Somewhere West of Dallas
It was pitch-black in the room when I woke up, but the bedside clock read 7 a.m. so I attributed the darkness to the curtains which I’d pulled tight the night before. I flipped on a light and started getting myself ready to go. I did not want to go. I wanted to get back in bed and hide, but I knew I was too close to family in both directions to get away with that. Plus, I didn’t want to pay for this motel room for another day.
When I opened the door and pushed the bike out, I realized that it was so dark in the room because the sun hadn’t come up yet. It wasn’t just dark in the room, it was just dark. In my general funk, I’d forgotten how late the sun was rising now. Aware of the fact that sitting in a chair in the room was likely to result in a sort of prolonged stay where I may never get up again, I kept pushing the bike out of the door. As I approached the main street through town, which was the highway I was going to leave on, I looked in both directions and didn’t see a soul. Not a person, not a car, nothing. I appeared to be the only person willing to tempt the fates of operating before sunrise. I turned on the small flashing red light attached to my seat post, assuming that would at least keep me from getting hit from behind, and started pedaling east, into the very first glimpses of the sun, fighting its way above the horizon.
It didn’t take long before the dawn light made it easy enough to see. At first I thought this was a good thing, but as the sun rose, I realized that I was riding directly into it and had to avert my gaze toward the ground to keep the blinding light out of my eyes. With the sunrise, the people of Crowell also came to life and cars began passing me, all of them a little too close for comfort and noticeably closer than most cars on my entire trip, especially without oncoming traffic to keep them from moving over. Then, as I looked up a little too high and was blinded by the sun, I bounced over a rock that was big enough that I’d have normally seen it and avoided it.
Shit! They can’t see me! I realized. The frustration that had turned into confusion quickly morphed into fear. I moved as far right as I possibly could, sometimes riding through the gravel on the edge of the road, gambling that the risk of a flat tire was better than that of my life. With the sound of every car approaching from behind, I would turn and look over my left shoulder, watching to see if they were drifting toward the shoulder, ready to dive for the ditch if necessary.
Within about an hour, the sun had risen off the horizon enough that drivers were no longer blinded and moving their left tires across the middle line as they passed. I felt a wash of relief, but felt like I’d survived one of the more risky stretches of the entire ride so far. I didn’t think anybody would intentionally hit me, but accidents happen and drivers are constantly distracted. I knew I was going to need to wait until the sun was off the horizon before I started riding to avoid this scenario again. Trying to stay positive, I thought I could maximize the time getting some extra sleep. Being realistic, I knew this meant as the days grew shorter, delaying my start meant I was compressing my available hours of daylight even further.
Now that the threat of being run over from behind was back to normal, I noticed that the bike was bouncing underneath me, making for a pretty uncomfortable ride. I realized the culprit was the chip seal paving on this stretch of highway. About forty miles later, with bruised sit bones and sore hands, the road smoothed as I entered the town of Seymour. I wasn’t particularly hungry, but since it was about halfway to Olney, I stopped and got some lunch. With no McDonald’s in sight from the highway that did double duty as Main Street, I pulled up to a Sonic Drive-In and grabbed a seat at one of the picnic tables under the awning.
Thus far, the day had gone okay. I could have done without the blinding morning sun or the chip seal paving, but all in all I’d felt okay on the bike. It didn’t take long after getting back on the highway for that to all change. I was pedaling along, trying to find something interesting about this West Texas landscape to admire, when all of the sudden my right leg locked out at the bottom of the pedal stroke. That was weird! I thought, but kept riding, thinking maybe it was just some strange one-off occurrence. Then it happened on my left leg, then again on my right, and now it had my full attention. It was a weird sensation and one I’d never had before. I tried to figure out what could be causing it, but it logically didn’t make sense to me. Why my leg was suddenly going into full extension and my knees locking for a brief moment when the crank arm was at 6 o’clock made no sense.
I pulled over to the side of the road, trying really hard to stay positive and not let myself fall deeper into a state of self-pity. As I looked around and saw nothing but open expanses of ranchland, I knew that feeling sorry for myself wasn’t going to keep me moving. Without any other ideas, I started doing a series of arbitrary stretches that I’d seen other people do for reasons I couldn’t begin to identify. When I’d completed my roadside yoga routine, I got back on the bike, hoping that maybe I’d unlocked the mystery kink that was putting a major hitch in my giddyup. The stretching seemed to work temporarily, as I pedaled freely over the next five or so miles, but then it returned, creeping back in one leg at a time, the frequency of lockouts increasing proportionally to my frustration. I got off the bike and stretched again. This time with less optimism and more desperation.
When the cycle of pedal, lockout, stretch became just routine enough that I stopped imagining covering the miles any other way, my body decided to throw another physical challenge at me, this time in the form of becoming so lightheaded and dizzy that I was afraid I was going to pass out riding the bike. The first time it happened, with no experience of this sensation in a seated position before, I stopped pedaling and coasted trying to focus intently on the white line on the shoulder, hoping that would help me retain my balance through the dizzy spell. It worked, because I didn’t crash, but when it happened again within a few miles I got pretty scared and pulled over as soon as I was back in control of my equilibrium. Instead of stretching, I sat on the trailer bag, looking out, away from the highway, over a brown and dusty field. What the fuck is happening to me? I wondered repeatedly.
When I’d decided that my quota of self-pity had been met, I realized I needed a plan. Some rough math told me I was still about twenty-five to thirty miles from Olney, way too far to walk. I stood and got dizzy, so I sat back down. Too afraid to pass out on the bike, I knew I was done riding for the day. One option was to hitchhike, but I hadn’t been passed by a car since lunch, so that seemed unlikely. I dug my phone out of the BOB, flipped my atlas to part of the map where I wrote my host’s contact information, and began to dial.
Pastor Hollingsworth listened as I explained what was going on, and before I even had a chance to ask, he offered to come pick me up. “You hang tight. I’ll be there in about twenty minutes,” he said. I hung up the phone, relieved that I probably wouldn’t die on the side of the road, but even more troubled for the rest of this trip. As I waited, I looked at my atlas, putting my finger on the page where I roughly sat. I was roughly halfway across the country with lots of space left between me and Richmond. Seeing it in front me became overwhelming and I put the atlas away. The idea that my body was going to hold up for that long seemed more laughable by the day. Trying to find a positive spin, I reasoned that I didn’t have to ride to Richmond tomorrow. I just had to ride to Weatherford. And I didn’t have to go to Richmond the day after that, I just had to ride to the next town. And maybe I could just fake my way across the rest of the country by focusing on the chunk that was immediately in front of me.
My host setup for the night was another church that was letting me camp indoors. So while I felt an immense amount of gratitude to Pastor Hollingsworth for the roadside rescue and letting me crash indoors, our interaction was pretty limited to the small talk on the short drive into town and then the brief tour he gave me before heading back home. I set up my stuff in one of the corners of the larger community room, took a bird bath in the sink, and immediately laid down to take a nap. I was surprised how exhausted I felt when the idea of a nap crept in and then how quickly I fell asleep after lying down. I woke a few hours later and ventured out of the church to find something for dinner, ate quickly, and returned back to my sleeping pad, closing my eyes and falling asleep before the sunset.
