Wild Wild West

So much shit has happened since I've left Austin, Tx. but I'm going to go ahead and jump to one story which is by far the most serious and exciting.  It all starts one day when I was riding west on highway 90 leaving Alpine,Tx, it was a really windy day and I was struggling to hold 6 mph.  With the wind increasing and gusting up to 70 mph I couldn't even pedal downhill, literally soo I decided to hitchhike.  After about 30 min of trying a truck pulls over and says their heading to El Paso about 100 miles up the road and I'm like hell yea! I load my bike in the back with their two dogs and then jump in the cab to find two more pups in the back.  These were two nice people a guy and a girl heading home to their ranch just south of El Paso.  We chit chat and make small talk over the next 100 miles till we get to the town of Faben, Tx which is about 1 mile from the border of Mexico. This is where they make their turn for their pecan ranch, they let me out at the shady gas station and head home.  Now I'm in the small town of Faben and I automatically feel the sketchiness from being 1 mile away from the city of Juarez,MX which had over 3500 murders just last year and is deemed the most dangerous city in the world.  I mean fuck just days before they beheaded over 45 police officers and placed the heads around town to warn the locals not not not to mess with the cartel.  So I ride around this shady town in search of a place to guerrilla camp and can't find anywhere that I feel safe and with only about 45 min left of daylight I know I need to figure out something.  I head back to the gas station at the edge of town, the only place that feels remotely safe. After about 20 min of being at the gas station a middle aged mexican man who looks like a rancher of some sort comes up to me and tries to give me a few bucks, I'm like no thanks I just need a safe place to sleep tonight.  (Names have been changed).  Jorge(the mexican man)  says his brother lives right in town and I can sleep there.  Knowing where I'm at I am a bit hesitant but its my only option so I load my bike into the back of his pick up and get in the truck.  He tries calling his brother but no one is answering so Jorge says I can sleep at his house which is 5 miles back east in the town of Tornillo, Tx even closer to the border and even more dangerous.  With no other options and Jorge already heading down a back road towards his house I am just hoping for the best.  We get close town which isn't really a town just shanty house's and and occasional market here and there.  On the way to Jorge's house we make a few stops at other house's where transactions are being made while I sit in the truck in the pitch black with the lights off and with Jorge's wad of money you can guess what was going on.   So after a few more stops Jorge says it would be better if I stayed at his friends house at the edge of town.  And by edge of town were talking about 200 yards from the border. By now I'm like fuck I have got to get out of this but already being driven down multiple dirt roads in the pitch dark and being about 10 miles from anywhere safe it was going to be hard.  We finally pull up to this shady ass trailer in the middle of nowhere where we go inside.  The trailer has no water and no electricity and is in really poor shape.  I automatically notice the huge shrine of half lady Guadalupe and half grim reapers and skulls.  Then out walks this mexican witch doctor and him and Jorge start speaking spanish to each other making me pretty nervous seein how I don't speak spanish. The witch doctor pulls out a handful of weed and puts it ona piece of newspaper with some rolling papers and tells me to roll it up to prove that I'm not a cop.  Now at this point I know if I roll a bad joint it could mean my life, you better believe I rolled the best fucking joints I've ever rolled in my entire life. After their approval Jorge opens a cooler which is full of Busch beer 40s and hands me one and tells me to drink.  We then start on the joints talk about paranoia when you actually have something to be paranoid about. Also while all this is going on Jorge has just been doing line after line of coke. About an hour goes by and another dude comes in and all three of them are just speaking nothing but spanish and multiple phone calls are being made a I can tell plans are being made. I try to go outside and call Dana but I am followed and when I call her I can't speak of the situation I'm in because I'm being listened to.  They keep feeding me busch 40s and joints but for every 40 I drink I probably drink a whole nalgenes worth of water as to not get too drunk. With my machete out of reach and all three of these dudes packing heat I am heavily out armed and seriously freaking the fuck out.  At one point I tell Jorge( who is the only one who speaks english)  that I would rather stay at his house and he says " this is where you stay, you work for me now".  After that was said I knew I was in deep shit and needed to escape. I don't speak much spanish but I understood enough throughout the night that they were going to take me into mexico tomorrow and force me to ride back  through the border with a bunch of drugs....fuuuuck. The three guys and I continue drinking and smoking till about 3 am, I continued to partake just as to not raise supiscion. When finally one dude leaves for the night, then Jorge gets a phone call and says he has to head out and he'll be back in the morning. Once their gone the witch doctor does some chants and rubs some bones together over the couch I am supposed to stay on.  He then lies down and passes out.  Now I know I need to get the hell out of dodge but carrying my 150 pound bike out of the trailer will be way too loud.  Then around 5 am inspiration struck!, a train comes flying down the railroad tracks right next to the trailer actually shaking the trailer, so under the cover of a roaring train and still under the cover of night I grab my bike and get out of the trailer without being heard, fuck yes! Now I still had to figure out how to get back to I-10,  I head to the main road and turn left  know that if I'm heading away from the border I'm heading towards Interstate 10.  I swear I've never riddin so fast in my life. With the sun peaking up through the mountains I finally make it to I-10 where I continued to ride down the interstate 40 miles to El Paso just to be safe. There's alot more to this story but thats the jist of it. Now without further a do, a regular blog update.

Thanks to these guys at Austin Bikes for hooking me up with some new rear cogs and free patch kits the day before I left Austin. And for introducing me to Shiner Bock beer. Thanks dudes!

I've seen more donkies the past couple weeks than ever in my

Leaving Austin and heading straight into the hill country.

This stretch is what took out my back wheel, too much climbing.

Stay safe.

The spring that makes the teeth inside my cassette pop up and catch broke, so once I diagnosed the problem I fashioned a new spring from the coils you find on your skewers.. felt like macgyver after this.

The finished product, springs nice and poppy.

Stayed at this place, catering only to two wheels only since 2005.

Outside the D Rose Inn.

Needed some jams while I fixed my hub so I rigged this Boom box out of a texas busch can, couldn't turn the treble down though.  

Check out my new bike lock, a little heavy but works really well.

Met up with this lady on the way to La Loma Del Chivo

Dana sneaking into the mexican border.

La Loma Del Chivo an awesome place that lets touring cyclist stay for free.  It's full of awesome structures made out of papercrete. 

Dana and I had this place to ourselves for three days!

View from atop the hostel, doesn't look like much but keep in mind we are in the middle of the desert.

The Bee Hive, once I left Dana stayed in this thing for a couple more days.

Soon to be chicken coop made from papercrete and cans.

Mike a full time resident of La Loma.  He is in the midst of building his awesome rock house by hand with local rocks from around the area.

One of my favorite structures at La Loma.

These train kids came and stayed here for a while and wanted to live in a train car... so they built their own.

The root cellar, just as deep as it is tall.

Inside the root cellar, keeps the veggies cool and crisp.

Dana and I cleaned out and decorated this one in exchange for our few days stay.

You know those hippies and their sweat lodges.

Built by the guy who started this place this was one of the more impressive structures on site.  

Inside the owners house, Dialed!

Even plants grow in the desert.

Yep this thing runs.

Papercrete just like concrete but less con and more recycled paper, heres one structure at a bed and breakfast in marathon texas in the works.

Desert green house.

Bed and breakfast in the works.

Can't wait to get home and build awesome shit out of this material.

They even had a lap pool inside the B&B.

cool place.

Gardens everywhere!

Got bored and hungry at La Loma and made desert pizza from scratch on the grill. 

Reaping the rewards.

After getting off of the dreaded 90 west highway and into new mexico I rode through a lot of pecan tree farms, this stretch lasted for miles, so awesome.

Behold the great Rio Grande, absolutely bone dry.  You know somethings wrong when the Rio grande has no water in it. 

Stayed with some awesome people in Las Cruces, NM. This is their view.

So after weeks of messing with my rear cassette for weeks it finally shit the bed while heading to Caballo Lake state park,  met this guy at the camp who offered to take me 60 miles back to get a wheel and then bring me back to the state park.  After my previous experience I was a little weary but 120 miles later Brian had bought me a new back wheel and mexican. A complete stranger just being nice trying to get me back on the road.  Thanks dude! 

Sick camp spot, check out that shiny new wheel.

Don't mess with the shrubs out here.

My next few days look like this, see that mountain I have to go over it.  See you in Phoenix! 

Peace out Austin,.. It's been Rad!

Austin, Texas is awesome! nuff said.  Been here for about 4 weeks now hanging out with Dana in our extremely posh pad on 6th street, HUGE thanks to her Aunt for hooking us up with a place to stay for a month while I rested some sore legs and worked only a couple odd jobs, but that was only because of my own laziness. I did however explore a large portion of this great town by car, feet, canoe, but mostly by BMX.  Which all of you know is the absolutely the best way to do it.  I don't have a ton of pictures of the sights and experiences I've had in this short time I was here, mostly because I was having too much damn fun to take a picture, but hey isn't that how it should be?.  

Hamilton Pool, this place is in the hill country about 40 miles out of Austin and is super cool.  It's been in a few blockbuster movies and rightfully so.  The picture doesn't do it justice but this place is magical, made me feel like I was already in Hawaii.

Surprisingly I have hung out with some good friends while I've been here 2000 miles away from home, this picture was at another awesome spot in the hill country called pedernales falls. It was a rad time with some rad dudes, for a ton of more photos of this spot check out brad pucks album on facebook. 

Lots and lots and lots of music here, really is the live music capitol  of the U.S.

I love cooking, probably my favorite past time second to riding little kids bikes.That said it was really nice to have a full kitchen to work with after 2 months of only a camp stove and limited ingredients.  Made a few banging ass meals while we've been here, This is a picture of some red curry chicken I made from scratch for Danas'  birthday.

Tons of awesome stuff everywhere you look while your riding around town, check out this graffiti castle!

I Love Bmx!

You know I had to get out on the water at least once while I was here.  Lake Austin which is really the colorado river runs right through town, kind of like Richmond minus the rapids.

Austin has a sick new concrete skatepark with a great bowl. It was only about a mile from where I was staying. This made it easy enough to get up and go to early in the morning and pump around the corners at mach 10  before the rush of kids showed up who would rather practice their flyout whips.  Watching Chase Hawk ride this in person was a pleasure.  

FBM

Dana is really good at making awesome jewelry. She even got some of her stuff in a shop here on south congress(the hip part of town).  Yea Dana!

Before Austin I was in Houston where I met up with Danas' aunt Pam and her cousin Wendy.  Saying thank you to them would be an understatement for how much they helped me out to keep going on this adventure. Here is a cookie cake Wendy got for us before we left. YOU GUYS ARE AWESOME!

Iv'e come to realize that when your in Texas everything is 100% Texan, even the beer. Drank quite a few of these things while I was here. I wonder if busch would sell better in Va if it was logo'd Virginia Busch?

While riding through hundreds of cities throughout the southeast, I've seen/participated in my fair share of OCCUPY  movements.  Austin is the first city I've seen having almost open arms towards the movement, no tear gas, no billy clubs, no rubber bullets, letting it be what it should be,  A PEACEFUL protest.

Mid day occupiers, yes some are bums, some are college kids who go home at night, some are hippies who just wanna smoke weed, but most are people who want a change in this bullshit thats going on in the world. Like their tactics or not at least they are doing something.  I say rock on.

Awesome cactus greenhouse we found in the hill country.

The infamous 9th street trails. I think its really cool the city lets this happen,  Dont know of any other place with city sanctioned dirt jumps............ Oh wait Ipswitch trails in my hometown of chesapeake,VA.

I could do a whole blog about street spots in Austin,TX,  but I'll leave it at this one. Rode it quite a few times while I was here, the damn Mazda never moved, either way it was still awesome to haul ass and carve around.  I call it the miata berm.   

Gunna miss this lady while I'm on the road.