Day 36: South of Van Horn, TX to Sierra Blanca, TX

Daily Miles: 53.2 Total Miles: 1944.1

Huge pecan farm on the way to Van Horn

What do you get when you combine a flat tire, punishing head winds, steady climbing, a near death experience while riding a bicycle down the Interstate, and the resurgence of a previously-dormant, stabbing-stomach-pain inducing, banana allergy? You get a bad day. A very bad day. I almost don't even want to go into the details, but here it goes. As I was pumping up my back tire this morning at around 8:15am, I got another flat, exactly like the one in Kountze. I now think that my floor pump is causing these strange flats.

Almost at the top of the Van Horn mountains

It grips on to the valve very tightly and I have to exert a ton of force to detatch the pump from the valve, and I think the force I have to use slowly rips a hole in the tube. Just like the last flat there was a small hole right where the valve attaches to the tube. The only good news is that I'm getting faster at changing flats. Once all of that was said and done and we drove back out to yesterday's stopping point it was 9:40am before I hit the road. I enjoyed 2 miles of no wind before it mightily kicked up. Even though I had eaten breakfast at the 7.5 mile mark I was absolutely starving and pulled over to eat an apple, banana, and a Clif bar.

Finally in Mountain Time. Now when will Texas end?

Mary headed back to the hotel and I told her I would eventually meet her back in Van Horn (~20 miles in to the day). About 30 minutes later I was hit with a stabbing stomach pain. This happened one day last week, and it wasn't until today that I tied it to the banana. I had this same issue years ago, and just stopped eating bananas and never had the pain again. While living in Honduras I started eating tons of bananas again (since there were only like 10 foods available where I lived), I had no issues and assumed I had gotten over the allergy. Not the case. I'm thinking they put something on bananas here in the States to keep them fresh or something and that's what I'm actually reacting to. Who knows. I do know that the extreme pain lasted like 2 hours before finally going away.

Cool picture of a train parked by the mountains

I finally got back to Van Horn and forced myself to eat something with Mary at Wendy's before tackling the last, services-free 40 miles of the day. Once I ate and rested, I headed out again, this time westbound on I-10, because there are exactly 0 other east-west roads in this part of the country. I immediately started climbing the Van Horn mountains, into the wind, and was scooting along at a blazing 8 MPH as hundreds of cars and 18-wheelers blew by me at 80-90 MPH. It wasn't long before I crossed into the Mountain Time Zone, extending this terrible day an extra hour.

Finally safe and sound on the empty frontage road

Once I got over the mountains, I had a little descent, and while I was going downhill into the strong wind, I got blasted by a stiff sidewind from a huge passing RV. The two winds pushed me in opposite directions and I briefly lost control of my steering and almost went careening onto road. That was the final straw. I was scared to death, and immediately exited off of the Interstate and on to a barely paved frontage road that I took on to Sierra Blanca. Originally, I was going to go 8 miles further to Exit 99, but once I battled the headwinds and rough roads to Sierra Blanca, I was done for the day. I checked the weather when I got in and I had been riding into a 22 MPH wind. The winds tomorrow look to be just as strong, but there is a brief window when they should be blowing from the east, and otherwise from the southwest. I will be heading mainly northwest, so I should be able to avoid headwinds for most of the day. I hope. One redeeming part of this day was the very nice dinner we had at the Diamondback Cafe, the only bright spot in the sadly deteriorated town of Sierra Blanca. Now we're finally enjoying our extra hour back in the room and looking forward to a good night's rest.