After leaving Hope and The Good Sam Club on November 10, it was an easy ride to Texarkana on the border of Texas and Arkansas.

         I had a great deal of difficulty finding the next State Park, which was recommended by the "Good Samaritans". I finally found it in the dark and decided to stay there for a couple days. The next day, I discovered that the showers did not work and there were no laundry facilities but the campground was very quiet. Bill and his wife Nadine were camped beside me and he spent his days fishing. When he returned with his catch, they worked together cleaning and filleting the fish. They then packaged them and put them in the freezer. They offered me some fish for dinner and Nadine set me up with a deep fryer and breadcrumbs for coating. I made a catfish sandwich with raisin bread and ketchup - odd but tasty! Bill's brother and his wife had arrived earlier and we all sat around the campfire in the evening.

         On November 13, back on Highway 67, my odometer approached 2000 km. Two days later when I was taking down my tent, a guy (Kim) who was very interested in my bike approached me. He invited me to his place and I followed him back for two miles in the direction I had come from. Kim, his wife Elizabeth and their two children, Noah and Kennan, lived on a farm with cats, dogs, chickens and goats running loose. Goats even went into the house. Kim worked at a Target Store (similar to K-Mart) but he had a workshop where he did carpentry, which he preferred. He admitted to being a hippie and said he would like to form a commune on the property. They let me use their computer and I looked at my website for the first time. As I prepared to leave, Kennan gave me some butter he had made, and Elizabeth gave me six hard-boiled eggs.

         On reaching Dallas, I spent the afternoon around Dealy Plaza touring the museum dedicated to John F. Kennedy and admiring the monument built to him. I had gotten so absorbed in the Kennedy story that I forgot to have lunch and it had become late to find a place to stay. I arrived at the YMCA only to find that it was closed. I then headed to the bus station where you can usually find a map, and there found the location of a city park. To get to the park, I had to ride through a rough neighborhood. On the way through, one of the brothers yelled at me to "get my lily white ass back to the east of Texas". I didn't stop to tell him that I had come from a little further east than that! I found the park and tried to be inconspicuous in a treed area with picnic tables. Soon after I had crawled into my tent, a dog started barking at the tent threatening to blow my cover. I stuck my head out, hissed at him and told him to get lost. He promptly left.

         Out on Highway 67, it was a steady climb out of Dallas as I headed to Cedar Hill State Park where I stayed for two nights. After that, I found a nice city park in Cleburne and met Robert Sparks (a lawyer) and his wife. He was very interested in my bike and told me that he also rode a type of recumbent. The next morning Robert returned, this time bringing me a McDonald's breakfast and a large cup of hot coffee along with some Gatorade and power bars for the road. I thanked him profusely as he left for work.

         I continued on to Dinosaur Valley State Park and, on the way, I passed the creationist museum that claims to have proved that man and dinosaurs lived at the same time. Unfortunately, it was closed for the Thanksgiving Holiday.

         On November 22, I arrived in Stephenville and decided to stay in a city park for a couple of days rest. The couple camping beside me had come to Stephenville to watch their grandson play football at the university and they invited me to come to the game.

         I left Stephenville on November 25 and, that night, stayed in a motel in Comanche. On the way, I passed a billboard advertising steaks and burgers at Humphrey Pete's Restaurant. My thought for the cows standing under the billboard was, "Too bad they can't read English!" The next day in Brownwood, I went to a Wal-Mart to find some wool socks and an emergency blanket. I found the socks but not the blanket. The City Park where I camped was high on a hill overlooking Brownwood. As I was preparing supper, I heard on the radio that a big winter storm was headed our way.

         The next day it was very cool and I dressed in layers hoping to combat the cold, but it was a loosing battle. I stopped in Santa Anna 20 miles down the road and went to the library to get warm as I read about Texas in the Encyclopedia Britannica. When I was in the library, ice pellets started to come down. I hurried to the grocery store to stock up on supplies and then checked into the Texas Ranger Motel. In the morning, I awoke to see everything covered in a layer of ice with a thin layer of snow on top and I was forced to stay in the motel for two days.

         I headed out on the third day but it was still very chilly. I felt like I was getting a cold, so I stayed in another motel in Ballinger. On December 1, the weather improved and the terrain was flat. I arrived in a State Park near St Angelo, which was a desolate place with no trees and no shelter from the wind. I set up camp near a lake which had appeared to have dried up.

         As I continued along Highway 67, the land became more and more desolate and I started to see tumbleweed. At one point, a helicopter appeared out of nowhere and did a complete circle around me. Further down the road, I noticed a white pickup truck parked on the shoulder. I had heard on the news that the local police were on high alert for possible attacks on power facilities.

         After a few days, the weather improved, but the wind was fierce. I passed an area with acres and acres of wind generators. When I stopped to take some video pictures of the wind generators, the same helicopter swooped down over me and again I noticed the white pickup truck parked on the side of the road.

         On December 5, I camped east of Girvin and, in the morning, I realized I was out of water. Girvin was the only town remaining before I reached my next destination, Fort Stockton. I arrived in town and saw only five buildings on the corner of Highways 67 and 11. I found some water at the Post Office. On leaving, I decided to shoot some video footage of myself riding by this Post Office in the middle of nowhere. Pulling off the side of the road to set up, both the front and back tires were punctured by thorns. I then decided to take some video of the repair job. As I was riding away, there was a rubbing sound and I realized that I had not installed the front wheel properly - another delay. I finally got going again, only to get another thorn in the rear tire! By the time I fixed yet another flat, I had lost two hours. I stopped on a bridge for lunch, safe from the thorns. I started a conversation with a passing farmer who made a living by raising emus. He told me that he got flat tires on his truck from these thorns. I was now in a paranoid state keeping my eyes glued to the road and trying to steer around the little branches of thorns randomly strewn all over the shoulder of the road. It was like going through a minefield! I finally reached Interstate 10, which would take me all the way to Tucson, Arizona, my destination for Christmas.

         After such a bad start to the day, I found that Highway 10 was flat and the wind had diminished so I made it into Fort Stockton as the sun was setting. I stayed in the Comanche Motel Hostel for the next two days, toured around town, took some videos of the Christmas lights and sent some e-mail from the library.

         I left Fort Stockton on December 9, with Balmorhea State Park 50 miles away as my next destination. Arriving in the town of Balmorhea just as the sun was setting, I decided to stay at a motel instead of trying to reach the campground in the dark.

         The towns now became further and further apart and the landscape became starker. As the next town had no motel and the town after that was too far away, I camped in a picnic area about 20 miles down the road the next night. This picnic area proved to be a very popular rest stop for all the transport trucks in the west of Texas as well. They left their rigs running all night and, as a result, I had to contend with the smell of exhaust and the noise.

         The next day, back on Highway 10, I continued uphill against a fierce wind. It was very difficult to keep the bike on the road especially when the transport trucks flew past. I was only able to make 6 miles per hour and had to stop constantly to rest. At one point, an enormous gust of wind combined with a transport truck lifted the front end of the bike off the road and I tumbled over into the ditch. After about 10 miles, I stopped for lunch on a bridge when it started to rain. I took shelter under the bridge until the sky cleared. As I got back on the road again, the wind had died down and I noticed I had reached a plateau, which was covered in fog. I finally reached Van Horn, Texas, and spent another night with the noisy transport trucks and trains rumbling past.

         The next day, it was cold and windy again and, when I started out of town, I realized I would be going uphill. Deciding that it would be too cold to ride, I returned to Van Horn and found a cheap motel. The next morning I woke up to a thin layer of snow covering the ground, so I decided to stay in the motel another day.

         The weather warmed a bit and I started the long climb towards the Sierra Blanca. After that it was downhill to the Rio Grande, the border between Texas and Mexico. I was slowed down by broken vehicle reflectors that are imbedded in the shoulder of the road. As I rode along the Rio Grande, the land flattened out, and pecan orchards and cotton fields replaced the desert. On December 16, I reached El Paso.

         I felt that I must have been nearing Mexico because Spanish now seemed to be the predominant language. The first day in El Paso, while I was out shopping, I met Pedro. He jumped out of his car as I was passing and started talking about my bike. He then invited me to his place for a beer, which turned out to be directly in front of his parked car. I sat on the porch of a badly run-down house with Pedro and his friend from California, drinking beer and listening to Rush pounding out of a ghetto blaster. We were joined by another of their Latin friends and, when it started to get cold, the party moved into the Cadillac. They bought me a burrito from a lady who was passing by with a cart filled with burritos, as well as some deep-fried fish from a restaurant. I washed it all down with good American beer. Pedro offered to let me sleep in the Cadillac, but I graciously declined and left for the youth hostel.

         On December 18, after biding farewell to Pedro, I started the climb out of El Paso. I had torn a hole in my tent a few nights before so I stopped at an awning manufacturer to see if they had a kit to repair tents. The proprietors enthusiastically repaired my tent for only $10. One of the Mexicans there took my e-mail address and promised to give me some names of people that I could stay with in Mexico.

         By lunchtime, I had reached Anthony, on the Texas, New Mexico border. After 39 days, 862 miles, six flat tires and one snowstorm, I finally left Texas and entered New Mexico.

New Mexico & Arizona