Tag Archives: Travel Journal

Journal entries from my travels, whether they be by bicycle, train, plane, or automobile.

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Left the San Jon Motel minutes ago. Stopped at a traveler’s rest stop by the interstate for a coffee because I didn’t feel like going through the hassle, however slight, of making a cup in my room. Managed to spill it all over the counter. Cleaned the mess up with a nearby rag, but the whole incident is symbolic of my mental state.

That damnable, oppressive sky…

I’m obviously not as strong as I thought I was, or rather, I never gave it much thought. The point of the trip isn’t to prove—to who?, or myself—how strong I am mentally, emotionally, whatever. However, if trips such as this test one’s boundaries, well, consider mine tested. I’m ready to be home (but where exactly is that?). Or to make a home somewhere, at least for a little while, until I’m ready to test boundaries again.

Ha!…
Well, fuck.

The motel was decent enough. Clean, at least. And economical. No wi-fi, but that’s not a bad thing, and is more than likely a good thing. Small, white(ish), square room, barely large enough to squeeze the cheap furniture into and still leave room to walk around it all. Firm, queen-size bed, and an orange, tan, and brown shag carpet (the peak of luxury). A CRT television on a stand against the wall opposite the bed. Up and to the right of that, and hanging from a shelf of metal tubes, plastic coat hangers in the colors of America!. The shower mostly dribbled out water, like an infirm, elderly man in hospice drooling from the mouth, but at least it was hot.

The proprietor was a pleasant enough old man—originally from England, has been living in the States, California specifically, since 1978, but moved to San Jon, God only knows why, in 2008. He’s been running the motel since, alone but for his mouthy chihuahua. Maybe his wife, if he had one, died, and he felt like he could no longer stay there? Or it just became too expensive? Or both? Anyway, the lobby, if one should call it that, with its dirty, white walls and worn carpet, frayed along the edges, smelled of sour tuna fish. In the back room, which is hidden only slightly by a length of curtain, and from where the man materialized when I rang, a television is perpetually on. He lives, not a spartan existence, but a simple, spare, messy existence. A seemingly lonely, despondent existence. He is wallowing in a pig sty back there, and I’m left wondering how reflective that is of his state of mind. The motel clearly gets little business; another fifteen or twenty minutes west (by car) is Tucumcari, a town with a greater wealth of more up-to-date places to stay. Much easier to continue driving, unless of course you’re heading east, and maybe that’s how he gets all his customers (though, in that case, why not stop twenty minutes sooner?). Too, he most certainly gets only the most budget-conscious types passing through who are happy to get by for a night with very little. It is peculiar.

San Jon itself appears to have nothing to offer to anyone aside from this rest stop, an Indian restaurant, and the motel. One has to live and work here to get anything of significance or value from the town, and even that I question. But there is no denying the landscape is surely magnificent, or would be on a less dreary day. I’m not getting the best of New Mexico right now, and that’s reflected in how I feel.

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Today is one of those lonely, melancholy days when I don’t feel like pedaling my bike, going anywhere, doing anything. The dour, overcast, cold weather doesn’t encourage joviality, and its endless stretch of soggy, grey clouds along one continuous horizon that encircles me like a purse seine has me fenced in, physically and emotionally. What might it take to encourage my lips to stretch themselves into even a mere semblance of a smile?

Here I sit, in a friendly gas station convenience store just off the interstate in Adrian, TX. I’ve unsuspectingly wandered into Mountain Time, or, no, I haven’t actually*. I am apparently simply incapable of reading the clock on my phone. Or I am confused by the passage of time.

The few people I have talked to here are all that is keeping my spirits up, if I should define them in such a way, and I’m not sure that I should. But I am no longer dangling from the nadir of despondency. That I can say. The chili and hot chocolate have provided comfort and encouragement as well. That warmth! Not just of the meal, but of the cheerfulness of the two ladies behind the counter, too. Talking to them has been like warming myself in front of a stranger’s—now a friend’s—hearth; fire once stoked, embers now softly glowing, the cast-iron stove having absorbed their heat now emanating it throughout the room like the passing of a baton in a relay.

I’m tempted to linger longer as I’m reluctant to go back out into the chill, but it’s five o’clock, and I really must get back on the road.

The baton is in my hand.

*I crossed the border into New Mexico an hour and a half later, where I did actually cross into Mountain Time

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The most brutally difficult day on my bike yet.

I hope this is the last time I write feel the need to write that.

Things started well enough with my front tire nearly bereft of air. I discovered this after breakfast, and after breaking camp, and after having packed everything onto my bike, naturally. Irritated, and rather perplexed I removed everything and proceeded to look for a hole of some kind in the tube. Nothing doing. Now even more perplexed I added air to the tire and finally rolled away from Black Kettle a half hour later.

It was a short three or four miles north that I was to cycle before turning west, and I managed that with aplomb. Having accomplished that task I was immediately walloped by a strong cross-headwind from the south-west, and I wished that my destination lie more immediately north rather than west and south as it did. I was to continue directly west for approximately 45 miles, cycling into Texas, before turning south-west for another 15 in order to reach the next town on the route. That’s 60 miles of basically nothing. That’s actually not entirely true. There was the headwind, of course, and there were many, many, many hills. And there was plenty of grass, and some scattered trees. So, this portion of the day which lasted far, far too long mainly consisted of a series of outbursts of cursing from me from time to time while pedaling along at about eight or nine miles per hour, often about half that for having to go up a hill while being battered by a headwind. It was hot, but I had to conserve water because I was moving so slowly (yet with tremendous effort) so I knew it would take at the very least an hour more than I had anticipated the previous evening to make it to Miami. I also carried little in the way of snacks with me, and I consumed all of those within the first thirty miles.

The few prominent memories I have of this portion of the day’s ride, besides what I’ve already related, are as follows: being passed by a foursome of motorcyclists just before the Texas state line, and then passing them as they pulled off the road to snap pictures of the sign, then being passed again by them ten minutes later and thinking that I chose the wrong mode of travel; stopping beneath one of the few trees not on the other side of the fence, which ran along beside me on both sides of the road for as long as there was a road, to eat all my snacks in one go; a decrepit and caved in old ranch house that I tried and failed to get a good photo of; and, lastly, several miles after turning south-west onto a new highway, dropping down in elevation a few hundred feet, loosing the dry grasslands and rolling hills and finding myself cycling amongst small, stunning plateaus erupted like mushrooms from the sandy ground, and the lushness of trees, and bushes, and the color green to the left and to the right of me, everywhere but on or near the plateaus in the middle-distance.

I arrived in Miami and demolished a surprisingly delicious burger and fries at what appeared to be the only restaurant in town, and consumed more than a liter of water. There being no decent place to stay in town I decided to cycle the next 24 miles to Pampa where I would stay in a much over-priced (as they always are) Best Western. I had one more lengthy climb before the terrain flattened out, the wind lessened and changed direction slightly, and the asphalt improved considerably (I had crossed a county line). Coincidentally enough, all this happened in about a span of ten minutes. After this I scooted along at nearly 20 mph and arrived in Pampa in close to half the time I had expected. It was a glorious end to an absolutely horrid and long day.

Now I am currently eating at the Texas Rose Steakhouse next door to the inn. The name certainly sounds charming enough, though the staff exude none of that. Everyone is just scurrying around like mice or ants, or standing in a corner chewing the cud like a couple of old cows in a field.

The place itself is a squat, wooden building erected over a concrete floor; square, hardwood tables all around, sort of old-timey-like if you might imagine. I can see them all being pushed out of the way from time to time, and great, joyous dances taking place, the community all gathered together, people holding hands, laughing, and the occasional boy and girl, twinkles in their eyes, sneaking off unbeknownst to their parents. There is a band playing on a small stage set up in front of the big stone fireplace over which is mounted a stag’s head. Kegs will be tapped, the beer will flow and many a person may be found stumbling through a dance as the night moves along, and perhaps even found on the floor or passed out in one of the booths that line the walls by night’s end. But here I am munching on a roll, waiting for my food, my imagination brandished like a shield in front of me, and the waitress comes over with my chicken-fried steak (the first and likely only one I will ever have), and all this melts away as I’m seized back into reality and look around me and think about where I am and realize I must have been dreaming because these people want nothing to do with me. They want my money only, and they want to go home.

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Further observations of Oklahoma:
The landscape, geography, topography smoothing out, like two ends of a coil pulled farther and farther apart. Slowly. Mile after mile. The hills longer. Gentler. Not so sharp and jagged, but worn like an old, old saw blade.

Hay baled in bales, each rolled up like a single piece of taffy and placed musically throughout their fields, like the pits in the plates of an antique music box, ticking little teeth to play a silent score. The score of the tractor and the farmer, the flycatcher and kingbird, of the changing seasons, and, once, of the sweat and toil that is still practiced in small pockets, remote areas of the world where the people still rely on milk from their cows to survive the winter, and the hay that they grow sustains them in their mountain villages. It is a music that often isn’t heard, and one need no musical instruments to play it, nor a knowledge of theory or scales to understand it. It is the rhythm of a life lived simply, and it is felt in the blood and in the skin.

The ancient windmill erect and lonely in a field of wheat, it’s blades twisted and broken, no longer spinning freely, exuberantly in the rushing wind, but dangling from its axis like the shadow of a Calder mobile—sad, and delicate, and beautiful—or like Nanantatee’s “poor broken crutch of an arm” in H. Miller’s Tropic of Cancer.

The butterflies, just the size of a quarter, in chalky shades of yellow, blue and brown,
that dance across the highway, some singly, others in pairs—a duet in four dimensions, turning round and round and round each other, swooping up and down in elegant dress, like some Japanese in his-and-hers best kimonos celebrating the new day like it is a new year.

The little beetles with their glinting, hard carapaces that shine like plate armor, skittering across the road, legs moving like a pianists’s fingers playing a prestissimo.

The traffic on the interstate, which parallels route 66, and seems to sail by in the distance like ships on an horizon.

Clouds at the end of the day which look as if they were applied to the sky with a palette knife—a steely, grey-blue smeared onto an aged, slightly yellowed canvas.

Fields of wheat, golden-blonde and pea-green shimmering under the afternoon sun, every stalk leaning in unison with the wind, beautiful like a head of hair, like the Greek gods, like cracked and ancient pottery, like archaeological sites going on and on seemingly forever like the Euphrates and Tigris rivers through Mesopotamia when giants still strode the land.

A sign advertising astronaut Thomas P. Stafford as from Weatherford, OK,
And another sign advertising Garth Brooks as from Yukon.

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Wednesday, 05/11

Iron Tree Coffee in El Reno, OK. Not sure I feel like writing. Not sure why I should bother. Nearly 3:30. I feel pressed for time. So often I feel pressed for time.

Small town. Slow town. Quiet town. The coffee here could be better (can’t it always? (most times)), but it’s better than many places, and well appreciated regardless of any complaints I might make. Two high school kids and a middle-schooler come in and don’t order anything. And that’s okay. That’s the type of place it is. That’s the type of town this is. There’s an acoustic singer/songwriter playing over the speakers, and the song is stirring me in melancholy. No one else in this vastness, this cavernous space with its beautiful, coppery, tin ceiling some twelve feet overhead, and bare brickwalls, but for myself, the bored barista, and these three kids. It all lends to the atmosphere of loneliness, and this sad bastard with his guitar and his dismal lyrics echoing through the room…

I ate lunch at a marvelous, little diner called Sid’s: est. 1990. Just a tiny, red building on the corner of Rt. 66 and Choctaw. Charming older lady, probably in her 70’s took my order and showed me pictures on her phone of a festival that occurred in town the past weekend when they cooked an 800 pound hamburger….

The place is famous for its grilled onion burger, so I had to order it. And a 1/4 order of fries, which was plenty large enough. And a tasty milkshake. Everything was delicious, and seated at the low, bar in such friendly, comfortable, snug surroundings I was put into quite the mood of joviality. Maps on the wall behind, stuck in a hundred places, at least, with pushpins of the many visitors’ origins. Freedom Fries, and Freedom Toast on the menu were a humorous, though sad, because I doubt not ironic, touch. It seemed a happy place. Now I’m in this cafe listening to this morose, sad-bastard music, the ennui thick in the air, filling the space. The internet was nice to use. I think I’m going to go now. I have forty more miles to do.

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Tuesday 05/10

Some days, many days, I don’t know what the hell I’m doing out here. I wonder, “why?”
I don’t wonder, “why?”; that implies much thought. I ask myself, “why?” Or, I shout it.

There is no need for reflection, because I already know. And regardless of any frustrations, of discomfort or pain, I know that the next day I’ll be ready, perhaps even excited, to continue on.

It’s amazing—man’s capacity to forget.

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Friday, 05/06

Oklahoma observations
thus far: flat
level, even; hills (east of Tulsa):
rolling, undulating,
up, then down, then up, then down,
rolling long and rolling slow like a rolling ocean swell
from one horizon—
that may simultaneously look so small
(just a piece of thread caught and held in the wind)
yet so immense it is,
and ever, and ever, and ever out of reach,
—to another,
ripples on a pond from a thrown stone

Trees speckle the plains that in places are swollen and bulging,
writ in harmony with the landscape they tie together
like various notes on a musical score—a soundless melody;
Scissor-tailed flycatchers and eastern kingbirds perched on wires and fences,
alert and fluttering off at my approach along the road;
Cows sprinkle the landscape all across
like poppy seeds on a bagel, or fleas on a dog’s pelt;
And the roads—long and black like cauterized wounds threading their way through

Wasn’t intending this to be a “poem,” but I like it more than just a list, and it provided me with some entertainment—the editing.

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Wednesday, 05/03

Woke up to sunlight streaming in through curtains that wouldn’t close. Fell back asleep for a couple hours. Woke up later to hammering and a throwing around of what sounded like weights on the roof. I’m only here because I couldn’t find the home of the woman who invited me to camp on her property. By the time I had cycled an additional eight or nine miles in search of this mysterious land it was dark and nearly nine o’clock. The motel sign shown like a beacon of dollar bills raised high aflame, and drew my exhausted, lazy self to it like a moth. I was photographing for a few short seconds in my room though when the camera battery died, so I guess this was a good thing—I suppose I say that as a way of justification, though I don’t need to.

These places all serve the same continental breakfast: cereals, waffle maker, bad coffee, bad juice, bad biscuits, bad gravy, bad pastries, bad bread, bad…. Here, there are two pieces of sausage left that look just like two little dog turds, like someone’s little chihuahua took a squat right over the pan while no one was looking. The juices in the pitchers taste nothing like their respective labels. Two women are rearranging the breakfast bar. I feel like telling them to stop wasting their time, that rearranging the display won’t make the food or drink palatable, or look more appealing.

While I’m sitting here a huge, dark-skinned girl walks in to fill out an application. She’s wearing black and white basketball shorts, black hi-tops, and a black button-down shirt that doesn’t fit her. I feel pity and sadness for her. Not necessarily because she’s applying to work here, but because she appears so tired and down-trodden, because she likely knows nothing of the wider world, and is likely not well-educated, like she’s living in a world where every move she makes is one made out of desperation because she sees no future for herself, and, worst of all, sees no present and has no idea how to fix this except to get a job, to create an income, to create some semblance of stability in her life, but she’s not even sure if this is right, and this is what most everyone is doing, and yet no one seems to see that stability is an illusion, that we all stride upon shifting, slippery, rocky ground, some perhaps more so than others, but what really matters is that one knows that, and moves forward anyway, for there is no rock face that isn’t crumbling, no plains that aren’t susceptible to drought, no forest fire-retardant, and no lake immune to pollution.

After sitting at a table in a corner, filling out an application, the girl turns it in to the ladies—who are still playing with the breakfast display—and slowly shuffles from the hotel like a despondent elephant too tired to lift its feet, and tied with a heavy, thick rope to a colossal sandstone block which she pulls behind her at the bidding of some cruel, unidentifiable master who stands atop it whip in hand.

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Yesterday cycled over the Boston Mountains, the most western mountain range within the Ozark Plateau. I thought it to be pretty easy, but my expectations of difficulty were quite high after reading other persons’ online acccounts of having cycled them.

Traffic was light, as most drivers opt to take a faster route along the interstate which more or less parallels Route 71, north-south, linking the Fort Smith area to Fayetteville.

It was gorgeous.

Everywhere but for the road winding up the mountains in front of me was fluffy, white clouds obscuring a blue sky, sunlight intermittently throbbing through the occasional break in the clouds, like catching a glimpse of a beating heart through gaps in a shroud of pericardial tissue; the greenery of trees rising up on either side of me or, sometimes, only on one side of me as in places the lower slope of the mountains fell precipitously and only the tops of those trees there were capable of reaching up to me; and broad rock faces in a multitude of grey and brown hues, some cascaded over with water, some merely trickling with water, some moss and lichen covered, some dry and bare, appearing so hard, so solid that one couldn’t ever imagine them being worn away, even over the course of millennia of millennia. No noise but for my tires on the asphalt, the birds in the trees, water playing over rocks, rushing through culvert and gully, and the occasional truck or car, or gang of motorcycles.

At the highest point of the climb is a small, antiquated gift shop and museum. Nothing of interest there beyond the view overlooking Fort Smith Lake, and other ridges of the mountain range carpeted thickly in oak, hickory, pine and cedar. The “museum” itself is a bit peculiar, but worth the five or ten minutes it takes to look around. It is a small room to the right of the entrance of the building, all the walls lined with tall glass cases, the glass cases filled with everything from stone arrowheads, to antique dolls, antique condiment containers, kerosene lamps, pistols, leatherwork, farm implements, a four foot long rattlesnake preserved in a narrow, glass tube, an even longer rattlesnake skin, killed on the property, mounted on a board, the head of an old show horse that had performed on the property for twenty years before it died of what (and when), I don’t know….

In the store one could purchase tumbled stones, raw stones, geodes to crack open, hummingbird feeders, cedar blocks for smoking food, etc., jams, jellies and sauces, dolls, walking sticks. It was a quiet place, though I imagine it saw a lot more business before the interstate was built a few years back. Now that has become the main north-south artery for the region and few people travel this road. It’s great for cyclists, but not at all good for the few businesses that relied on that regular traffic. There are a good many derelict motels, inns and other buildings that I passed along the ridge. Now, I suppose it is considered the slower, scenic route, but most of the time that’s not what most people want. They want to get from point A to point B as quickly and efficiently as possible, granted, I’m betting the views from the interstate aren’t too bad.

I wonder what will become of Artist’s Point in another five or ten years.