand featured incredible fresh cut flowers, local goat cheese, local plants and even… drumroll please… Mexican Coca-Cola! I haven’t had this stuff since I visited Costa Rica with my high-school. It’s in a glass bottle and has real sugar in it as opposed to corn syrup. We of course, took a break to enjoy.
So tomorrow we push on in hill country. We made good progress today, about 50 miles, and we hope to do something close to that tomorrow- though the hills just keep getting bigger…
Quite a day
With a project like this, most days are pretty good. Sure, you can have days where the wind is in your face and you’re riding uphill in the rain all day to find only soggy fried food and a $30 campground with noisy neighbors all night, but mostly life is pretty good on the road. Then you have days like today. Days when things are so good you wonder if this whole thing is real or if you aren’t still dreaming. We’ll begin at the beginning.
This morning we met up with Mandy and Ryan- two fellow round-the-country cyclists who started in California and found out that we would be in Austin at the same time. They invited us to breakfast at the Austin Whole Foods (which happens to be their flagship store and is therefore pretty spectacular). In short, they were awesome. First of all, check out this rig they’ve been riding:
That’s right. A side by side tandem. Secondly, they are doing this crazy around the country bike trip to make a film about sustainable communities around the United States. How cool is that? They were wonderful people and we had a great breakfast swapping stories and tips and ideas. We’ll definitely be keeping in touch with them as they continue their journey, and you can too at their website: www.WithinReachmovie.com.
After breakfast we headed out of Austin (though we could have spent all day chatting with Mandy and Ryan), and on our way out passed by the famous Barton Springs- a natural spring turned swimming pool that discharges an average 31 million gallons of 68 degree water each day. 
We rode on, through Buda, Texas and into Kyle where we had set up an interview at an inn called The Inn Above Onion Creek. The owners designed and built the inn seeing themselves as stewards of the land and as such, decided to use a fair amount of green building practices. We met with Janie Orr, one of the owners and she showed us around the breathtaking buildings and grounds. This is the dining room where they serve dinner and breakfast:
Here is the library, where you can see the reclaimed pine floorboards from New Orleans:
After the interview it was getting dark and Janie asked us all about the trip and our accommodations and then invited us to spend the night! She talked to the innkeeper and brought us up to our room! The inn is so spectacular and our room is so incredible… we even have a fireplace! Here’s Alan’s “have we died and gone to heaven?” face upon taking in the room:
So we had a wonderful dinner with the other guests of the inn and learned tons more about Texas and interesting things to see and do while we’re here. And now we’re blogging… in front of a fire.
Just for fun, here’s a shot that Ryan got of us on our bikes outside of the Whole Foods. We love this shot- especially since it captures perfectly how we feel about today- and the trip in general right now- thrilled! And tomorrow promises to be pretty great too. We’re meeting a friend for lunch and starting to really get into Hill Country!
Austin, TX
Still in Austin… Alan flies back here tomorrow morning and we’ll probably spend one or two more days here so that we can reorganize and he can relax a bit.
As we’ve mentioned before, this part of Texas is a pretty beautiful place. I actually have ancestors from north of Austin and my parents have talked in the past about visiting, so they took this opportunity and flew down! It was great to see them and it’s always fun to have a good excuse to do touristy stuff for a few days.
In other news, tomorrow the wonderful friends who have been hosting me are taking off for a long weekend in New Orleans (for Mardi Gras)! Jen, Morgan, Jess and Sam have been so amazingly tolerant of having another person in the house and of course I love their adorable puppies, Izzy:
and Stella:
And I just had to throw in a photo of the chocolate covered strawberries that Jess and Jen made over this past weekend… as beautiful as they were delicious!
More updates to come tomorrow as Project Tandem reunites in Austin to continue on our journey! Thanks again to the crew here at the house for a great week!
Happy Valentine’s Day!
Happy valentine’s day everyone! I’m still in Austin and Alan is still in NY. We’re expecting him back mid-week. However, in the valentine’s day spirit it was worth mentioning how v-day, normally a super consumer holiday generating a ton of waste can be a little greener! Check out the TreeHugger Valentine’s Guide! We already have heard of tons of people from Maine to Texas planning on having a local food dinner, giving e-cards or sending flowers from Organic Bouquet!
Alan flies back to NY
Yesterday afternoon Alan’s grandfather was admitted to the hospital. This morning we rode 30 miles, hitched a ride on a flat-bed truck with a guy named Preston, caught a bus, rode our bikes to The Peddler Bike Shop in Austin and left them there, got a ride from my friend Morgan (in her tiny Civic- too small for us and the bikes) to the airport and got Alan on the first flight to NY. It has been quite a day but he should be there with his grandpa late tonight. We’re unsure when he will be able to fly back to Austin, but we’ll pick up from here and head into hill country. Stay tuned for updates. I know all our Project Tandem blog readers will be keeping Alan and his family in their thoughts and prayers.