Day 20 – 1000 miles!

Miles Completed: 53.8

Cumulative miles: 1017.4

Miles to St Augustine: 2046

On the way from El Paso to Fort Hancock, TX today, I surpassed the 1000 mile mark in miles traveled on this tour. Wow! Now for the good news, I have over 2000 miles to go!

We left downtown El Paso and traveled through some industrial sections of the city and then into typical residential and suburban areas. Once we were out of the city, it was back to agriculture areas along the Rio Grande River. Our trip today followed the Rio Grande along the Mexico border. I saw the border wall again, but not as close as we did in California.

I learned the Rio Grande is dry in New Mexico, because Texas has the water rights. In Texas, we saw more cotton fields and pecan groves.

The first big story of the day was the wind. We had 13-15 mph winds in our face for 35-40 miles of the ride. We’re hopeful that the winds appear to be changing in our favor. We’ll see. In the meantime, sing along with me:

“Against the wind, we’re still riding against the wind, we’re older now (66) and still riding against the wind”

The second big story is Felix got bit by a dog today. I was riding about 100 yards behind Chris and Felix, when this big fluffy white dog started chasing them. It looked like the dog was wagging his tail, so I was not overly concerned. The dog was leaping towards Felix and I saw him veer his bicycle away from the dog. At that point, the dog backed off and didn’t chase me when I rode by. We all stopped at a gas station about a mile up the road where Felix told me the dog bit him but he did not know the bite was bad until he went into the bathroom and saw blood. Felix got out his first aid kit and cleaned it as well as he could. Felix finished the ride to Fort Hancock and the saga continued.

There are no medical services in Fort Hancock but we are staying at the Community Church which was right next to the High School and the school nurse checked him out and gave him advice. The police and animal control were called and Felix and Tammy drove back to the trailer where he was bit. An elderly couple owned the dog and it had not been vaccinated. The dog has to go into quarantine for 10 days. In addition, Felix and Tammy drove back to El Paso to get Rabies shots. They arrived back at camp and Felix was accepting his plight in a good mood. We’re all hoping he gets a good night’s sleep and has little affects from the shots.

Finally, today was my day to cook with Dale. Our appetizer was chips and salsa, but not just any salsa. Dale and I bought both green (mild) and red (medium) salsa from Hatch, NM which we had just rode through. Dale was the main chef today and we made picante fish with cilantro lime rice and tortillas. Everyone loved it. For desert, we had Pecan Pie with ice cream, in recognition of the many Pecan groves we saw the last couple days.