(January 10)

Day 16 - Austin to Johnson City TX

When the Dog Doesn't Even Bother to Bark

My route took me right by one of yesterday's bike shops (Mellow Johnny's...the one owned by Lance Armstrong) where I needed to purchase a second spare tube from my trailer tire (they open at 7am!). This is how Austin/Mellow Johnny's do community rides. Pretty cool I thought!

Even at 7:30am, Mellow Johnny's was a busy place oozing a hipster vibe.

So...the hill behind me was the first hill I've ever walked my bike up; on this trip or otherwise. It was in the western suburbs of Austin in kind of a "Hollywood Hills" area where multi-million dollar homes perch on the sides of mountains overlooking the lesser beings below in the city. This road was so steep by the time I got half-way up I felt like I was towing a battleship. If I hadn't gotten off the bike I'd have simply fallen straight over as I was not able to push the bike forward AT ALL via pedaling by that point.

I'd just ridden through that stream behind me which was flowing over the roadway. I spent most of the latter half of my ride WAY out in the middle of nothing.

And I hate how when I smile my glasses go awry on my face. Unsightly!

 



The Pecan Street Brew Pub here in Johnson City. How a great place like this gets started up in a town with less than 2000 people I have no idea. Ambiance was great and the food was very good as well. I lingered a bit just to soak in some of the excellence.

Cyclists and dogs have a long, and generally, adversarial relationship I've actually been lucky to have no reason to pull out my pepper spray thus far, but I know that's because dogs generally just care about one thing: protecting their turf. In Richards TX, for instance, there was a ranch house that was at least a quarter mile off the road. But, the dog on the ranch made a sprint the whole way to the corner of the property where I entered his turf...barking madly the whole time...and followed my all along his property line until I'd passed the edges of his territory. At that point he figured his job was done and he sauntered back to lay under the porch. Particularly in Louisiana I had dogs bark at me for the duration of the time I was adjacent to their property dozens of times.

 

But they never cared anything about me once I'd ridden away from the "zone" they had it in their head it was their job to guard.

 

Which brings me to today. Though Texas hasn't had anywhere near as many dogs running around on rural properties, I was riding in my lowest "granny gear" up a steep hill as I came upon a ranch today where I saw a dog in the distance back up near his house. You now realize what I expected: he would be furiously in "guard mode" now that he'd seen me coming.

 

But that didn't happen.

 

Instead, he walked slowly toward the edge of his property that I was approaching. He didn't bark at all. He just stood in the grassy meadow which was his front yard until I was about one-third of the way to being off his property and then he just walked slowly back where he came from. Never barked the whole time.

 

I decided that he knew something about cycling. He knew that me going roughly 4 mph up that hill meant I was so weak and ineffectual a human that I posed absolutely no threat whatsoever. Why bark when it was clear I didn't have the strength to even say "Good Dog!" much less leap his fence to wreak havoc upon his ranch? Why run madly to the edge of his property to ensure maximum time on target when it was clear that I wasn't even worthy of the attention he might give to the weakest member of a deer herd. I was so weak he had all day long to catch me if he wanted.

 

So, yeah, today HILLS HAPPENED. By far the most challenging cycling day I've had thus far; and by a pretty good margin. Over 4,000 feet of climbing over 52 miles. I was in the saddle just under 6 hours (with my total elapsed time nearer 7.5 hours including breaks). Luckily my move to the new saddle worked out perfectly. I can NOT imagine what today would have been like with my old saddle setup. The difference in the two experiences (new vs. old saddle) was night & day. I'm very grateful to the fine folks at Bicycle Sport Shop for their emergency saddle intervention!

 

And because there was no option for a lunch stop today, I had the added burden of ravenous hunger. I did have a big breakfast, but even that couldn't quite keep up with all the calories I was burning climbing hill after rolling hill. There were plenty of times I was in my lowest gear for 10-15 minutes at a time doing my best "The Little Engine That Could" impression. Literally. At one point I was repeating the words "I Think I Can!" "I Think I Can!" over and over to myself just in case they'd do magic for me the way they did for Thomas.

 

For all the cyclists out there, I get that what I did wasn't The Alps in the Tour de France. But, for me, today felt like great preparation for all the climbing I still have left to do. I have a real sense of accomplishment for getting to my destination today. Maybe moreso than on any other ride days. I've had cold days, "mechanical" days, days of lots of flat terrain, etc., but I feel today was uniquely challenging.

 

I'll close with this thought: a trip like this is going to tell ANYONE who goes on it what they are made of. It will tell you...over the course of the whole trip...a very great deal about who you are.

But what it will ALSO tell you is who you are not. And today I learned I'm not super-human. I had to get off and walk up one of the hills today. Not only is it the first time I've ever had to do that as a cyclist, it also constituted me breaking the FINAL RULE I had for the trip. And that rule was, you guessed it, to never walk my bike up any of the hills. Yep. There are absolutely no rules left to be broken!

 

Today I was humbled, but emerged triumphant anyway. And, really, in the end that's all I can ask out of a day like today.