Day 20 - Fort Hancock to Van Horn

Today is the San Francisco Randonneurs NorCal Flèche. Tom (replacing me as captain), Brooks, Keith, Robbins and Charlie left Alameda this morning and will ride 363 km in 24-hours finishing at Crepes on Cole in San Francisco. Along the way they will cross the Benicia-Martinez Bridge, pass through Fairfield, Napa, Calistoga, Healdsberg, Guerneville, Petaluma, Fairfax, and cross the Golden Gate Bridge.

I'm not too clear on their team name. I've been told that the name is "Brooks Brothers" because they all ride Brooks saddles (except, of course, for Brooks who would never ride a leather saddle, but gets a pass anyway for some reason). I've also heard their the team name is "The Honey Badgers", because they just don't care. Either way, Godspeed boys!

I called them just before their 7:30 AM start to wish them luck, they were all eating breakfast at La Penca Azul in Alameda, bonding as a team, except for one, can you guess who was missing?

It was Brooks, of course. He just an outlier I guess, going his own way.

We lucked out in the morning, no wind. In fact no wind for the first 40-miles which got us all of the way to Sierra Blanca. We did, however, have one obstacle in the morning, a 1000' climb. It really wasn't bad, the grade was manageable, just long. Funny thing, about half way up the climb we had to exit the freeway shoulder and off-road across the roadside gravel to an adjacent frontage road. Fun, and not the last strange freeway segment on the day. I guess we could have stayed in the freeway, but the map said "exit" so we exited.

At the top of the climb we finally met "The Walker". We had been hearing stories about a young man walking across the country to honor his father who recently past away. Almost everyday someone we ran across would say "we saw the walker" or "keep an eye out for the walker" and tell us his backstory the three wheeled stroller he was pushing. He was becoming a myth-like figure in our minds.

Turns out his name is Brian and he's very nice. He's been accepted to a PhD program at Stanford and will start shortly. He seemed a little embarrassed when we told him we'd been hearing stories about him for days and that all of the cyclists were passing along his story. He did agree that he'd spoken with a lot of cyclists.

After "The Walker" it was back on to the freeway to Sierra Blanca and lunch, but first Immigration where we waited inline with freeway traffic to confirm to The border control office that, yes, we are citizens. He didn't ask to see ID so I guess he believed us.

Jerry ask him were we could eat lunch which seemed odd to me. I've always felt "yes, sir" and "no, sir" we're all the conversation one wanted with border control, but Jerry's a chatty guy. The border control guy said he didn't know and waved us on.

We did find a place to eat: Curly's BBQ and we all had the BBQ Brisket sandwich, but with different sides: onion rings, fried green beans and potato salad. All fantastic. The bad news is that Sierra Blanca appears to be a town on the decline, as a result Curly's will close at the end of the month, it's a shame.

After BBQ? 35 miles in to a wicked head wind. Groan!! And the last of the three interesting freeway moments. After grinding along an empty frontage road for twenty mile we reached a fork so I stopped to wait for J&M to discuss which way to go. "Neither" was Jerry's reply, the map says to cross the freeway and ride in the opposite shoulder. What!?! Sure 'nuf that's what the map said so that's what we did. Texas is a funny place.