Two detours deep into riding across Texas standing at the front desk at Panther Junction in Big Bend I’m explaining to the person that “No I promise I don’t mind I can totally just put my tent in the parking lot if there’s no sites I only have a handful of miles left in these legs…” and they would not let it go that there simply was not a single available spot remaining in the entire park and overnight parking was not allowed. Barely a minutes window of serendipitous timing dropped a group of gents in line next to me registering a river permit for a kayaking trip they had planned for the next few days, them overhearing my (admittedly amplified) frustrations, and offering to join them at their registered site. I was betting they half provided me an alibi if I wanted to then just go ⛺ off in the desert somewhere buuut I said fuck it; the five of us managed to get Omnium into the back of a truck and I rode with em downnn to their spot.
We chatted about what it means to adventure in these modern times, connected dots on numerous things I miss about Austin (where they all live, miss u Freebirds), watched the sun set and moon rise at the exact same moment, and (I’ve been debating sharing this or not) shared a few beers. Yeah whoops 1,027 days of sobriety and I fell off when a good Texas dude tossed me a Modelo as I’m sitting in the back of a pickup. They didn’t know and I never told them but it felt as if breaking my don’t-get-into-cars rule had already been discarded without any feelings of guilt and this was one more ehhhhfuckit let’s see where the night goes layer of frosting on this cake I’m baking.
Traveling by bicycle is a self administered gauntlet of challenging ups (and ups and ups and ups) with enough downs (wait are we talking about hills orrr) to level someone out. It persuades you to accept everything that shows up. Often there really are no other alternatives and yeah you gotta sleep in a baseball dugout, inside an abandoned ice cream shop, or with four guys you just met because overnight parking is not allowed.
