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,