Daily Miles: 49.9
Total Miles: 1569
Max: 34.3
Avg: 10.3
Time on the Bike: 04:48:11
I got up before light and was out on the road by 7:30. I couldn’t help myself and stopped at the taco place to get more breakfast tacos before riding out of Austin. They were just so good I needed to have more of them. I would have been thinking all morning about these tacos if I simply left them behind to be eaten by someone else. And those people didn’t need or deserve them. I did. I had a long ride ahead of me.
Navigating out of Austin wasn’t too bad. The roads were busy but there were bike lanes and large shoulders for about 15 miles. After that it became more country again and the shoulder disappeared but there wasn’t much traffic. The roads today were like roller coasters and the climbs were longer and steeper. I’m in the heart of Texas Hill country now and going slower is just part of my new reality.
The scenery was impressive with legitimate hills and valleys. There is a lot of wide open space out here but most of it is owned by private ranches. Barbed wire fences line the road on both sides. Theres fences inside of fences and if you needed to get into the bush you literally wouldn’t be able to. People around here really don’t want anyone getting onto thier property. I suppose the fences could be for livestock but I didn’t really see any. A few cows here and there but mostly the fences looked like place holders for property boundaries.
I sat down for lunch at the entrance to Peredalles State Park. I watched the road and saw only two cars pass me the 30 minutes I sat there taking a break. This wasn’t a popular road and that was fantastic. While Leaving the park boundary there was a steep downhill that had me soaring at speeds over 30 mph. I had to brake suddenly because there was a river flowing over the road at the bottom. I rode through it slowly and miscalculated how deep it was. I ended up getting my right shoe soaked as I pedaled through it which was not great.
I’m in a small town called Johnson City tonight, camped out at an RV park just outside the city. This is the birthplace of our 36th president Lyndon B. Johnson. There’s a national historic park here were you can walk through his childhood homestead. LBJ was Vice President under John F Kennedy and assumed the presidency after the assassination. He later won the next election and ended up serving a full term as president. He was mostly known for his work with major legislation in regards to Social Security, Wilderness Preservation and Gun Control, and many historians believe he marked the peak of modern liberalism in the US. He ended his presidency with a low approval rating due to escalating US involvement in the Vietnam War and the many US casualties that resulted from it.
And that’s your history lesson for this evening, courtesy of Wikipedia. What would we do without the internet? Encyclopedia Bertanica I guess…
