Day 32: Tuesday 04/05/16, Rest Day at the Mexican Hill Ranch. Richards, TX

Day 32 distance: 0 miles (Rest day)

Total miles:  1767 mile

 

Anne served an excellent breakfast this rest day morning. She always prepares foods such as hotcakes and bacon that we do not have when we are riding. My sweet tooth always looks forward to hot cakes and syrup. :)

A great day-off breakfast menu!

The breakfast line was moving slowly this morning. Everyone was figuring out how to get everything on their plates in one pass! I couldn't even get anyone to take the time to look at the camera!

 After breakfast, another coaster, John Ilinin, brought out a hair clippers he had bought in Del Rio. I was able to trim the sides of my hair and got a volunteer to do my neck and the back of my head. That led to several other coasters wanting trims and since my haircut looked so professional, I got today's barbering honors and trimmed about four more coasters.

Look at that head of hair I got to trim! The victim is Jan Ritzier from the Netherlands. Jan and his wife,Truus, are two of the strongest riders on this C2C, while riding their 40 pound, 12 speed Rohloff geared bicycles. Fortunately, when I later asked Jan if he liked his haircut, he said he hadn't looked in a mirror yet. I hope he continues to not look!

At 10:00 am, I hopped on the trailer for the first of two hayrides that Ernie, the owner of Mexican Hills Ranch, was giving the coasters who wanted to see his ranch. Ernie spent two hours driving us around explaining his operation. Ernie has 35 head of cattle. Some coasters were excited as they were able to try to milk a cow by hand as well as feed a new born calf with a bottle. Obviously city slickers, not having grown up on a small Midwest farm like your blogger. Ernie also drove us past two of his deer stands. He said that in the area around his ranch, hunters are allowed to harvest, during season, two bucks and two does every year. Feral pigs and coyotes can be shot anytime, without a license.

Ernie heading out to his pastures with the hayride trailer full of coasters in tow.

Ernie explaining the ins and outs of breeding cattle and raising the calves. It was a very interesting and educational discussion for all.

In 2010, this pond was completely dry due to the drought. It is now thriving again, although obviously warm and oxygen deprived, due to all the algae growth.

Looking back at our camping site at the Mexican Hills Ranch from the hayride trailer.

Odds and Ends

I mentioned a while back that I would tell you about how tent camping works while on a Bubba tour. It is very simple for the rider. All we do is find our assigned tent by the number on it. The tent is already set up and our luggage in it along with a blown up air mattress. When we leave the next day, we leave our luggage in the tent if the ground outside is not suitable to set it outside, open the deflation valve on the air mattress, and leave. The next night if we are in a tent again, the preceding procedure is repeated.

This is part of about 40 tents that were set up at Marathon, Texas, when we arrived from that day's ride. The first thing I do is look for tent B61. There are two tent sizes available, a regular tent which is suitable for one person but is not tall enough to stand up in. The second size tent is a Bubba Dome which is bigger and tall enough to stand up in. Last year I had a regular tent and this year I have a Bubba Dome. Both work, but I am enjoying the convenience of being able to stand in the tent when doing things like packing and unpacking.

Ah, there is my tent, B61.

When I open the tent flap, this is what I see. An inflated air mattress and my three pieces of luggage. The green compression bag contains all of my bedding (sleeping bag, sleeping bag liner, pillow, fitted twin sized sheet to cover the air mattress, and my Walmart $4.88 quilt purchased in Del Rio. I also pack at the bottom of the bag my cold weather sleeping gear. Everything goes in and out of the bag in the order I make my bed.

Sleeping mattress set for the night, although since I took this picture, I also insert the blanket over the liner and under the sleeping bag.

This is my cold weather sleep gear. Good to the low 30's. I double up on the tops and bottoms, single or double socks, stocking cap that covers the ears, and gloves if needed. My sleeping bag is rated for 15 degrees but think it should be rated for 50 degrees!

When I leave the tent in the morning, it will look like the first photo, only with the air mattress deflated. As far as computer gear, there is a separate container where we keep all computer gear for extra safe handling and ensuring it doesn't get wet.

Extra pictures:

 

SAG member Pete McCabe throwin' the bull...or the bull throwin' Pete?

Brad Stafford, City Manager of Navasota, Texas, on the left and coaster Jim Sporer, on the right. Mr. Stafford approached Jim and me when we were viewing the statue of Frank Hamer, next to the Navasota City Hall. Mr. Stafford welcomed us to Navasota and told us to contact him if we had any needs while in town. He is very pleased that Navasota is on the Southern Tier bicycle route.

John Edwards, is known as coaster Eddo, due to two other coasters named John. John is a Probation Officer from Liverpool, England. He always has a smile on his face and is a great sport!

Note Bubba's Phantom drone overhead. There was a contest to name the drone won by your blogger with the name Wolf Craft. The name was chosen because Bubba doesn't fly the drone, but a member of the Wolf Pack is the drone operator. The winning prize was 5 tokens for evening hydration drinks. :)

Day 31: Monday 04/04/16, LaGrange, TX to Mexican Hill Ranch, Richards, TX

 

Day 31 distance: 89 miles

Total miles:  1767 miles

Elevation gain: 1825 feet

Map of today's ride:

The weather for today's 89 mile ride from LaGrange, Texas, to the Mexican Hill Ranch, right outside of Richards, Texas, was great. The sun was out and when the wind came up, it was a moderate tailwind. However, the ride for me was not without an issue. About 45 miles into the ride, an unfamiliar squeak was heard coming from the rear wheel which turned out to be a cracked rear rim. In fact, an inspection revealed there were 14 cracks next to spoke holes. The following is a picture of the worst crack:

This shows the worst of the 14 rear wheel rim cracks, next to the spoke openings, on my Velocity A23 rim. The tire set was custom built at a cost of $740 for a cross country ride such as I am on. Velocity has been notified of the problem which could be due to a metallurgic failure, or, I am surmising, Velocity will say that someone over tightened the spokes either during their installation or during a routine truing of the rim. The wheels probably had over 6000 miles on them at the time of failure.

Fortunately, John Murphy with SAG support had a spare rear wheel along, and within an hour of the failure, our traveling bicycle mechanic had transferred my cassette to John's spare wheel, and I continued the ride from the point I had stopped. Amazing staff efficiency!

The rest of the ride was pleasant without incident. The ride was pretty with a very "Midwestern" look. I believe there were more flowers the past two days, but that will vary from day to day. We are in the process of leaving the flat ground of Central Texas and are beginning to get into the hills of East Texas, although according to Texans, we are still about 20 miles from "official" East Texas.

This photo with heavy shadows was taken a little before 8:00 am, a couple miles out of LaGrange, Texas.

We rode on almost all types of roads today, from farm roads like above, to a 6 mile stretch on a busy 4 lane highway.

About 5 years ago, C2C bicycle mechanic Chandler Otis, while riding his mechanic's vehicle on that day's C2C route through Carmine, Texas, stopped to help this man, Gene Goodsley, repair a flat tire on his bicycle. Chandler also trued his tires and adjusted his shifting. When completed, Gene asked Chandler what he could do for him, Chandler told him he would like a cup of coffee. Gene told Chandler that there was no coffee available in Carmine, so he went home and made Chandler a cup. Ever since then, Gene has been waiting for each year's coasters with a pot of coffee for all the riders. This year Bubba also bought donuts for everyone to have with the coffee. It was a real treat about 20 miles into the ride!

Burton, Texas, small town, USA.

The only field of flowers picture today. In this field, there were small yellow daisies mixed with the Indian Paintbrush. It was quite a sight!

An old log cabin in the Independence, Texas area, an area of significant Texas history.

This was a 44 mile lunch stop. Everyone made sandwiches in the morning at breakfast for their lunch. Note the four white columns thru the trees and followup in the next picture.

This monument is to mark the location of the original Baylor University site, the oldest University in the state of Texas, formed on February 1, 1845. Baylor apparently operated at this site until 1886.

A simple but clean entrance to this ranch site.

Your blogger in Navasota, Texas, next to the statue of  Frank Hamer, a famous Texas Ranger. At the age of 24, over a 4 year period, Hamer cleaned up the crime and corruption in Navasota. He went on to become, perhaps the most famous Texas Ranger of them all, culminating his career in leading the posse that tracked and killed Bonnie and Clyde in Louisiana.

Whoops! With the hills ahead it looks like we are getting close to East Texas!

At last, Indian Hills Ranch is in site. We are all ready for a day off tomorrow!

Tonight's menu.

Day 30: Sunday 04/03/16, Lockhart, TX to LaGrange, TX

Today's sunrise during breakfast at Lockhart State Park, Texas.

Day 30 distance: 62 miles

Total miles:  1678 miles

Elevation gain: 1825 feet

Map of today's ride:

What a fabulous day for a bicycle ride! Perfect weather and outstanding scenery! I took many photos today so no more non-picture verbiage for today's blog!

It was around 45 degrees a little before 8:00 am when we left Lockhart this morning, but the sun had just come up and there was no wind. It had the making of a great day!

This was the scene shortly after leaving Lockhart. I thought this might be what it would look like for all of today's 62 miles, but keep scrolling down for the whole ride.

A view of the road early in the ride. It was Sunday, so traffic was very light this morning, although on most of the roads we have been riding in Texas, traffic has been generally very light.

I don't think the cattle I rode by today were familiar with bicycle traffic as they would always look as I rode by. Or perhaps it was my mooing to them as I rode by that always got their attention?

Further down the road, the ditches and adjacent pastures were filled with Indian Paintbrush and occasionally bluebonnets. Beautiful!

Most all of the farming/ranching operations observed yesterday and today are much smaller than what I observed in Hill Country, so what a surprise I had when I saw the fanciest gate yet, to what I assume was a ranch. Texans appear to love elaborate gates to their ranching operations. They also love the Lone Star State symbol, with seemingly one out of every two rural residences displaying at least one Lone Star. I have yet to figure out though,what the deal is with having a big 4 wheel drive pickup with a heavy duty 4 wheeled flat bed trailer being pulled behind. Out of the 100s of rigs I have seen set up like that, I have only seen three trailers that contained anything, and the items being hauled by those three could have easily fit in the pickup box or trunk of a car. Apparently the trailer is a symbol of some sort to a Texan. I could speculate, but want to keep this blog family rated!

I made the mistake of stopping at the top of this hill to take a picture of the road just traveled. The mistake was it gave two dogs time to get a full head of steam as they ran down their long driveway toward me, barking like crazy. I took off hoping I could outrun them, but turned out they were just driveway runners and didn't come out on the road after me.

Hmm, anyone want to restore a slightly older used 10 passenger bus? If so, this one might be available!

OK, so another roadside flowers image. The flowers just went on and on. I have never seen as many wild flowers as today.

Just a pretty scene. As I said yesterday, the same type of scenery could be seen in many places in the \Midwest.

I haven't looked back to check the earlier blogs, but think this might be my first horse picture. Nice looking animals!

Indian Paintbrush.

A pasture filled with Indian Paintbrush and bluebonnets. The Paintbrush I've seen vary in color from salmon to almost a bright red.

This pasture is filled with bluebonnets.

A close-up view of a bright bluebonnet.

A true Texas Longhorn. There were probably about 15 Longhorns in this herd, but this one appeared to be the Granddaddy!

I observed several shut down oil wells earlier today, but this one looked like a new one and it was pumping.

The LaGrange, Texas, County Courthouse. It is a beautiful old building.

I didn't check to see if the Texas Quilt Museum was open or not, but I know several quilters who would love to visit this place.

The final photo of the night has to be another flower picture! The Indian Paintbrush created a very pretty cemetery.

I am guessing you will see more flower pictures tomorrow as we are riding 88 miles to the Mexican Hills Ranch, a working ranch outside Richards, Texas. We will be spending a day off there. I am told we have only begun to see a lot of wild flowers!