Welcome back to ESPN! Today we have special coverage of the biggest fight of the season...in one corner we have the Sloyers. Riding their bikes from Tallahassee, FL, - they have proved to be formidable opponents to everything mother nature has thrown at them. In the other corner we have Texas Hill Country, an endless steep barrage of hills - put there by God Almighty to punish bicyclists for their sins (and we are sinners). This is not a game, this is a full contact - no mercy, man vs. wild, struggle for survival. Don't even think about changing the channel....we'll be right back.
We left the hotel close to 8:00am with our new 2 liter 'bladder' (a bag that holds water) and another 1 liter 'bladder' just in case we couldn't refill our water bottles (we have run into that problem a few times in Texas). The extra weight was well worth it, and having the extra water gave us a sense of security (hey...we didn't/ don't have a sense of what kind of hills we're in for, but at least we'll have water!). The morning wasn't anything special... a few big hills, but nothing we hadn't seen before. About 30 miles in we stopped in the shade on the side of the road. We drank, ate our english muffins (brought from the hotel), and looked at the map. A car pulled up alongside us, and the driver told us it was dangerous for us to be where we were. "Because of the heat?" my dad asked. "No, because of the RATTLE SNAKES" she replied. Yikes!! My dad and I quickly ran back to the road only to remember that he had left his helmet hanging on the tree we had been standing under. He decided to 'risk it all,' and he bravely retrieved his helmet (see pic below). We biked to Kyle, TX where we ate lunch and waited out a few hours of the heat (it doesn't really cool down until 6/7pm here so its inevitable that we are riding during the heat of the day - think 105 degrees). Down the road from where we ate, we passed a post office. We decided to send some stuff home to make more room in our bags for additional water if we needed it. We sent home our bulky sandals, some cloths, and the maps we had finished using (the net weight of the package was 6lb 9oz but the purpose of sending stuff home was to free up more space, not cut down on weight). Almost immediately after leaving the post office we saw a sign letting us know we were entering the famous 'Hill Country of Texas' (see pic below). We had(/have) no idea what to expect from 'Hill Country' but we were only 10(ish) miles from the hotel. Turns out 5 of those miles were pretty steep, there was no shoulder, and there was heavy traffic (fairly unpleasant). We reached an elevation of 1150 feet as we pulled into the Mountain View Lodge(there actually is an amazing view from our room ... we certainly earned it climbing up the side of the mountain on our bikes). We chatted with the motel owners, and they showed us a short cut for tomorrow which should cut out 5-10 miles. We ordered dinner and turned on the TV just in time to catch the 1st pitch of the All-Star Game. We are going to sleep soon so we're not too exhausted for our first full day of Hill Country... wish us luck!
Thanks for coming along for the ride!!
Check out our route at the link below:
love the pictures. watch out hill country-- the Sloyer men are coming.
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