Day 25 Brownfield, Texas

Stats
Daily mileage 96 Ride time 6hr 16min
Avg speed 15.28 mph Total mileage 1569

Today was my 12th consecutive day on the saddle. Granted, I have had a few easy days mixed in but I have covered just shy of 1000 miles. With the nights drawing in early I find myself asleep equally as early. As a result I am waking up during the night feel quite restless. It didn’t help with all the loud lorry whizzing past. At about 5am, I woke to the sound of coyotes. They were close and appeared to be calling to one another. I remember hearing a story in Africa where the hyenas screech to each other alerting them that there is food around. I was praying I was not the food. After all, I looked like a giant grub in my sleeping bag. I was afraid enough to sleep the next hour with my pen knife.

I crawled out of my tent a little later than I planned and had a baby wipe shower. My speed was good right from the off and I hoped it would continue throughout the day. With no breakfast, I planned to stop at Tatum some 30 miles away. It took less than 2 hours to arrive and I was ready to eat a horse. I went straight to the cooked section of the gas station and bought two breakfast fajitas. They were delicious and one was enough so I saved the other for lunch. The next place along route 380 was another 30 miles away so I judged the water accordingly.

I left New Mexico for the last time and entered Texas, the birthplace of Mr George W Bush. I stopped for some compulsory photos and inadvertently learnt a very careful lesson. On the side of the road there are thousands of goat heads. No, not real ones dummy! They are small spikes that are more than capable of puncturing tyres. I will take a picture of these little pricks tomorrow!

Before setting off I removed 3 of them from my tyres and aimed for my destination, Brownfield. I rocked up pretty earlier and had a good 3 hours of sunlight left. Unsure with what to do I popped into the chamber of commerce and enquired about camp grounds etc. One thing lead to another and she suggested I go to the free dinner they dish out to homeless people. Initially I thought against it but then I had nothing to loose and was quite intrigued about the ordeal. She also believed somebody might be able to put me up for the night.

I trotted around town and found the place. I knocked on the door and the lady told me that was yesterday and there was no food left. I was enquiring about everything from showers to somewhere I could crash. But she was not having any of it. I decided to head to the camp ground on the outskirts of town. It was perfect. They had water, electricity and best of all it was free. I have not seen any toilets but there are some big trees behind me.

With no dinner in my pannier bags I had to rely on my massive bag of M&Ms. Total spent today: 13 bucks