Day 4 – Motorpacing

Friday, October 24th

Kountze, TX to DeRitter, LA

So after our 125 mi day yesterday through hills and a headwind, today was supposed to be our easy 80 mi recovery ride on flat ground.  We woke up around 6 this morning, but milled about the motel a bit, eating a big breakfast, watching the news, working on the computer, watching the Discovery Channel (learned a lot about New York and the Free Masons), then we packed up our things, brought our bikes down in the elevator one at a time, turned in our keys and were on our way.  On the way to breakfast, Dad had warned me that my legs weren’t going to work for the first 20 miles or so of today’s ride, but told me to just keep pedaling and that my power would come back eventually.

We took Hwy 69/287 out of Kountze, met up with 327 and headed into Silsbee.  After a brief stop at a CVS in Silsbee for treatment for my very chapped lips, we left town along Hwy 96 having agree to eat lunch in Kirbyville, 30 miles away.  Just outside of Silsbee, we saw saw a couple of cyclists up ahead.  They were riding regular bikes and each was pulling a bob trailer of gear with a big red flag swinging on a five foot pole. They were fighting our next hill at about five mph and although my legs still weren’t working and his were probably not yet warmed up, Dad said, “Let’s smoke ‘em!”  So we pushed it up to around 23 mph and waved as we flew by them going uphill.  I didn’t get a good look, but Dad’s pretty certain the wife was a little pissed that her husband hadn’t bought her a faster bike.

We were pushing against a strong headwind all morning, so Dad talked me into letting him draft so the motor could pull us both through.  Our legs were still incredibly weak but we plugged along, made it as far as Buna (15 mi from Slisbee) and had to stop, too hungry to continue.  We followed our noses to a nice little fried chicken (and seafood and hamburger) joint that had wonderful, crispy, juicy chicken and some really tasty, fresh homemade fries.  Surprisingly though they only had unsweetened tea…how do you survive in the South without sweetened tea?

Other than lunch, nothing special happened most of the rest of the way.  Our legs, knees, ankles and thighs were still complaining about yesterday’s ride.  We’d deal with one pain just to have it pop up in another place; relieve one tendon’s pressure only to have another one start hurting.  Our muscles just DID NOT want to move. Our bodies’ response to us trying to bike another 80 miles was like a kid trying to keep their parent from going to work.

Kid: “Moooooom don’t go to work, I don’t want you to go!!!”
Mom: “I have to, sweetheart.  Now let go of my leg.” (Kid reluctantly unwraps from leg and looks around)
Kid: “You can’t leave without your keys!” (grabs keys and hides behind back)
Mom: “That’s cute, darling, but Mommy has to go. Give me the keys. Give me the keys, honey.”
Kid: “Okay…but you can’t leave without your purse!!!” (grabs purse and runs out of room)
Mom: “… Sigh” (leaves to retrieve purse)

The only trouble we ran into was when we were on a section of highway that was 2-lane with a 45 mph speed limit.  While plugging along on the shoulder, the lead card for an oversided load truck flew by us while laying on his horn then swerved on to the shoulder, cutting off Dad who was in the lead.  The oversized load, not far behind, barreled by at around 60 mph, filling his lane, part of the oncoming lane and some of the shoulder.  The back car flew by as well and the whole entorage disappeared around the bend.  Jerks.

We almost made it to DeRitter before I bonked.  We hadn’t eaten since lunch and I was completely out of fuel.  With some encouragement from Dad we crawled into the town and pulled over on the remnants of an old building’s foundation.  I half fell off the bike and pulled out the last of our food I could find – 4 flour tortillas, some peanut butter, honey and honey mustard.  Honey mustard on a tortilla never tasted so good (not that honey mustard on a tortilla is regular fare for me).

On the way into town, Dad took the last big hill at full power.  He climbed it at 27 mph!  And hurt his ankle doing so.  We iced it down when we got to our motel, and although it’s not swelling, it’s probably a sprain.

Mom had made reservations for us at the American’s Best Value Inn in DeRitter, and it turned out to be a beautiful motel – very clean and spacious with good beds, really hot water, and a cool TV.  There’s not much nearby in the way of restaurants, so we broke out the GPS to find out our options.  Not wanting to touch the bikes for the rest of the day, and being barely capable of putting one foot in front of the other, we decided to check out “A Ri Rang”, a restaurant the GPS posted at about 800 ft away.

After putting one foot in front of the other in the wrong direction, we turned around and saw the Bamboo Cafe right next to the motel.  “I guess A Ri Rang didn’t make it” I said as we walked up to the Bamboo Cafe.  Though the windows we could see the restaurant was empty and as we approached, the owner came up to the door and turned the lock.

“Are they closed?”
“No, the sign says they don’t close til nine.”
…
“Ohhhhh, he was UNLOCKING it for us.”

He smirked when we came in and invited us to have a seat at the table he had set for us while we were trying to figure out if he had locked us out or not.  The room had a distractingly wonderful, sweet aroma and the place was very well kept.  Everything on the menu looked great, but hungry as we were, we picked our meals pretty quickly, ate them with gusto when they arrived, cracked open and gobbled up our fortune cookies (“No profit grows where there is no pleasure to be had.” Reverse side: “LEARN CHINESE: Going or not? – [chinese characters I can't reproduce]? [pronounced] cheu be chue?” and Lucky numbers 17, 21, 24, 28, 30, 32) then got up to pay the check.

I forget how the conversation started, but they asked if we were moving to DeRitter and we told them we were just passing through on our bikes from Texas to Florida.

“Where in Texas?”
“We live West of San Antonio.”
“Oh, really? We live[d] in Austin, in Round Rock!”
“Oh cool, we have family there!”
etc., etc., etc.

Turns out they ran a restaurant by the same name in the shopping center closest to my aunt’s home in Texas for several years and only recently moved back to Louisana.  Their Round Rock restaurant had several five star ratings on Austin360.com and the food here stayed true to that.  All the vegetables were steamed, the meat was high quality, and the sauces were flavorful but not heavy at all.  We’ll definitely be stopping here on the way back home!

Today’s Quick Stats:

Bike              Distance (mi)    Average Speed (mph)

MiniWini            87.42                   19.0

Sti(ck/g)           87.08                   19.0