Today we rode from the east side of El Paso out to Ft.
Hancock. Ft. Hancock was memorialized in
the movie, “Shawshank Redemption”. If
you recall; Morgan Freeman (“Red”)
bought a bus ticket from Maine to Ft. Hancock where he would make his border
crossing over to Mexico. There’s really
not much here in Ft. Hancock – it’s a one street town. We may not be able to make this post actually
today because there’s not much internet service here either.
Our ride today was just 45.78 miles in 2 hours, 43 minutes – that’s a 16.78
mph average, our best yet on this trip (never mind that we normally would do
17+ mph averages on our training rides this past summer….). But considering the 130 pound load we’re
carrying, not too shabby. We had flat terrain
and a nice tailwind today (sorry Pete!!*)
The scenery wasn’t bad either – more farmlands and pecan orchards. We stopped in Fabens for lunch and ate at a
really nice Mexican seafood restaurant, El Defines, with the best
hostess/waitress we’ve encountered for quite some time. With the décor, food, and music, it made me
think I was having lunch on the beach in Mexico!
After lunch we just had about 25 miles to go. I have an Ipod and bought a t-connector for
this trip so Rick and I could both listen to it. Most of the time we haven’t used it, but
today we were out in the countryside with not much traffic. So we put on “The 25th Anniversary
Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame” album and rocked past those last 25 miles. At one point we were cranking 25 mph!! Oh, the power of music and a tailwind!!
Tonight we’re holed up in the one and only motel in Ft.
Hancock. We walked down to the only
Pizzeria in town about ¾ mile this evening and ordered their Supreme sans
meat. It was actually very good pizza
which we ate while walking back to the motel (new gastronomical experience!!) We saved the crusts and fed them to some
starving dogs we noticed along the walk.
Tomorrow we hope to get an earlier start and do a longer
mileage, maybe make Van Horn.
*Pete is a guy doing the Southern Tier east to west who we
encountered earlier today. He is from
Maryland and actually started his tour in Jekel Island, Georgia. He’s 37 days into his ride. This is really one of the fun things about
doing this ride – running into people who are also on the same route from the
other direction. We always stop and chat
for awhile. Pete was hoping to not have
a headwind today, but since we had the tailwind, guess he was out of luck. He took this photo of us (we don't get too many photos of the two of us since we're traveling on our own).
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