November,17th - St. Augustine, Florida

St. Augustine is the oldest city in the US and the end point of the southern tier. Even as I didn’t cycle here I wanted to be here. I went to the beach into Anastasia state Park. At the end of it I saw a building, which I found out was a hotel. I checked in and took a room with a balcony to the beach for 2 nights and if the weather would have been warmer I would stay even another night, but the heating doesn’t work and it is supposed to go down to freezing the next night. My lower back is bothering me and cold nights don’t help that. So I will check out the city this morning and go further down south to meet Andreas tomorrow evening in Miami. On the other side I am pretty tired of endless beaches and flat landscape. You can do not much more than walk along endless unchanging sand strips and that is too meditation like for me. St. Augustine and St. Augustine beach are too touristy for me, here at the beach everything is pretty much empty, but that’s is only because it’s so cold and the first days of the week. Anyhow there are still plenty of people on the beach and when I passed the historical downtown on Sunday it was crowded and not very enticing to stop and have a look. I hope it will be a bit better this morning.

November 16th - leaving Jekyll island

I had to check out because they were booked out for the weekend. I am getting tired of travelling and would really have liked to stay longer. I returned the bike and went for a last hike at the beaches. Afterwards I had a big lunch in the millionaires club hotel dining room which was big but satisfying. When I left it started to rain. I hit the road in the rain and did not like the driving so I checked into a hotel after just one hour of driving. I am now only seven miles from Florida and the sun is shining again. I hope that I will make it to St. Augustine tonight and find a nice place to stay, but I have no idea what to expect. The only thing I know is that I need to be Wednesday evening at Miami airport to pick up Andreas and we will go to Naples for a short stay together before I will start a swift drive back,while Andreas goes to Europe and will hopefully come back on the 5th with my new bike. I am very exited.

November 12th to 15th - Jekyll Island

After having left Savannah, I got lured in an outlet center. I had no real running shoes with me and without bicycle I will need them. I will still have more than 3 weeks to go until I return home. So I got a pair of trail runners which I hopefully can use to hike a bit as well. And I got even more audio books. Now I have really enough books to listen to for the whole long trip home.
I am reading "Journal of a residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838-39" by Frances A. Kemble. The plantations she describes here are on St. Simon Island which is one of the golden isle just a short distance north of Jacksonville, Fl. First I missed the turn-off for it, so I turned and drove over the causeway. I followed a sigh which said tabby slave cabins and came to a big Methodist center filled with old women. At that time I had no idea what tabby means, but I learned meanwhile, that it is a building material baked out of oyster shells, sand and lime which was used a lot already by the Spanish in St. Augustine. The cabins didn't show anything about there past and seemed to be only used as backdrop for the local garden club nativ plant garden exibition. So I left for the beach. I took a wrong turn again and was on the causeway off the island again with no opportunity to turn back. So I just decided to go to the next island against I decided before because the information that I read out of a flyer was that it was very expensive and high end as having been for long time the vacationing spot of a club which consisted of the industriell elite of the noth like the Rockefellers and Pulitzers, which was by now a hotel. Never the less I was on my way there. Before entering there was a visitor center, where I got coupons for hotel room. They were all incredible cheap and I decided on a place at the very end of the island ( Villas by the Sea) where the rented out apartements for 70 $ per night. Unfortunately they had only the awful beachcruiser bikes but they send my to the main place to get bikes and I rented a Schwinn which was not much better, but had at least gears.
I surrounded the island the same afternoon (27km) and was smitten by it's beauty. It has wonderful cycle paths and wild pristine forest as well as lakes the historical center which is a very prettily maintained Statepark and a lot of marchland.
The next day I took a bit more time to drive around the island and had an exellent seafood lunch at he rah bar which has owners from LA. They have exelland oysters - not from here rather from Chesapeak Bay and a wonderful seafood boil with shrimps, dungeness crabs etc. I met this couple from Paris, Tennessee which invited me to join them at their table which makes lunch just more fun. I met them the next day again, they took a Photo of me before they left.
Yesterday I took a tour of the historical district, which was not too interesting even if it took one and a half hour and needed to eat a seafood boil again. By now I saw pretty much everthing on the island and after the weekend crowd arrived I am not to sad that I have to leave today.

November 8th to 11th My bike was stolen in a brazen Robbery in Charleston

I drove from Wilmington to Charleston, where I circled a bit to find a hotel. On Hwy 17 just before it left the city to the south I found a best Western which hosted a bicycle tour organizer convention. I felt this was the place for me and checked in for two nights. I went out to explore the city center on foot as it is getting really early dark nowadays and I don't have light on my bike. (I have actually lights that I could fix to my bike but don't feel very save to ride in the dark. On a website for cyclists in Charleston I found a description of several bike routes to explore city and beaches and I intended to do so the next morning.
Charleston is really pretty but full with tourists. As it is so small and gets cruise ships coming in you really feel the impact of 500 visitors at one time. Cruise ship tourist are not interesting people you can find. I always think when I see them disembarking in SF that I would never want to be with 500 or even many more elderly people, who never stay overnight anywhere and eat their meals always on the same ship, enclosed in such a tight place for my whole vacation. I don't really get why this is attractive in any way. I found a nice restaurant next to the college of Charleston where I had an excellent low country specialty with fried oysters, crab meat, grits and oysters and pounds of melted butter. I could only eat half of it and I usually can eat a lot. I went home to my hotel, had a good night beer in the roof top bar of the Marriot next door and went to bed. In the morning I copied down my routes that I wanted to take and went down in the lobby to get a Charleston map. I had left my car directly in view of the front desk next to the front door. As my room was on the 6th floor and several cars outside had bikes on top I left my bike locked in the roof rack. I had my map looked out to my car and saw that the bike was missing...
I had to wait for the cops who came and took down my name and made me call in the serial numbers. They told me a lot of bikes get stolen in Charleston and they usually find them after some weeks. But I doubt that there are many nice road bikes around anyhow and much less get stolen. Of all the bicycles that I saw in Charleston not one was as nice as mine. I pounded the possibilities: One of the conventioneers, who were leaving that morning or perhaps someone from the bike shop across the bridge where I had it to try to do something about the problems that I had with my front derailleur. Whatever the bike is gone and I couldn't change it. I rented a road bike (I think this was the worst one that I have ever ridden.) and rode my planned tour. When I came back to the hotel I encountered the night security guard and he told me that he saw the thief and tried to stop him but he backed his truck nearly over him. He could describe him and the truck - dark blond, tall slender dark gray pick-up truck, of which I forgot the make - but he didn't get the license plate.
So now I am without bike for the next three weeks. Andreas was at once online to check on new bikes for me. We found a special in Germany which seems to be real good value and we ordered that. Until now we don't have any confirmation, that we get it but I am rally exited about this as it seems to be an upgrade to my old bike.
I really like Folly Beach outside Savannah. It is part of Charleston but has a really relaxed vibe to it, at least in this time of the year. I left Charleston to go to Hilton Heads. I was not so sure about this as I don't like big beach resorts. But it is the only one in the south (and outside Florida) that I have ever heard about. I found a room in a Motel 6 which was 33$ including tax. For that price I had to chase down a cockroach and in the morning a lizard jumped out of my suitcase just to stay on the power cord of my laptop for the rest of my time there. The beach was nice to run on but there much to many people there and hundreds of beach cruiser cyclists on the beach. The nice thing is that here in the south everything is green and hidden in forests all malls are not visible from the street as they are behind a big green strip of forest, which means on the other side they take up even more space and everything is really far away from each other, but at least it is optically pleasing, which is a rare thing to be said about malls.
Yesterday I was in Savannah where I had already after Charleston the second Veterans Day Parade this week. It seems that all high schools in the Savannah area have ROTC programs. I am so happy that SF bans them. I think it is a scary thing that schools take the underprivileged kids and instead of teaching them to think critically for themselves teach them blind obedience and how to kill and die for the financial win of big corporation whose shareholder don't ever fight themselves. Savannah is very pretty. If it wouldn't have all the trees full of spanish mos it could be any small european city as well. I enjoyed walking around and it seems to me a more real place than Charleston which has a slight artificial gout to it. Tourist, wealthy retirees and students as main visible inhabitants of the historical downtown.

November 6th and 7th - Cedar Island NC

I left Cape Hatteras to go further south. I am just sorry that I didn't get a photo of the white cat in the motel which was about double as heavy as Minou. From here you have to take two ferries the first to Ocracoke Island Takes about 30 minutes and from there further to Cedar Island is a 2.25 h journey. It was beautiful on the boat. the second section was as far that I could not see any land when we were about midpoint. Ocracoke island has one settlement at the end and seems to be really relaxed. But I preferred Cedar Island which has one motel directly at the ferry landing and one convenience store about half a mile away. I had a very nice 50 km ride in the morning (really flat) and enjoyed it less than I could have because a very determined mosquito bit me through both jerseys I was wearing and the bites inflamed at once into huge boils. I explored the National Park headquarters. They had two little walks and the most pathetic Museum that you can imagine. It had plenty of Baseball picture of the local high school and other fairly recent stuff but nothing about the native Americans and the slaves who used to live in the area as well.
I stayed over night in Wilmington. W. is a pretty small town on the fear river which end with Cape fear. I saw both movies but still had no intention to visit as I imagine this to look very much like all the seashore that I have seen in the last days. This is not a very exiting landscape.

November 3rd to 5th - Outer Banks, NC

After leaving the smoky mountains the weather turned into something really dark. I didn’t see the sun the whole day so nothing enticed me to stop and I drove past Winston-Salem than Durham-Raleigh without stopping. It’s getting night now pretty early. By 5:30 it was pretty much pitch dark. So I stopped at the first exit which indicated hotels. I stayed in the business area of a city called Rocky Mount. In the night it started to pour and it didn’t stop in the morning. I stopped shortly before I reached the coast at a state park which was an old plantation. I thought it was a good idea to spent election day on which the first black american would be elected in a slave holding place in the south. Even though Obama’s roots had nothing to do with slavery. I found in the last weeks especially that most people are not really willing to talk politics in the south. It is considered impolite to discuss politics or religion in this country. There were no black people in the state park and you don’t see a lot of blacks in the restaurants or touristy places in the countryside of the south. When I was there it started to rain again and it stormed all the way past Roanoke Island and along the outer banks. I stopped finally and was dripping wet only by entering the office of the motel. I tried to walk along the beach but it stormed as much that I had to give up. The wind was whipping me with sand and there was ocean foam flying everywhere. I woke up in the morning to a flooded bathroom. The bathroom window was full of sand which drove water into the inside. I decided to stay and read a book. The weather is supposed to get a bit better tomorrow, but there will be no way to cycle. I still thing I will go further down south. I just regret that I had no opportunity to explore the islands here a bit more.

1st to 3rd of November - Fontana Village, Smokey Mountains, NC

I drove from Athens through the foothills of Appalachia to the smokey mountains. This old couple which grew up here and stayed in the same Econo lodge in Athens than I told me not to go to Asheville and go to Townsend at the SMNP instead. Apparently they live there and they say that they see many cyclists especially at Cades Cove which is a high plateau with not a lot of traffic. But I missed the right turnoff and drove along a beautiful windy road which had quite a bit of motorbike traffic. When I hit a gas station to ask where I was, I got told that I was in North Carolina and apparently on the wrong side of the National Park. It was really beautiful here and so I kept going. After 10 more miles I hit a sign saying Fontana village resort. So I went up to the Lodge, which was on top of a hill with grand hall. huge fire place and a veranda with views over the flaming fall coloured mountains. I asked for a room and it was 59$. It came with a king size bed and an balcony to the mountain view. Most of the parking lot was filled with little two-seaters. There was a Crossfire owners convention going on and I learned that this car is German engineering with American styling. I have thought the whole time that this car exist already for longer but after researching it. It looks that the first model came out in 2004. My 2002 Subaru is a collector item compared to that.
Whatever I had in the late afternoon a beautiful ride along the river and in the evening a surprisingly good meal. This morning I left to finally go to the National Park and do the bike ride at Cades Cove. On my way I went through the most touristy indian reservation, that I have ever seen. Cherokee the main town had hundreds of gift shops with native American items made in Asia and not even India to throw people off. Entering in the Park I saw that the blue ridge parkway, a road which follows the Appalachians for 468 miles was closed due to icy conditions. So I went to the nearby visitor center and asked whether I could cycle up there and they said: Well I guess that's possible but be careful of ice in the tunnels. So I climbed a 7% accent until I reached the top after 700 vertical meters at big witch gap and than I turned back and just rolled all the way back down with absolute certainty that no car would come. It was a dream and I was so happy, just one of the best bike rides ever.
In order to go back home to Fontana I wanted to make the loop along Cades cove and a little unpaved one way road down to the devils tail. The whole park was choked by cars. I had read about that in Bill Brysons Appalachian Trail book but forgotten all about it. Cades cove was stop and go for hours. I got overtaken by fat pedestrians! I was pretty happy that I had audio books with me. It is just so much better to listen to a book while driving than just obsessing about not moving and wasting time which could be used for much nicer things. But the worst and weirdest thing was yet to come. By the Way: never take your road bike there the road is riddled with potholes and there is barely space to pass the trucks. Coming finally to the turn off for the little unpaved road back I had a very slow moving Jeep in front of me and when I tried to overtake him he (Considering the obnoxiousness I assume it was a man but I did not see the driver due to dark tinted windows.) wouldn't let me. I am pretty sure in Tennessee they have the slower cars use turnouts rule as well. But I had to stay behind him a crawl in the first gear. So I stopped took some photos and waited for him to advance a bit. than I went back in the car and drove leisurely further until I hit him again and repeated the game. After several miles of stop and go a car came from behind me and I left again after a quarter mile there was a young tree blocking the road and I and the four guys from the car behind me got out to remove it. I told them that there is a very slow and aggressive guy in front of me and that he had obviously pulled the tree on the road, we went head shaking back into our cars only to hit 300 meter further two more huge branches blocking the road. And after going nicely for another 10 minutes we met Mister IamslowbutIcanputtreesontheroad and had to stay behind him until the end of the road and because he was so slow I had to drive quite a time in the dark to reach the hotel. By than I was really cranky and hungry and the day which began so perfectly was pretty much ruined. I wanted originally stay another night out here, but now I think I will go fast through North Carolina, perhaps stay election night in Raleigh or some other city and hit the coast soon. We will see.

October 30th and 31st - Driving through Tennessee

"John Byrge is pro gun and pro life" Election commercial on TV in Athens, TN

Ich hab lange keinen deutschen Text geschrieben. Nachdem ich in Hot Springs am ersten Tag eine sehr schoene Radtour fuhr und am Abend mich bei einem Blueskonzert betrunken hab, hat mein Koerper sich entschieden mir eine extraheftige Monatsblutung zu verpassen, was mich dazu zwang fuer zwei Tage aufs Fahrradfahren zu verzichten. Ich bin dann am 30. nach Tennessee losgefahren. In Memphis hab ich mir die Innenstadt angeschaut und Mittag gegessen, Das beruehmte Southern Food ist sehr aehnlich zu dem Essen, das ich in Norddeutschland als Kind gekriegt hab. Alles lange gekocht und mit Bratensosse. Nur das Brot ist hier tatsaechlich nur weiss und superweich. Memphis sah irgendwie nicht aufregend genug, dass ich laenger bleiben wollte, also bin ich Hwy 64, der durchgehen mit gruenen Punkten (sehenswerte Landschaft) gekennzeichnet ist, gefahren. Es ist unglaublich schoen hier. Die Haeuser sind wesentlich gepflegter und alles ist gruener, als im Westen. Dafuer sehen die Leute alle leicht zurueckgeblieben aus und in aller Wahrscheinlichkeit sind sie es auch.
Uebernacht bin ich in Lawrensburg geblieben, wo es offensichtlich eine groessere Amishgemeinde gibt. Jedenfalls sah man mehr Kutschen als Fahrraeder (5 zu 1 ich).
Riding along hwy 64 was really beautiful. Rolling hills and a lot of southern mansions. I expected many black people living here, but I see mainly whites many of them look like you would expect Tennessee hillbillies - slightly retarded. I wanted to stay in Chattanooga, but driving around did not yield in any place which seemed to be interesting. There were barely any people anywhere walking around so I went further towards the Smokeys and I am now in Athens. The weather forcast is exellent. It is very warm for this time of the years so I wait until it is warmer and will cycle in the smokies. I hope it will not be too crowded considering it's Saturday.

October 27th to 29th - Hot Springs, AR

I left Austin after having spent a bit more time sightseeing and a last lunch in the afternoon to drive past Waco to shortly before Dallas, where I spent the nicht in a motel with an indoor pool in order to get at least a bit of exercise. I found that swimming for more than 30 minutes hurts my arms and think, I should do that more often.
The next day I drove right through to Hot Springs National Park in Arkansas. The hot springs have been used already by the native Americans in the area for long time and they were put under federal protection long before there was any other National Park. Today the whole downtown is NP. It reminds me a lot of some rundown places in Germany like Bad Ems, especially as the landscape is very similar to German Mittelgebirgen. The people visiting seem to be all elderly as well, but that might be the time of the year. This is the town where Clinton lived as a child and they just had the last day of their documentary film festival. Of which I met the organizer in the evening in the local bar, where I drank to much, listened to music, danced and generally had a lot of fun until they closed. HS is surrounded by three big lakes and a lot of low forested hills and is not far from the Ozarks, which seem to look similar. People talk very southern and althought there are many black people in town, I didn't see any in the restaurants and bars downtown. People in the bar where I got drunk made remarks about the racism, but still there was no black guest there either. Cycling was wonderful and there is a bikeshop and a HS bicycle webpage organized through the owner of the bikeshop it seems and there signs along one road which mark a bike route, I saw only two people on bicycles from far away, nevertheless I had a beautiful ride.

25th of October - Austin

In some scary way facebook knew that I was in Texas and I got an invitation from the Austin cycling association to join their new to Austin ride at 10 in the morning. I thought it was a very nice idea to have a city tour on the bike. The way from the hotel to the city center led me past the football stadium where they prepared for some kind of big game or they have always as much going on if they have a game in town, I don't really want to know. Austin might be progressive for Texas but it is still Texas. Everybody was dressed in orange and so was I - accidently fitting in, later I found out orange was the color of the enemy.
At the convention center was a pretty big group of cyclists which was the city tour group and a road ride group. I wanted to have a longer ride than the short city tour, but still decided to have it afterwards. It was a really nice way to see the city and thanks to other well informed Texans I learned a lot, which I would probably not have learned alone. After the ride four of us had a nice Mexican lunch and than went to Lance Armstrongs shop, where somebody took the broken aerobars of my bike. I talked to several people working there, one guy just moved there from SF where he lived in the Haight. I left the aerobars there to pick them up by car on the next day. Sunday had a big fundraiser where people went with Lance A. on a live strong ride for which you had to have raised or begged for at least 500$ for the lowest level. We had one woman on the ride who was in Austin to ride there.
the rest of the afternoon I followed the route Norman who guided the city tour recommendet and found out that Austin has a lot of really steep hills and nice riding, if only for that texan pavement.
Austin is nice for a vacation, but it is still much to spread out for my taste and than it lacks ocean and mountains. I would not like to live there, but I haven't expected anything else.

24th of October - Austin

I tried to ride early in the morning the country road of the day before, but the temperature was 34 degrees and I was with short gloves and without beanie, so I had to give up after 2k because I just could not move my fingers any longer. I took a shower and went the road by car to Pedernales State park, where I wanted to hike a bit and see the falls. I hiked the recommended hike for some miles and was bored out of my shirt, the landscape was pretty but did not change at all. Going on a belt in the gym gives you more entertainment. So I tried the falls where nothing fell. But all was nice and warm and I had some exercise, what more did I want. I went to Austin in search of the Ramada, that I booked through hotwire. It was the "Central" one but still miles out of downtown. Google map told me that it was at the intersection of 35 and 290, but it did not tell me that there were two of them. So I came to the southern intersection and there were plenty of hotels. I had problems with the internet in the last motel and could not verify the address in the morning but I thought that I shouldn't have too many problems locating it. I cruised for an hour, asked people who told me with complete certainty where to go and called meta to check my email again and look at google maps. By the end I called the hotel and drove the 12 miles to the other side of town, did finally my laundry hat a bite to eat in the neighborhood and called it an early night.

23rd of October - Fredricksburg and LBJ's Ranch

I stayed in a weird motel, which called itself resort but seemed to cater to retiree group travel. The kitchen was at five minutes past nine already closed and the bar could serve me only drinks. There was a country cowboy band playing and two couples shared the dance floor. As this is in Texas everything was BIG: bar, dance floor and air conditioning, only the crowd was pretty meager, I had one beer and after that I was not far from being frozen stiff, so I left as long as I was still able to. In the morning I left for Fredricksburg an touristy place in the hill country where they make quite a bit of wine. I walked through town, tried some wine (brrr! Texas needs still some time until it will become a wine and food lovers destination.) and I had a buffalo burger in a place with buffalo head.

From Fredricksburg I drove to Johnson City which is named after a cousin of LBJ. I cycled a bit around the farm and tried to make the tour on my bike. But they do allow the self guided tour only by car. I complained widely and people told me that they might change that soon and when I would come the next time I could perhaps enter already by bike. the tour of the farm would have been an ideal little bike tour, but whatever...

Overnight I stayed in Johnson City where I asked for a nice route to cycle on. The girl behind the counter told me she wouldn't know, but the on little road just up the street were always cyclist to be seen even as it was really hilly. She was right, it was a nice road for cycling - rolling hills, moderate traffic and pretty landscape. I went for a full work out ride. It was nice to exhaust myself without thinking about all the miles I would still need to go. I really like riding short and intensive better than long and moderate. Next to the hotel was one of this barn like huge and empty dinner places that they seem to have everywhere in the Texan countryside. I saw already before that a lot of Restaurants advertise themselves with superlatives like best hamburger in town, Texas or world, which is the same anyhow. This place said best chicken fried steak and behind it - nearly three dozen sold! I love this kind of humor, today I saw a big highway billboard which said: "Dirty birds to clean up? Birdbaths next exit!" By the way, I only learned on this trip what a chicken-fried steak is. It is a hamburger breaded and fried over which a white gravy (weisse Mehlschwitze) is poured. I cannot recommend it, there was until now not realy new and good food. Quite a bit of the stuff I tried was new to me but I don't really care for any of it. I was in this one country diner (only open one town), where I needed all but two items on the menu explained to me. I heard or read gizzards often but I don't really know what it is. But if you look at the photo of the gizzards and liver, I am happy, that I didn't have that - not that I had something better!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gizzards

22nd of October - Texas Hill Country

Garmin says : 79.40 km 2749 cal 1122 m ascent
After leaving this morning I drove to Leakey (which is seemingly pronounced lieky instead of leaky). I had an early Lunch and took a tour which included a part of the southern route. In the beginning was street construction and a street worker called out of his truck: Are you going to Florida, too? The first 16 miles which are part of the southern tier had some of the steepest climbs of the tour. It was pretty exhausting. the worst part was the last 11 miles against furious north winds, I thought, that I would never get back to the car, Driving and riding eats quite a bit of time but I can go to places where I will have very attractive riding. The texan hill country was settled pretty much only by Germans and you still recognize this in the names. Until WWI most people here spoke actually German, but with America joining the fight against Germany that changed.

October 21st - El Rio to Brackettville

After Justin was late again and hadn’t researched the greyhound bus, that would have meant to complete the country crossing, I should have known that he wouldn’t do that. He said: “I don’t take buses!” - “Have you ever tried?” - “No.” What else is new. Andreas and I cruised the north eastern corner (Montreal, Toronto, Chicago, Niagara, New York State all over) for four weeks and it was one of the most interesting travel experiences of my whole live and I was five month pregnant at that time.
He stole four more hours from me, still fidgeting next to me and relying on me, Just how does he survive on his own? I cannot say how often I asked him to stop that on this trip. He thinks it is my personal tick to be irritated by this. His parents really didn’t teach him anything, they are seemingly religious weirdos and might live with the hope that God will fix that all.

After dropping him at the airport and throwing another 300$ onto him - he should be extremely proud to have ripped me off like that. Normally people like him are just too repugnant to other people to be a con artist. Reality hit me: I am free! I started to be tired of the long straight rides on abysmal road surface. So now I will create my own tour. I still have a month until Andreas will arrive in Orlando and I will plan a new tour of the south on which I can get every day some riding in. I tried for quite a time to find maps or more in El Rio. They have only one bookstore, a Waldenbooks in their Mall, which didn’t even have a Texas road atlas. The only bike shop in town doesn’t have bike maps either, but worse the owner doesn’t ride bike. Who has ever heard something like that?

After several gas stations I hit a Walmart, where I finally found a big book road atlas, which doesn’t include one more information than the US road atlas and lacks distances, mountains and green dotted scenic drives. I bought a charger for my MP3 player, just to find out that it doesn’t work any longer. I deserve that for buying at Walmart.
I am now in a historic army fort where part of it is a motel. It is very pretty here and if the roads around here would have better surfaces I would stay longer, but after 10 miles I gave up on all 3 roads out of town. I will go tomorrow early in the hill country and try my luck there. I had dinner today in a joint where I had them explain 80% of the items on the menu, I felt like in a really foreign country and I got my water bottle filled in a drive through bottle shop. In reality a barn with front and back door open. The people in Texas are really friendly, that was not what I expected and the more I go towards the east the more I hear really southern talking. Yesterday a couple started a sentence with: “And we was…”

October 20th - Big Bent National Park

Justin was not ready at the time I said. This time he said it was on purpose, but it was like always, that I had to adjust my day to my so called help. I was just fed up. He just doesn’t get the idea. I have the feeling that he thinks, he gets a wonderful vacation paid, because I enjoy so much to have him around. I think he is not aware that he was chosen as driver because he is just so absolutely unattractive, that Andreas really doesn’t need to worry about him. Ugly and boring, I thought I would be able to handle it, but he is obnoxious too. He just talks the whole time without saying anything of substance, interesting or witty. He eats like a pig. After some days I just couldn’t stomach that any longer and I told him. I would be really ashamed if somebody would tell me that. He took it in and ate the same thereafter, it is really disgusting, even if nobody taught him ever how to eat properly, he could have asked what it is what nauseated me about his eating.
However after he was not there on time in the morning I told him to put his stuff in the car and meet me at three at the headquarter of Big Bent, where the road back to Marathon starts. He put stuff in and slammed the backdoor (He always slams the car doors, that is probably, why the lock of the driver door fell out.) and I took off, considering that I had only 5 hours left to see some more features of this huge park, which requires quite a lot of driving. Justin wanted so much to come to this park. “I was never in a National Park and it will be cool.” But he is not interested in nature and doesn’t like hiking. He never tries new things. That is the fact about him which is the worst, besides his repugnant physical aspects (eating, PERMANENT nervous ticks, like fiddling around or pulling out his knuckles, he never sits still. He has ADD plus hyperactivity and is still totally slow, if I would have known, I would not have taken him. He seems to have no intention to get a grip on this as well as he seems to have no intention to do anything which would give him learning possibilities. He lacks every intellectual curiosity, which is to me the worst form of stupidity. He doesn’t watch movies, he doesn’t read (except for fantasy novels, but as he never really went to school he misses the basics and he doesn’t even try to replenish that by himself). He has no interests, at least none which would lead him to a serious commitment. I am sure that is his ADD. But he was supposed to be able to drive the car for less than 2 hours a day and do his own thing with the rest of the day. But he was hanging onto me and did not get the hints at first and when I started to get extremely annoyed and unfriendly, he still followed me like a duckling his mom. I am so happy that I got rid of him.
What really annoys me is that it cost me thousands of dollars to have been annoyed by this total idiot for three weeks and I paid him even more to get rid of him. Last week I knew already that I just couldn’t stand to have him around me and I bought a flight ticket from Orlando to SFO. I just didn’t want to let go of the cross country bike ride for which I planned nearly two years and which was supposed to be my biggest trip yet and I put so much hopes and expectations into it. All this was destroyed by this little creep and I still felt like had to give him money. I feel he has a moral debt to me which is huge and I hope his bad Karma gets him, although I think anyhow that he never will amount to anything else than a pathetic unsuccessful bore (if he ever even looks for something he wants to be successful in).
That I gave this nobody the power to my shatter dreams tells me to listen to my gut feeling, When I saw him the first time, he was really eager doing this. But he looked so repugnant that I could barely look at him. It took month to get used to that, but I thought I should not be so shallow. - Next time I know that I get never at least subconsciously over this, unless they have a strong and interesting personality, which comes in rare cases with vapid expression.
I don’t know what Colleen sees in him. He really things she loves him so much more than he loves her. That I really doubt: a cute vivid intelligent and social girl like her, will not stay for long with a socially inept loser than Justin. The attraction of somebody needy who saps on your motherly feelings usually doesn’t last long.

Now I vented enough - much too much energy spent on that. Lets eat the loss and get over it!
When he didn’t show up at he ranger station, I was considering to just take off, would have been neat, but I don’t do that - let a helpless kid alone. I picked him after waiting there for 30 minutes about 10 miles (midway between motel and rendezvous spot) up and told him that he should take a bus from Del Rio to Orlando. I gave him time to 9 h in the morning to research all this and that would be it. My mood would have been really lightened, if he wouldn’t have sat next to me fidgeting and making knuckle noises. Yuk, just writing this I feel vomit coming up.

Qctober, 19th Big Bent NP

Garmin keeps quiet because I didn't take it out. I had a little hike which got 1300ft. elevation, that was about the same than what I did yesterday on the bike, only that this was spectacularly beautiful. I like the Texans who hike. Everybody chatted a bit. People did seem to be quite intelligent, at least the half dozen I met on this hike. After I got finally rid of Justin my day turned out to be perfect.
He does not get it. I did not ask him along because I wanted company. If so I would have chosen somebody who is a little bit interesting or might share one or two interest with me, having some cultural experiences, like books, movies or perhaps even knowledge of arts or anything could not really hurt either. But tonight I found one of his interest: He is a big believer in some of the 9/11 conspiracy theories. Not that he is informed about anything but he knows that what THEY tell us, we should not forget that he doesn't know exactly what they tell us (and who THEY are - probably the Illuminati) , but he knows it's all lies. He read the transcripts, again he does not know which transcripts, but he read them and once you read them you know. I told him that he shares here the mindset of suicide bombers, Oklahoma bombers and other paranoids out there. It is obvious that this mania inflicts especially young men look at nearly all suicide bombing terrorists. He was pretty offended and I would be scared, if he would have a shred of drive or focus.

October 18th, Ft. Davies to Marathon

Garmin says 12 .5 km less than the bikecomputer, because I forgot to turn it back on after lunch: 79.89 km 2420 cal 485 m ascent
Being slightly hung over I decided to cycle only 55 miles to Marathon.I had the whole way headwinds and the asphalt in Texas is just awful. People tell me it eats the tires away. I don't know about that but it for sure hurts the butt of cyclist and it slows you down. They just put a layer of tar on the street and on that they pour gravel. When it gets older you have the tire tracks where the street gets a bit smoother. Unfortunately there was too much traffic yesterday to stay on the street a lot and about 25 miles had been freshly redone, which makes it especially terrible.
Alpine had a lot of government buildings where the spent money on expensive modern architects. That surprised me and it also had a train station with a passenger train which blocked a main city street for at least 20 minutes. I asked the young people in the restaurant where I had lunch from where and to where you could take the train, but they didn't even know or realize that you could take a train.
In Marathon Justin was lucky that he got rooms at all as they had a marathon. I took a cabin at the place where the after party was and he got a room for 80$ in the plush Gage Hotel. But I am pretty happy to have some time to myself. Today I want to go to Big Bend and now Justin wants to come too, which makes it already much less attractive.
Die Geister, die ich rief...

October 17th Van Horn to Fort Davies

Garmin says: 145 km 5019 cal 1845 m ascent
I tried to leave at 7h in the morning but it was really dark and I had to wait till 8. This stolen hour for central time is pretty useless but it is nice that the sun sets later. I left when the sun came out behind the mountains and it was freezing cold. I wore only a fleece jacket and an undershirt underneath and was really cold for the first hour along Interstate 10. I stopped at the first and only as I found out afterward place for food after only 20 miles and had an omelet. From here on I had to go on the shoulder of I10 as there was no frontage road for another 18 miles. After this trip I hope that I will never have to ride on a freeway again. The stretches of unpleasant riding which are difficult to avoid if you need to go the whole way make me not like this experience too much. Justins Job, where you move from place to place and ride only everywhere an attrakrive round seems to be much more fun to me.
From Kent I turned onto hwy 118 which was completely empty and beautiful. It climbed slowly up to over 6000 ft (1900m) in a landscape of huge skies. When I arrived at Ft Davies Justin was not there yet I had expected him to overtake me for the last two hours and had already all kinds of crashing scenarios in my head. I checked in the first motel, where I got the last room - a suite with a partition between two rooms and a kitchen. Justin needed to sleep on the sofa bed. I waited for him at the pool where two couples were sitting. they heard my German accent and offered me a Weizenbier which I gladly accepted. I explained to them that I was waiting for justin to arrive in order to get changed and that I wouldn't mind to use the pool. I never got around to that.
Justin came, I changed and we went to dinner with them, for which they paid and a lot of the locals came and bought us drinks. We got pretty drunk and discussed weapons, one of the guys showed me his on his belt, the army, they were both in it. The ease and quality of drugs you get in foreign countries. The teenage son of one couple doesn't want to drive a car, because he thinks pretty green and is a total oddball in town. Their house is out of rammed earth and they invited us over to look at it. But it was to late for this - next time when we are in town,

October 16th, Ft. Hancock to Van Horn, West Tx

Garmin says: 120.92 km 4056 cal 856 m ascent
West Texas is an abomination. The only halfway human beings, I saw today were two Aussies from Melbourne at a gas station, who were on their way from LA to NY. This riding along Interstate 10 is just awful loud, ugly and boring. I would even prefer 360 laps on the Hellyer track. You would not have all the time headwinds and you would get the possibility for 360 bathroom stops, which doesn't compare with waiting for a bridge to disappear under that you will not be seen by 150 Border Patrol trooper and 500 truck driver. Tomorrow I have to go another 35 miles on I10, if it doesn't get better afterwards, I let Justin ride a bit. He picks up the ugly bits and I do the rest. But it seems he is onto me, he did already remark on how he hated the ride into El Paso.
My motel room tonight smells of insect poison, if there will be no new postings in the next week, I might have died of it, especially as the window is painted shut - Budget Inn is no Interconti!
The next three or four days are filled with long rides through completely empty countryside. there are two stretches with more that 50 miles without any services. Justin cannot go before me here this would scare me he should always leave that he reaches me in the afternoon and that way I can decide if I call it a day or not. It is supposed to be fun not torture!

October 15th El Paso to Fort Hancock TX

Garmin says: 92.56 km 3039 cal 545 m ascent
I bought in the morning a little gel padded suit for my saddle and took of the meanwhile quite annoying foam construction. Passing through El Paso I made my way to the border along which the route went for the whole day. I passed just out of El Paso a strip mall where it smelled so good of grilled fish that I had to go through it in order to find the source. There it was Mariscos de Caribe. Being hundreds of miles away from any ocean I thought you shouldn’t eat seafood in El Paso, but here I got one of the best ceviches and fish soups that I ever had. For sure the cheapest!

The ride was quite boring and uneventful, except for two dog attacks which I both got only in the last moment, I find shouting firmly at the dogs helps. I should probable stop listening to my walkman as this makes me unaware from where the barking is coming. The second dog attack were two pit bulls, which were only growling hoarsely. I asked people how to buy a gun that I can leave a trail of dead dogs all over Texas.

Today this will not be an issue as I go mainly freeway, which I don’t like. And I will pass the next time zone, cool!

Our motel is the only one in Fort Hancock at the freeway exit and it has the only diner of town opposite of it. So Justin and I had dinner there. It seems to be the place were the law enforcement of the region goes to as well. There were several Border Patrol trucks outside and one had a bike rack with two really nice mountain bikes (Bush’s Country). The best about them was their lock, they were fixed to each other and the car with two pairs of handcuffs.

In the dinner was barely anyone under five tons light but two guys were like the man in monty python’s “meaning of live”, which explodes while eating. They were preparing a parade in town for their high school homecoming - I need to find out, what this means, as I have heard of it so often but still don’t know what this is. First I was thinking that they dismantled their Columbus Day parade remnants. In the diner two sheriffs with two guys in comic strip striped prison suits came in. At first I thought of a Halloween costume or so, but then I remembered having read about parts of the America who really started to have these again. This morning they are talking about the prisoner having been at the parade. It is so weird. Justin said, they were like: “Look out of towners, lets play out all stereotypes, do not show, that we are normal.
.
When we left, both sheriff cars took off with a pebble spraying start as well. I was wondering what could possibly happen in a small town like that which would require two sheriffs at once.

October 14th - El Paso and Ciudad Juarez

The weather was awful this morning, stormy, rainy and cold. So Justin rode the less than 50 miles to El Paso. It was flat through pecan plantation and suburbs just like yesterday anyhow. I looked meanwhile at the little tourist town of Mesilla, where Billy the kid used to live and than I went to El Paso. the downtown consist of two hotels, two bank high rises, convention center, arts plaza and city hall and a lot of very trashy shops toward the border. I did not want to stay in a hotel with more than 2 stories so I backed several miles out of downtown and stopped at a motel, which was cheap and close to the U of T and a lot of restaurants. I took my bike and went along Paisano Road to the border. I had problems finding the right street for the crossing and hat to turn at the end, when a sudden wind blew a coke bottle onto my front tire and felt me. I did not hurt myself but was still pretty embarrassed. People were helpful and showed concern. I had to cross in the car lane and pay 35 cent bridge toll to enter Ciudad Juarez. There were even more people in the streets and if downtown El Paso looks already cheap and very shabby, Ciudad Juarez had definitely a touch of third world charm. It reminded me more of Africa than of the Mexico I know. But it was still much better than the town opposite of Fort Douglas Arizona. The whole town was filled with thousands of Mexican soldiers with mashine guns in their hands. El Paso and especialy Ciudad Juarez saw a lot of gun violence in the last month and after the last open street killing in which harmless bystanders have been killed as well. Both cities decided to do something against it and Mexico brought in the army. In the short time I went through to see the cathedral and all the shopping, markets etc., it seemed pretty peaceful to me.
For dinner we went in a so called Thai restaurant where the dishes on the menue were not recognizable the Thai chicken soup was white gravy, the beef curry brown gravy and the fried Banana an unripe banana wrapped in a springroll dough sheet. But what were we thinking to get Thai food in Texas. Next time I know better.

October 13th - Hillsboro to Las Cruces

Garmin says: 125.29 km 3930 cal 676 m elevation
Today is Columbus Day just the right day to ride to Apache country where Geronimo fought against the white settlers. This morning I went to the cafe on the other side of the street for morning coffee, When I came there I just saw a cyclist woman entering. Her bicycle was a Schwinn which was converted into a single speed and was packed with small panniers. I entered and she said, I saw your bike in Silver City and I met Justin yesterday on top of the hill. The world is so small, so now I know that her name is Gretta, she told me this much and she plays the fiddle in the Silver City string beans, found that in the internet after she told me that her band played yesterday at Gila Hot Springs. I had been told of this concert with 4 Bands already from Julia and David. And she is friends with the guy who won the Great Divide Race in 15 days.
I left Hillsboro pretty late as it was very cold in the morning, I even got a cold overnight. One of the guys in the cafe said it had 37 degree this morning on his thermometer. I wanted to go to Las Cruces and it would go mostly downhill except for some climbing in the beginning. The landscape was gorgeous and the streets were pretty empty. There are a lot of weird bugs on the streets and for days I see huge amounts of fat locusts. I think they might be in mating season as there are so many of them coupling, I mean copulating which doesn't look very exiting: a smaller one sits on top of a bigger one and they don't seem to move. I took a photo of a pair and while I was watching them, they did not move at all.
In Derry I had my first dog attack, not that I am not able to out speed them but it is still annoying and there is still the element of surprise. In the next town 4 miles down the road a second dog charged after me, now I am kind of traumatized, I didn't even think of dogs before and now I expect them everywhere. I had lunch in a redneck place which was plastered with Mc Cain/ Palin posters. Surprisingly it had Mexican owners and they did a collection for an employee who was for several weeks in a hospital - they don't seems to see a need for universal health care as you can just do a collection. Works like a charm!
Shortly past Hatch I met a Dutch cyclist who does the southern tier. He thinks there are no 15% inclines in America! Probably because there are just no mountains!
When I arrived finally in Las Cruces I was really tired and cranky. Poor Justin, he is just a born victim, he takes it all in. We stay at a Motel6 again and the kid behind the counter just left his home on Cortland St. in SF, because he could not effort to live there any longer, but he misses it so much.
We had dinner in a weird chain that Justin knew Uno, the food was very mediocre and the service sucked.
Aber das Schlimmste war eine Gruppe Deutscher (ca. 10 Maenner, keine Frau, die ueber der Kollege, der sie morgen trifft und aehnlichen eine eher sehr zaehe Unterhaltung hatten. Ich hab sie gefragt, ob sie bei der deutschen Luftwaffe, die hier doch irgendwo stationiert sei, seien. Sie haben zwar die Praesens der Luftwaffe mit einem Kopfnicken bestaetigt aber sonst nur ein nein hervorgepresst und ansonsten mich voellig ignoriert. So obskur benehmen sich auch nur hoechst merkwuerdige Deutsche, ich schaetze mal die kamen von Siemens oder sowas.

October 12th - Silver City - Emory Pass - Hillsboro NM

Garmin says: 84.66 km 3104 cal 1680 m elevation
This morning I left finally, the sky was much clearer and the stormy wind was gone. It was hard climbing but I reached the Pass without problems, except for my but, as the yarn donut kept moving in the pants. But at 2100m (already the 3. time as the street went up and down) Justin passed me and I took the Styrofoam, that I found days earlier out of the car and taped it with duct tape to my saddle, from here on my butt was controlled but my cleats broke and my right foot couldn’t click in any longer. I hope my left leg got a bit more workout, it is to much slimmer than the right one anyhow. On the Pass I met a woman from Albuquerque who was catering to her husband and two other guys from Colorado. They had started two weeks earlier in Pie Town and, yes Andreas, they ate pie which was quite spectacular, were hiking to the Mexican border which they expected would take another three week to reach.
We stay over night in a charming little town where everything closes down by 3 a clock in the afternoon. Justin was lucky that he got our rooms. The rooms are very bed and breakfast laura-ashleyesque, what people seem to call quaint - yuk! Tomorrow I plan to proceed to Las Cruces and then it’s off to Texas.

October 11th - Silver City

I was ready to leave when the big dark clouds which were moving fast to the north, started to rumble so I got my computer back out of the car and helped myself to another coffee at the reception and decided to wait the thunderstorm out. In the morning the reception was staffed with an old Indian, in this case better a native American woman. The owner/ manager of this motel6 was like 80% of all motel manager Asian Indian and so was the cleaning personnel, a weird couple which worked to all hours, didn’t speak English and wore both a big red chalk dot on the forehead. But I chatted in the mornings that we stayed there with the night clerk about what to expect of the cliff dwellings, the weather, wind directions etc. and she had every morning the same middle aged man there with her. The motels in Arizona and New Mexico that we have been to so far cater much less to tourist than to workers who work in the area. I do understand this, if this is for construction workers but in the days inn in Globe stayed about ten Arizona correction officers There seems to be a prison in Globe but for what does Arizona need to spend the money on all this motel rooms and I am sure they get the worst rate as the government pays.

I swerved off my original thought: By now it poured and I decided to stay another night as I was not keen to cross the highest point of the route in eventual snow.
By noon it cleared a bit and I went on a tour up the street to Gila. Silver Springs is over 1800m (6000ft) high in elevation and I felt it at once, there was just not enough oxygen in the air to breathe normally, my butt still hurt like crazy and than my chain jumped off again. I had screwed the chain thrower position several times in several different position, but without a stand it’s kind of hard to verify, if it’s good now or not. So I had an excuse to return into town and to the bike shop. The guy there adjusted the gears etc. nicely while I went through town, where I bough a big roll of loosely packed Polyester yarn which had the form of a donut (to accommodate my cyst in the middle) and had a nice lunch in a hole in a wall eatery which pretended to be Greek. The daily special was never the less German Bratwurst with Sauerkraut. I returned to the motel and spend the afternoon reading. Justin must have caught some kind of bug and was vomiting the whole evening.

!0th of October Gila Cliff Dwellings

In order to heal a bit more I decided not to ride another day. Instead I went by car to the Gila cliffs
national monument. The road out to there was the best cycling road I have seen yet on this trip. I was really upset that I couldn't ride. On the road I saw the first cyclist since Phoenix exept for two old men on mountain bikes at the whitewater catwalk. Going down I saw a couple on touring bikes loaded with many panniers. They are Julia and David going from Louisiana to Seattle. Checkout their blog at http://common-milkweed.blogspot.com/ . I arrived at the National Park shortly before noon so I could get in on the daily guided tour.
Afterwards I hiked for an hour and went back to Silver City, where I had dinner with Julia, David and Justin.

Die zwei anderen Radler lassen mich wirklich daran zweifeln, dass ich was abnehmen werde. Ich hab sie an einer wirklich steilen bergigen Strecke getroffen. Sie haben schwere vollgepackte Fahrraeder und sind beide ziemlich mollig. Die fahren auf die typische Art. Sie versuchen immer bei entfernten Bekannten oder im Zelt zu uebernachten, obwohl sie sich als zu dekadent bezeichnet, womit sie ihre Tendenz zu Hoteluebernachtungen und Restaurantbesuchen meint. Fuer so etwas bin ich zu alt, war ich wohl immer zu alt, ich hasse es bei Fremden zu schlafen.

Finally the sun comes out, I might leave now...

9th of October - Safford, AZ to Silver City, NM

Garmin says: 177.71km 9675 cal 3872 m ascent Wow, bravo, Justin!

As my weird growth doesn't let me ride without too much pain, I let Justin do the biggest section of the trip yet. I planned not to ride all of it and let the last 30 miles go, but Justin went for it all and gave up only less than 10 miles before Silver City, I am sure he never did more in his life. Meanwhile I went a scenic parallel road which dated from the 20s and was rough, unpaved and totally empty. I didn't meet one person in the 3 hours traveling there. But I took 100 beautiful pictures from my whole trip. I met a herd of wild horses which had some mules with them. I saw a rattle snake, but was to startled to take a picture and got pictures of the biggest copper mine of the northern hemisphere. This is really off, the biggest of any hemisphere is a well used expression which works only with southern! Something is not kosher with this copper mine I tell you!

I walked then over a catwalk in whitewater canyon, that was absolutely beautiful. I took so many pictures and most of them turned out well and when I tried to load them on the computer, I deleted all of them except for the last one, which is my car in the parking lot of whitewater canyon.

8th of October - Globe to Safford

Garmin says: 125 km 4030 cal 1236 m ascent
When I started really late (It took for ever to figure out how to connect pictures to albums in the blog, when I was finally done, it was long past midnight.) I had not yet cured the worst out of my growth, which has the size of an XXL chicken egg. It hurt so much that I went into the first hardware store to get some foam to upholster me a bit. they didn't have any, so I went into a gas station and got diapers which worked better than nothing. The wind was still blowing with considerable force from the east straight into my face. I am getting really tired of this. Yesterday I lost my camera again at a rest stop and had to go back a bit uphill even but with tailwind that went like a charm.
Soon I entered in the San Carlos Apache Reservation where they had a big Casino and a very fancy Safeway like Basha supermarket. I got a Coffee and a sandwich and chatted with people outside. Nearly everybody asked me where I was going to.
I went back in the saddle again and struggled over the mountains. Again: too much traffic, heat, wind and pain in the butt. I stopped on the other side in the second supermarket of the reservation. Here it looked like I knew indian reservation Supermarket to look. Not everything had bilingual sign, but for that the people spoke to each other something which I took for Apache or whatever their language is called. about 60% of the shelves were empty and the choices were very limited, a bit like east German Supermarkets used to look.
Das waere doch mal was fuer Ostalgiker!
I asked the woman working the cash register about the difference between the two market and she told me: "We call them the Cs." I guess the Casino money doesn't get distributed evenly. I wanted to buy a yoghurt or something like that, but they had nothing I would have loved to eat, so I just bought fruit juices and went to the covered hwy rest areas some steps from there. I pushed me bike over 3 meters of greenery and sat down. there was a group of motorbikers (I have not seen a bicycle rolling since Phoenix.) from Westchestercounty, NY. A woman came over and we talked a bit. She thought we do the same thing as they have a support car as well for their tour of the southwest. One of the guys asked me how much my bike weights and that was when I saw that I had a flat. This happens always after I push my bike somewhere of the road, I just should stop doing this. Before stopping here I found on the side of the roed a piece of foam padding which I picked up and put on my saddle. But by now nothing seemed to help any longer and I ran out of ibuprofen as well. I could not go full speed because each pedal stroke nearly killed me. Finally I reached close to tears Pima where I got some ibuprofen. By now it was close to 6 o'clock and the sun had set behind the mountains and I had another 8 miles to go. I did not like to ride on a crowded highway without lights so I called Justin to Pick me up and I rode out of the saddle pretty fast until he met me.
Abends waren wir direkt neben dem Hotel in einem Riesen Restaurant/Bar/ Andenkenladen, wo ein Maedchen mich nach meinem Akzent fragte und mir erzaehlte, dass sie zuhause eine deutsche Gastschuelerin fuer ein Jahr beherbergen. Das Maedel kommt aus Berlin. Ich hab mir gedacht: Oh mein Gott, wie kann die das bloss aushalten und kein Wunder, dass die Deutschen ein verqueres Bild von den USA haben, wenn Austauschueler an merkwuerdige Orte wie diesen hier geschickt werden. Der durchschnittliche IQ hier schein ca 30 Punkte niedriger zu liegen, als in den Orten, an denen die Mehrheit der Leute wohnen. Man vergisst immer wieder wie leer es hier ist.

Tuesday 7th of October - Apache Junktion to Globe

Garmin says: 93.05 km 3810 cal 1783m ascent

I suffered crazily, the whole day strong headwinds and on top of that the route followed a hwy 60 which has heavy traffic awful shoulders, if any. It was pretty hot and my weird swollen and infected growth in the right saddle touching area is still infected and got worse over the day. I met Justin in Superior for Lunch. He can still not start properly in the first gear. When I came to Globe, I couldn't believe, that it was full of Motels and I had found only some pretty expensive ones online.
By now it starts to get dark by 6:30h and it was to late to look at the town, which I regret a bit. I had a long swim in the pool and got out just to see a bicycle standing in the room next to mine. the door was open so I asked him if he toured as well. But he was a Arizona transportation worker and used it on the street repair sites. The second presidential debate was running and he offered me one of his buds to listen with him. Being an Arizonian he said I am a republican. I asked him if he really thought that his party would be the party which represents worker like him the best. But he told me that Obama wants the people and especially small business owner to pay even more taxes. I asked him if he makes more than 250k ayear, but to no avail...

6th of October - Phoenix from Surprise to Apache Junction

No Garmin, Justin doesn't have something like it but he rode this segment. Ca. 60 miles through the City, not a lot of elevation but plenty of traffic and scorching sun, paired with over 100 (38 cel) degree heat.

I took meanwhile the car the lot behind our hotel belonged to an body shop and I talked to a guy back there over the fence. I had to climb on a heap of discarded air conditioners. But the guy told me to come around with the car. "It's always a pleasure to help a sexy Lady!" Weird, I never get that in my bicycle outfit, and he was pretty put off when he saw later that I was like a foot taller than he was. Anyhow he was just the help and the owner did come found a fitting screw or however that is called. Justin is very big on throwing technical terms around (only a shame that this doesn't yield much more than buying stuff, which will not solve the problem).

So I went on my way through Phoenix. I was here before and hated (looked at Scottsdale, where at least the Biltmore is great, it looks so good that I had a totally overpriced lunch there and considered a room some years ago, but it was in that category that makes me think that no place is worth more than 50$ an hour of which you spend most sleeping anyhow.)

So this time I went through downtown which is remarkably similar to Sacramento. Phoenix is not only the 5 th. biggest "city" in the US but the most stretched out as well. So if you have to drive for more than an hour to reach your downtown which doesn't even contain shops or restaurants, why would you bother.
Than I passed through Tempe which looked like small college town for several blocks and where there were actually cyclists - Justin loved it because they had bike lanes there. He is easy to please.
Finally I arrived Apache Junction where I tried the ugliest Motel 8 and than the Best Western of the map as well but they were just to expensive and stuffy as well. Leaving the best Western I saw a little forsaken Motel on the other side which I tried. The rooms were clean and reasonable
and it had Internet connectivity. When I checked in a fat couple came in as well, they were driven by a Police cruiser. They told me that the nice Policemen were driving them already for hours around but as they got only 50$ for the room probably from the city, they could not find a place to stay. Here they got a room for 50$, but they still needed 4.95 for the taxes, so I let the pretty strict Indian owner, who was a bit like Champa and scared as well as annoyed Justin, because he wouldn't allow the bike in the room, charge it to my card. They promised me to pay me back, whatever it will take. I am sure this will be pretty soon the case, they just need to have the money and than my name and address, easy!
But after all the talk, about the great depression all over again, they looked like straight out of a time capsule. How do the kids call them in San Francisco - Hobos.

5th of Oktober - Restday in Phoenix

Stayed most of the day on the bed. I iced my butt down which seems to help a bit. Had to buy a new camera, because the old one disappeared and calls to the hotel and to the bar in Wicksburg were in vain.
After the shopping I went for the first time ever in a red lobster and couldn't finish my plate. I am obviously still sick but I think the breading around the fish did it's job as well.
What a shame, that two days of pictures are gone.

Justin did a big ride today and I feared already that he had an accident when he did not come back until hours after night fell. Now he exchanged both tubes on my bike. He says there where big thorns in the tire and when he wanted to bring it to our rooms both tires were flat. I never had so many flats in my whole live and San Francisco's streets are full with glass shards and metal pieces, I don't get it. I hope that I will be better by tomorrow.

October, 4th Wickenburg to Phoenix

Garmin Lies today as I started it only after several miles, nevertheless it says: 52.18 km - 1792 cal - 128m ascent (this must have been the 4 overpasses)

I did not feel really well this morning as my butt is meanwhile so infected that it gives me fever, and I was a little hungover as well. I tried to call Justin from out of town several times, but his phone was off and he didn't get the message, that there was an open Garage out of town, where he could have gotten my spoiler reattached to the car and some tools to reassemble the bike rack on the roof. The sky was very overcast and in several places the street looked like it had gotten a sprinkling.
Nieselregen ist mir sehr viel lieber als stechende Sonne mit Temperaturen oberhalb von 38 grad (100 fahrenheit). die Landschaft wechselte langsam von landwirtschaftlicher Haesslichkeit in scheusslichste amerikanische Vorstadt. Haeusersiedlungen mit genormten Gebaeuden und Grundstuecken, die alle vom gleichen Bauunternehmer zur gleichen Zeit erbaut werden und dann verkauft werden stehen hinter Mauern, die die Siedlungen von aehnlichen Siedlungen, die andere Bauunternehmen fast genauso gebaut haben, trennen. Dazwischen sind lauter Einkaufscentren, die nur Ketten beherbergen. Wirklich gruselig. Muessten die Einwohner dieser Siedlungen nicht permanent arbeiten um ihre Hypotheken abzuzahlen und deswegen die Haeuser nur uebernacht und am Wochenende benutzt werden, gaebe es sicher noch hoehere Selbstmordraten oder Schulschiessereien in den amerikanischen Vorstaedten.
No money in the world would me ever bring to live in Phoenix. It is the 5th biggest city in the US. But only with the invention of air conditioning people started to settle here. Before you had to survive the summers with months of over 100 degree heat. Like Las Vegas it is an environmental nightmare and it was after LV the fastest growing city in the US. Phoenix is one of the few places, where bicycling actually declined in the last years. If you look around you see many more young fat people than you would like to.
Anyhow I checked into a Motel6 and called Justin to come. He had not done anything about the damage at the car. I had by now a fulblown fever and wanted him to just get it done and let me sleep it off. He kept harressing me and was slow and not able to organize things, I could have killed him. By the end of the afternoon I had to get finally up and take things in my own feverish hands. Now there is a bike rack back on the car, I have new replacement tires (Justin bought them a bit wider because they were in a special, he says. In reality he was not able to ask somebody, if the tires were for a roadbike, because that would have made him look like a newbie. - I hope you read this, Justin!)
We went for dinner which I couldn't finish - how sick is that!

3rd of October - Blythe,CA to Wickenburg, AZ

Garmin says: 117.72km 4419 cal 1224m ascent (garmin lies often as I switch it off for lunch etc. and forget to restart it.)

My butt is getting definitely worse. The second day I developed some infection under my usual right cheek callous, which made it impossible to sit in my normal position so I am shifting around and getting more and more sores at places where I am not used to pressure.

The riding today was excellent, but everything they promised me about Justin came true. He was supposed to go to Salome, which is pronounced like salon with an ome, but here she still dances. Calling me from the first motel which wasn't to his liking he proceeded to the second called international inn, where he encountered the first awning of this trip. Remember his bike is in the roof rack and we were discussing relentlessly beforehand how people do crash their bikes by forgetting about it. Unfortunately in this case the bike didn't break, but the brand new rack and the spoiler was torn off. I was not very happy especially when I cycled later past it and saw how low it was. I would not even have gone without a rack under it.

Justin musste sich erst mal ausgiebig mit seiner Freundin beraten, bevor er mir dann endlich beichten konnte, was passiert war. Ich hab ihn dann angewiesen ein Hotelzimmer zu nehmen, wobei das International Inn wirklich sehr scheusslich war. Ich hab ihn zum anderen Motel geschickt, das uebrigens sehr nett aussah, aber als er die Zimmer inspizierte sah er eine Kuechenschabe. Mann, du kommst aus Florida und bist damit aufgewachsen! Justin ist einer von den Maedels, die sich vor allem kriechenden, schwimmenden und krabbelnden fuerchtet. Er kann nur im Pool schwimmen gehen. Also musste er bis zum naechsten Ort mit Unterkunft fahren - Wickenburg. Er ist dann zurueckgekommen um mich aufzulesen, den Wickenburg war eigentlich fuer die naechste Nacht vorgesehen und zwei Tagestouren auf einmal sind zuviel fuer meinen wunden Po. Ich war zwar schon ca. 40km weiter als geplant, aber hab trotzdem viel schwaenzen muessen. Richtig traurig war ich nicht, da die Strecke von Aguilla nach Wickenburg voellig flach, extrem haesslich, sehr vielbefahren und mit mit grauenhafter Strassenschulter war, so dass ich die meiste Zeit auf der Strasse fahren musste. Es fuehlt sich trotzdem sehr viel sicherer als in der Stadt an. Obwohl Justin da ganz anderer Meinung ist, aber er ist ja auch noch nicht viel gefahren.

Heute ist der Tag der Deutschen Einheit und wir sind zur Feier des Tages ins Restaurant Berlin gegangen. Dessen Koch und Besitzer ist ein knurriger Weddinger, der noch nie vom Tag der deutschen Einheit gehoert hat. Das Essen war grausam, aber nach langer Fahrt putzt man ja munter alles weg. Anschliessend haben wir uns in der Bar gegenueber nett betrunken. Der ganze Ort war zum Karaoke da und wir hatten Spass, obwohl alle Lieder Country waren und ich ausser meinem neuen Lieblingslied nichts kannte. Justin vertraegt nicht besonders viel und war voellig betrunken, was vielleicht bei seinem Einkommen auch besser ist. Irgendwann muss mir auch noch meine Kamera abhanden gekommen sein. Wir waren schon um 11 wieder im Hotel und als ich die Tagesdecke abnahm huschte eine Kuechenschabe unterm Kissen hervor und verschwand unterm Bett. -Oh du Ironie des Alltags!

2nd of October - El Centro to Blythe

Garmin says: 98,47 Km 3528 cal 685m ascent

Forgot that it is supposed to be in German as well. Also heute auf Deutsch, leider bin ich jetzt schon etwas muede und muss bald schlafen. Ich hatte ein Loch im Reifen und deshalb zwei geplatzte Schlaeuche, daraufhin hab ich mich die letzten 20km mitnehmen lassen. Wenn ich Ehre besaesse haette ich sie jetzt verloren.

El Centro has an elevation under 0 and is one of the ugliest towns that you could imagine, so I was quite eager to leave it. Already some miles out off town I felt that my back tire didn't run round and I found that it had a hole which would sooner or later flatten it. As I suffered so much yesterday, I had asked Justin to leave El Centro at noon, take some water and check on me. Between the town of Brawley just behind El Centro and Blythe on the border to Arizona was only one place called Glamis and it was not clear whether the grocery store would be open. It turned out that Glamis was the station for people who used their recreational vehicles in the big Sanddune area and camp out there in the dessert. It had barely any groceries, but a huge collection of tshirts with sanddunes or this weird sandhopper vehicles (you know this little lawnmower tractors, which get ridden by predominantly white people over the age of 6 and transported on the back of a Dodge Ram pickup next to a cooler of budweiser sixpacks). The owner of the store tells me people who cross the country on their bicycle come by all the time, which makes sense as this is the only stop for many miles and so everybody following the southern route would stop there. I asked him if he saw the 3 young man in long sleeves and pants with suspenders and he told me that they passed yesterday. He was pretty smug about it:
"They want to do it in three weeks, that is impossible. It takes 8 weeks!" Like he would ever go on a bicycle and would know what is possible - 3 weeks is hard, but they are strong and young and should be able to do this. After having filled up all my water containers, I went on my way over the mountains. At least for a quarter mile and than my tube at the broken tire made such a loud pssssst, that I heard it through my music even before I felt the flat. I exchanged the tire and as it was only until about one a clock that Justin would pass me, I thought I'll take the risk. I had two new tires in the car and would need to have both of them exchanged.

Es war wunderschoenes Fahren dort. Die Strasse ging immer nett auf und ab, so dass man an jedem Huegel noch genug Schwung von der vorherigen Abfahrt hatte, die Temperatur war durch eine Brise in Kombination mit dem Fahrtwind superangenehm und die Wuestenlandschaft mit Sandduenen und dann dunklen Felsformationen zwischen denen verschiedene Kaktussorten wuchsen. Ich kam zu einem Borderpatrol Kontrollpunkt.

I begged them to please arrest me, that I could enjoy some shade. They directed me towards a big fan. The cutest one came over to chat a bit and I asked him what they do with the Mexicans they catch. He said they check first for crimes and the others they send just back, to catch them the next time and over and over... "until you don't catch them and they can mow our lawn or clean our banks." was how I completed this. God - there are not to many nice paying government jobs in this godforesaken area and being in the californian dessert beats the Irakian
dessert every day.

I left the Checkpoint and anjoyed riding with high speed along the rolling hill, when the second psssst hit. I pushed my bike for about a mile until I found a bush which was big enough to spent me some shade. It was past one by now and Justin was supposed to come every minute. My MP3 battery died and I started to get annoyed. About 6 Border Patrol trucks past towards the checkpoint and half an hour later the guys that I met there earlier came from their shift and asked me if I needed help. When the one I talked to stopped I was ready to hitch a ride, but in this moment justin pulled up and we went to Blythe for the night.

1st of October: From the Mountains to the Imperial Valley

Garmin says: 112.64 km - 3742cal - 866m ascent

I tried this time really to leave early in the morning, but didn't leave until past 8 o'clock. Today I used my MP3 player for the first time on the bike. The first day on the bike passed through so boring landscape that I decided to try some music listening. It was so much fun. As nobody could hear me, I just sang out loud with all songs.

While still cycling in the mountains there was some more climbing to do but I looked so much forward to the exhilarating descent ahead of me and the time flew by with me hollering "I' a redneck woman" along with Gretchen Wilson. I have no idea how that got even on my computer, but it fits totally cycling through the countryside. I stopped for a breakfast consisting of a three eggs Denver omelet with home fries and some coffee in a place called Posta Inn which had four parking spaces in front, which were all reserved for veterans. And the two guys inside seemed to have been Navy veterans. They were somehow obsessed with the Indian Casinos around, but I didn't follow them into this. The only casino information, which was worthwhile, was that the top of the last big climb would be reached with the Casino standing there. I still had some climbing to do and the temperature was pretty high, but still tolerable, when I came around noon to the entry of hwy 8 at In-Ko-Pah Gorge. I flew down the hill and the sound of the wind did even drown out my MP3 player. The efforts of the federal goverment to limit illegal immigration from Mexico show off a lot. I got the whole day passed by border patrol vehicles. In the montains they had even a street controllpoint. Weirdly they did not even agnowledge me. If you want to come illegal take a bike, a blong wig and you are safe. but in the middle of the pass road down there where two border patrol truck parked. Talking to a young Mexican,who had a bit of a hustler air about him and a lawnchair and an umbrella setup between the rocks besides the freeway in the middle of nothing, about half a mile off the Mexican Border. This was the only time I saw the border patrol actually controlling someone who was obviously suspicious. I was unfortunately so occupied with breaking and going around the scene without being hit by one of the many trucks coming down as well, that I couldn't really see what was happening.

Arriving down in Ocotillo The deadly heat of at least 110 (45 cel.) degrees hit me. It was shortly past noon and not only that I could not stand this much heat, I was burning slowly as well. Sunscreen, even with a factor of 80 which gets reapplied often, goes only that far. So I decided to wait out some of the worst heat in a restaurant. The only one next to the gas station off the Hwy exit was closed and the woman cashier told me there would be a bar and a cafe in town (population 296), she recommended the bar because they had the better air condition. I went there could not refrain from buying one beer and some lays chips, that I wouldn't get drunk. I had taken Picture of this bar, when Andreas and I passed through last Thanksgiving, because the whole town looked so desperate and the name "Lazy Lizzard" was really fitting, The owner is called Lady Lizzard and she seems to be a crack at her own dart championships.

After I voiced my desire to stay until it would cool down a bit from the worst midday heat, she said, than you need to stay at least until 5, but it will not really cool down until night falls. So I took my bike and started out for the last 27 miles to El Centro, I was kind of hungry too and I thought that I could get something to eat in the next town Plaster City. They were like,:There is really not a lot there. Which was the biggest understatement ever, as Plaster City is only a huge Plasterfactory (or mine don't know really) which took up both sides of the road. After real long sufferings with nearly boiling soda and water nleft in my bottles I came to mobilehome which had no car in front but a tree to provide some shade, I sat down and tried to wave down a guy with my empty waterbootle who tried to enter the busy street from the Plaster City to town. As I nearly reached him he took off sarcastilly waving - what an asshole. This didn't go unnoticed: The door off the Trailler opened and an old fat woman in a polyester nightgown and with many open sores everywhere pushed her walker out. I asked her for some cold water, which she got out of her house in only 25 minutes. I paid with listening to her many illnesses and how her Husband is now in the hospital and her kid gets her to visit him. When I asked her whether she was feeling save alone this far out. She gave me a leery look and said: I got seven guns"" - another even meaner look at me, whom she seemed to have recognized for what I am - "and I got a permit to kill!" On that note she inched back into her house and I mounted my bike with wonderful fresh and cool water.

Finally I reached Seeley which was only about 4 miles from El Centro where I had booked two rooms with the Senior rebate and Justin was supposed to wait for me. I stopped at the store got a Mexican frozen fruitbar, another cold drink and tried to leave but after 100 meter I had a flat front tire. When I came to the motel I jumped first in the pool and than I told Justin that I would not be sure if I could survive more days with heat like that on really ugly and bad roads.

30th of September, San Diego to Pine Valley California

Garmin says: 83.34 km - 3793 cal - 1821m ascent

At 7:35h this morning I finally climbed on my bike and started pedaling. I was pretty afraid of this first day, which started with 50 miles of climbing in scorching heat. Like promised the weather was very hot and I was already pretty shot after 30 miles. The route is really not pretty and I would recommend to anybody who would like to cycle cross country to create an own route rather than following the adventure cycling one, which basically follows really big roads. I had absolutely no fun on HWY 8 climbing against headwinds and having cars and truck flying by. Nevertheless I reached Pine Valley and remembered that Andreas and I had been cycling around here last Thanksgiving. There are so many pretty little roads around here, that I think, I would have found a more attractive option to go east. I will have to ride more miles to make up for the short ride today. My average needs to be 75 miles (120 km) in order to arrive in time.

Als ich gerade mal 10km gefahren bin kamen von hinten 3 junge Burschen, die wirklich schnell fuhren und recht heftig schwitzten. Besonders bemerkenswert war ihre Kleidung: schwarze Polyesteranzughosen gehalten von Hosentraegern mit langaermligen Polyesterhemden drunter.
I just had three beers and would very much like to sleep now... more probably tomorrow.

29th of September

We left this morning in foggy Morro Bay after a shared eggs Benedict breakfast at the harbor, where we could look at seals frolicking , tourist getting taught how to paddle, a huge rock and the power station. I let Justin drive again and I think he will do just fine without me. So tomorrow morning I will finally start riding and I am really nervous about it. I hope that I will not be too tired in the evening.

We found after cruising around in SD finally a Motel near the Airport and close to the point, at which I would like to start. The owner is an Indian Lady who lived in Florida before she settled here. Justin was impressed how I haggled the price down, but actually it was just her who did it. I just played along, some people are happier if they can negotiate, although I hate it, I can do it.

Justin was today the first time ever in hot springs. I am still smelling of sulfor and need to take a shower now and after that I have to sleep in order to be ready for tomorrow. I hope so much that it will not be hotter than today, which was already to hot for me. My photos are at
http://www.kodakgallery.com (password is Meta).

Morgen geht es richtig los und ich bin froh, dass ich wieder ein wenig allein sein kann, nach zwei Tagen bin ich schon voellig ueberfordert von der Jugend,besonders dann, wenn ich gefragt werde, wo dieses San Diego denn nun eigentlich auf der Karte ist.