Part 1 (Austin, TX): rollin' out

That's it. I'm really doing it.

As of tomorrow, October 5th, I'm going to start this tour by cycling to Brownsville, Texas. I've been in Austin for close to two weeks, attending the Austin City Limits (ACL) Music Festival, enjoying fleeting moments with close friends and talking with from professors at the U.T.-Austin campus. Austin's great--I love the city--but it's time to hit the road and start this trip.

I'll be cycling along the U.S. 183, Highway 80, U.S. 181 and U.S. 77 on the way down to Brownsville. This leg should take about four days at eighty miles a day--five days if I take a detour to Padre Island, the easternmost land mass in Texas. Once back in Brownsville, I'll spend some time at Southwest Key, a group home for migrant children who've been separated from their families, and the Good Neighbor Settlement Home, a center that provides transitional living accomodations to any in need of their services. For close to week, I'll also be on the lookout for the Texas Minutemen who, not so coincidentally, are also on the lookout for migrants trying to cross the border. Don't worry about me: I'm relatively safe with the ACLU. Be concerned for those crossers. Minutemen carry guns.

I'll send out more updates as I go. So far, I've been really fortunate in Austin. I've managed to finagle a free room for close to a week, and I'm living pretty dirt cheap and learning from some amazing people. I'm just about done shoveling the dirt out of my lungs from the ACL, so I'm in better health that than I have been in a while. I feel great, if not nervous at times. Equal parts excitment and anxiety: the recipe for rational decision-making for an undertaking like this.

Keep in mind that this is a really important time to be aware of what's happening on the border right now--if not from me, from other sources. To the right of this post, I've set you up with links to news portals about the border. Recent news: R-Jim Kolbe presents the Tucson Border Patrol with a "symbolic" 35 million dollar blank check, part of the 56 million dollar package designated solely to the Tucson B.P. to protect the "most vulnerable area" in the United States; Border Patrol officials unveiled their new $14 million unmanned aerial surveillance system, a Predator-B spy drone used intially in Afganistan and Iraq; more and more undocumented immigrants are choosing voluntary repatriation to Mexico City, while the U.S. government foots the bill. Any one of these blurbs could indicate both triumphs and failures of border policy--the Border Patrol has been dramatically effective, so it needs more money; the Border Patrol has proven utterly inefficient, so it needs more money. Whatever. Do your own research, come to your own conclusions. If you stick around, you'll read plenty of mine in the posts to come.

1,951 miles plus. This is going to be a long ride.