day 11 -- big bend to el paso (embellished)

and then off again...repacked the bike for the trip north. this is one of the less liberating aspects of the ride. the new bike has large saddlebags and I've kept the gear limited enough. but the arrangement is still slightly complicated. I have a bike-specific framed bag that fits over the rear backrest and sits on the back seat. that's simple enough, but to it I've lashed the hiking backpack, which is suspended over the back fender. ideally I'd have a luggage rack to support it, but as it is is rests on top of the license plate. the whole deal is stable enough, but of course it's hard not to glance in the rearview to check it once in a while on a 350-mile ride. inevitably it's not perfectly centered, and it's easy to get a touch obsessive about it. but this ride was stunning enough to distract me from the rearview...long empty roads from the edge of the park north to alpine and then from marfa to van horn. another six or seven storm systems to dodge...by this point I'd realized that no matter how much I wanted to I didn't have any control over the situation. but it was fun to pretend, even if it took away some of the sit back and relax vibe. climbing into the first town above the desert (alpine) there was even a towering dust devil visible from a mile away, a wispy dust column that probably wouldn't have been too fun to ride through. but it spun off harmlessly. crossing west from alpine into marfa, though, there was a solid wall of purple grey that was more than the two minute splashes I'd ridden through so far. they were without fail rain under sunny skies, so sparkling pavement and big drops but no risk of a long-term soak. this was different...a slow-moving giant. enough to have me scanning escape routes...best bet was a pavilion built from which people can gather to watch the mysterious 'marfa lights' (moonlight reflecting off mica? highway lights? swamp gas?). I could just squeeze by the barriers and pull into the broad bay of the men's bathroom. but of course the highway veered off to the north just enough to skirt the edge.

I thought about tarrying in marfa for a while since an eccentric high school friend lived there for a while, but the storm kept me moving onto the 'no services for 75 miles' stretch into van horn. opened up on this dead straight stretch, an immense plain between low ridges, grassy scrub with a handful of cattle herds. plus a possible explanation for the 'marfa lights' -- a USAF experimental dirigible station with a huge white unmanned blimp tethered next to the road. absolutely breathtaking and impossible to capture with a camera...exactly the landscape that this trip is about. nobody around for miles, just the bike and the mountains and the grass. and occasional jackrabbits, once close enough to see one have to drop his ears to squeeze through a barbed wire fence. after a late lunch of carnitas at chuy's in van horn, which heavily advertised the fact that it's a regular stop on john madden's bus trips along I-10, I turned north toward the guadalupe mountains and then one more long stretch into el paso. and here one more thing to worry about. for the first time I was in a gasoline situation. 4.9 gallon tank, getting about 50 mpg for most of the trip. 135 miles since the last fill up, so though I'd never really pushed it to empty, all the way to el paso was out of range. but there were a couple of towns on the map, so I figured it was fine. 14 miles to salt fork, then another 23 to cornudas. salt fork was nothing more than a greyhound bus stop cafe -- charming in itself because that's the kind of place where people always board the greyhound in movies...but I'd never seen one. dusty highway, one shop, no visible population center. I think I had just missed its opening hours since I'd seen a greyhound roll by at the last intersection. figured that cornudas might look the same, and google-text confirmed that. so it was either backtrack to pine spring at the guadalupe national park or take a shot with dell city -- 35 miles out of the way. I was in press-on mode, so I hated the detour, but the serendipity was perfect in the end. past salt flats and then into the 'city,' population 415, now very much a transient community of migrant workers. that at this time of evening was under a cloud of irrigation spray. just as I pulled into the only gas station, manuel was closing up and walking toward home. incredible timing again...without this I would have had to backtrack another 40 miles (and hope). I think it was evident that I was desperate, though, given the unlikelihood that anyone would randomly visit dell city. he had shut everything down, so we went exact change, which was just $6 since I didn't have anything else smaller than $20. (in retrospect I should have filled up and offered the change in thanks). enough for a couple of gallons. looped back to the highway on another road, which of course led to a lone gas station that I would have found had I pressed on another couple of miles. ah, but no hurry. long ride into the blinding sunset in el paso and the shock of the strip malls and traffic of a big city. ugh.