Day 14 of 17 Days of Texas. Another day of fighting the wind, I stayed in Bob’s draft as much as possible except for the 20 miles before checkpoint. During the first part of the ride we passed Steve who was on the side of the road with Danny, didn’t know what the problem was at the time, but found out later that Steve’s frame had broken. Steve was now on a mission to find someone to weld his aluminum frame back together – good luck in this part of the country, even if he found someone that did welding, it would be for heavy duty farm equipment not lightweight aluminum. The checkpoint was at this rundown little store, but it also had a grill and the lady there at my request made me a mean custom ham and melted cheese sandwich which I happily devoured. Bob, Sig and I left checkpoint together into the wind. For awhile we were on this very pretty road with big trees forming a green canopy above us.
Our camp for the night was right on Lake Texana, fairly sizable and very windy. I think everyone needed help putting their tents up. Steve rode his broken bike to camp and was now, with the aid of a dremel tool he had purchased and some pipe, attempting to make a bracket to hold his bike together so he could ride until a replacement could be found. He had called the manufacturer, but because we were in the middle of nowhere, he would be attempting to ride his broken bike for at least 2 more days.
Dinner tonight was served out at the camp. It was still very windy, we tried to sit with our backs to the wind to shield our food, but it didn’t work very well and the food got cold immediately. More than one plate of food went flying, you just hoped you weren’t in its flight path when it did.
70.1 miles