P4W2 Day 17 Comstock - Campwood, TX 108 miles

On another day of tough headwind I also battled a rough road for the full distance today.  Pour Oreo cookies into really gooey pancake dough, bake to a crisp, and then try driving a match box car over it...that was the best analogy I could come up with in riding an aluminum-framed touring bike over the chip-sealed roads today. 

The first 60 miles were flat, bleak, and trashy.  Unfortunately, the best part of Del Rio was looking at it in the rear-view mirror.  I needed some comic relief, and little did I know it would come in the form of a package waiting for me in the Bracketville, Texas post office.  My friend Chris sent me a nice sized bag of Hog bars, along with a good dose of his very original humor.  I was laughing so hard that the the postmaster wished me to leave her zip code.

After Bracketville, with 70 tough miles completed, I think I subtly said goodbye to the American southwest and said hello to the Texas hill country.  The scenery got pretty again.  I saw many deer, wild turkeys, and armadillos in just a few hours of late day pedaling.  Great horned owls hooted in the distance during one of many stops to eat still more food (~10,000 calories today, only 6 of 15 Hog bars left as I write this).  I got into river bottoms full of live oaks, of course an evergreen species familiar to folks who live or visit along the U.S. South Atlantic coast.   And I even crossed a couple shady spots with hickory trees, another sure sign that the P4W2 miles in the great American desert are about behind me.