Out Of The Frying Pan And Into The Fire

Day Seven: Plano to Abilene Texas

•         About 200 miles (we forgot to keep track)

•         6 hours

•         380 W to 67 S to 180 W to 351 S

•         temperature when we pulled off the road: 98 degrees and climbing

We dragged ourselves out of bed this morning at 5. That is an awful time of day to be awake when you’ve had such an indulgant night before. We checked the weather, and we realize that we need to be off the road by noon if we want to be under cover when it hits 100 degrees. We plan to get to Abilene today.

We’re on the road at 6:15. It takes us nearly an hour just to get out of the sprawl of N. Dallas. Just past Denton (where the Texas Women’s College is) the scenery suddenly changes to desert, officially. There are huge patches of prickly pear - each pad looks like a 10 toed foot. Low, swaying mesquite trees and sunflowers are what’s along the roadsides now. We see the idyllic Texas ranches with the huge gated entrances. Some of these ranches appear fancier than others-my favorite had gone through the trouble of inserting verticle mesquite branches through the fencing for about 3 miles. We see fields of seemingly healthy cattle, horses galloping in sage-y pastures and millions of pick-up trucks. Pick-up trucks might be the state vehicle.

By 10:30 we’re melting. We pull over to a roadside shelter (one picnic table with a shitty metal roof) to cool off. The highway is quiet except for a pick-up that goes by every 10 minutes or so. The wind blows, and it’s hot. I feel like we’re in a Mad Max movie. We realize that in our haste to get the hell out of Dallas we packed the saddle bags wrong and the computer is sitting in the saddle bag over the exhaust.

Let me digress and talk about our rig for a sec. You’ve already met R. Girl, The 2004 Yamaha V-Star 650 who is our ride and constant companion. She’s beautiful and I often imagine that she is a giant wasp flying us through the desert. Anyway, strapped to R. Girl are two leather saddle bags, a standard backpacking pack, a big fanny pack and two little leather packs (one on the handle bars and one on the fork). The saddle bag that’s over the exhaust keeps stretching out and wanting to sit right on the exhaust. Not good.  We keep strapping it so its sits up higher, and we’ve laid some heat resistant material across the bottom. And all of that is to say, we put the computer in the saddle bag over the exhaust and thought we’d really screwed up, but all was well.

I should also introduce the computer, from which all of these blog posts come. His name is Mariposa, and he is a flamey latino. He likes the Pirate better than me, as a woman’s touch does nothing for him. Ah, Mariposa.

 

Back to the ride. About 30 miles from Abilene we begin to see that we will pass through some of these enormous windmills that have, so far, been off in the distance. When we get closer, it’s the most surreal sci-fi beauty you can imagine. It’s like driving through a garden of 100 foot tall, stark white, 3 pronged pinwheels. They move slowly. They look alive. It takes us nearly 15 minutes at 70 mph to drive through them all. It is a stark contrast to the small Grapes-of-Wrath looking windmills that we’d seen up until now.

Abilene is the very definition of oasis. It is artsy, landscaped with many fountains, and humming with air conditioning. By the time we arrive, we are really fried. We get into street clothes and into a brewery as soon as possible. Lunch is a green chile burger and some locally brewed beer (a pale ale that did not impress the Pirate). We tried to hit the Center for Contemporary Arts that had an exhibit on body art, but they were closed. We made our way a few blocks over and checked out National Center for Children's Illustrated Literature. This happens to be a quiet love of mine, and I have a collection of illustated children’s books that I’m pretty proud of. Stumbling upon a museum like this is a lucky break. The exhibit currently in place is: Dancing By the Light of the Moon The Art of Fred Marcellino. It includes the original works that eventually made it into the books. I like the watercolors best.  Check it out:  http://nccil.org/exhibits/index.htm

From there, we get a hotel room and enjoy a very lazy evening complete with delivered pizza, cable TV and blogging. The high in the desert tomorrow will be around 105 again. We have a 5 am departure planned so we can make it to Carlsbad NM before noon.

Abilene: Cypress Street brewing,

Hotel. A/C blogging, dominoes.