"The longest day"
As you can see from the above picture, the road to Dalhart is very straight. Tucumcari marks the edge of the mesa lands; east of there is rolling prairie. We crossed the Texas border and sprinkled our beach sand, but the wind fairies were obviously displeased with our meager offering. We had head winds all day, a century ride into 20 mph winds, gusting to 30 mph. Peter, Chris, Al, and Willie worked a pace line to make it possible for me to finish. It was a long, hard day. I'm so tired, I can hardly type.
Deborah says, according to AAA, Dalhart Texas' original name was Twist, later changed to Denroc which is a combination of the 2 railroads the crossed there in 1901 (Denver City and Rock Island), then changed to Dalhart which reflects the 2 counties in which it resides (Dallam and Hartley). It's a shipping point for agriculture and cattle and has the world's largest amateur rodeo in late summer. Up to 400,000 cattle are in the feed lots south of town. You can imagine the smell. The XIT Ranch was more than 3 million acres at one point. Things are big in Texas.
CrossRoads employee of the day:
Mack is one of the CR staff taking care of our needs each day. He's English and an ultra nice guy. He drives one of the support vehicles, helps Margaret with the SAG stops, and does a myriad of chores behind the scenes to make our trip comfortable.
Texas! You have returned to the seat of the crime. Next you will be telling us some tall Texas stories.
ReplyDeleteOk, when your rested up please explain what a pace line is so I know what your bike buddies did to enable you to finish. Take care.
ReplyDeleteOkay, you're in the state where Cam's family first settled. The German Lancasters lived in a small town there. One day the bad guy in town was threatening to have a shoot out with a good guy. Cam's relative snuck up alongside the bad guy and shot him when he wasn't looking, before the real shootout began. The town was relieved of it's bad guy but they had to hide Cam's relative to prevent retaliation. The story finally came out when he died. You'll be in Tx for a while, so maybe I'll have time to look up all the names. Tailwinds tomorrow?
ReplyDeleteBeach Bike Trek update.
ReplyDeleteAs we set out this morning and found ourselves facing some stiff 2 mph headwinds, I attempted to establish my own pace line. Naturally, I put the larger domestique (Piper, aka "the chubster") in front, reasoning that she would create a nice draft for those of us following behind. The second domestique, the fourth rider, and myself moved into formation close behind, to maximize our use of the draft envelope.
Before we set out, I explained - very carefully - to our leader that concentration is essential in a pace line and that there was absolutely no time for sight seeing.
Unfortunately, my admonishments fell on deaf ears. Within seconds, our pace line leader and both of the other riders had violated two of the most basic tenets of pace line riding - (1) never weave or drift in a pace line, and
(2) never suddenly slow down or attempt a quit stop
Our ride became a free-for-all of drifting, weaving, bobbing, quit stopping, and slowing (as well as some very public urination, which is never good).
Tomorrow we will spend the day participating in a much-needed educational workshop about the rules of the road.