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…”