Day 55

I got up early for a run this morning - 40 minutes around the neighborhood and across the street along a path that winds around a really big park. It was hot but I felt pretty good and managed about ten minutes at race pace. Then it was time to begin our long journey.

Texas is a really big state. It's roughly the size of Germany, England, Scotland, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Belgium and the Netherlands - combined. And we drove across it today.

We left Colleyville, took 121S to Fort Worth and then got on to 20W and we drove and we drove and we drove (until we came to 84W and then we drove some more)...

Most of the way this is what we saw.







It was a peaceful (if not a little boring) drive. But we forgot one thing. When you drive for hours in this type of environment you need to plan ahead. That means having lots of water and plenty of petrol. We had the water but we didn't get petrol when we should have. And it was a close call. Fortunately, we made it to the town of Point just in time - the light was on and the needle was well into the red zone. But a Philips 66 appeared and saved us. We were able to fuel up.



We continued along 84W across the border into New Mexico. After the town of Colvis, it's pretty barren. 84 becomes a two lane road and we saw more trains than cars along the entire stretch. Paulo's Zen player started acting up during the drive, so we tried the radio. He switched it on and pressed the scan button. It went all the way from 92.1 to 107.9. Nothing! Not only were there no people, houses or cars. But there weren't even any radio stations.

84W and 60W split and 84 takes you to 40W, which is the road we needed to get to Albuquerque. We missed it and ended up continuing on 60. And there was nothing as far at the eye could see. Not a sizzlin' sausage. Eventually, we made our way to Vaughn and found this spot.





It was a proper, old school diner and it was good. We ate and then got back on 60W. This time we found 285N and took it up to 40W. Still nothing. The entire way. Except now it was dark so all we could see was less of the nothingness. Actually, that is not entirely true. There was lots of heat lightning so we did get to see a fair bit of the nothingness.

We got off 40 at exit 167 and stayed in a Rodeway Inn for the night. It wasn't the best motel but for $40.00 you canty go wrong! We caught all the baseball scores and saw the end of the Giants - Braves game in San Francisco where Bonds crapped out in the eighth and did not hit his 754th home run. Woo-hoo! Then we watched some Tour highlights before shnoozing off...