Part 1 (San Benito, TX): trials by night

Maybe the easiest way to look at the initial days of the trip is not even to look at the days all, but the nights. The days of cycling were relatively the same--almost monotonous at times--but things really picked up at night. "Picked up" usually meant that something (anything) happened in the two or three hours I had between making dinner and sleeping. The life of a cyclist is a bundle of excitement, I'll tell ya. Off the bike, I never quite knew what to expect. Some nights I'd find my way to the home of a person with whom I'd been in contact previously. Other nights were more of a karmic nature, meaning to say that a bed found its way to me. In any case, here's a[n almost overly-extensive] look back at Voluntour 1951's trials by night. For those concerned with brevity, skip to the end.

The first night. I arrived in Houston by bus and I didn't have anywhere to stay. I lugged my bike onto a park-and-ride bus to shave down another twenty miles of the cycling whittling block, and I found myself with two options: get a cheap hotel room for the night or go to the campus where I would attend a conference the next day and find some place to camp out. If you knew me well, you wouldn't even have to guess which choice I made. I pedaled straight to the university and set up my tent behind the ceramics studio. Nestled in between the studio and a patch of bayou forest, I awoke only to an armadillo coughing--better than the crocodiles that also apparently lived in the backwoods nearby.

I found a home, both literally and figuratively at the Chicano-Latino Leadership and Unity Conference the next day. I found myself among people who were doing and have done--people who understood the Latino community (or said they did) and would give me a whole slew of suggestions for my project. One of those persons was Lorena Lopez, who ended up taking her little cycling puppy home for a night and calling Univision the next day to interview him (which they did).

For the next two nights, I curled up in the home of Samantha Rainman, a junior high school teacher (please correct me if I'm wrong, Samantha) who was nice enough to respond to a petition for housing that I had made on Craigslist.org. She gave me full reign of her house, pots and cooking utensils, and welcomed me whole-heartedly into her home. That, and she played a mean backgammon.

After recovering from Samantha's board game demolition, I started the first leg of the cycling venture. On the first night, I managed to bang out a tough eighty-five miles into a mild headwind. My plan was to make it to a campsite directly south of Houston, Bryan Beach, a section of what I've aptly named "Flesh-Eating Killer Mosquito" Island". As I left late in the morning, night fell upon me all too quickly. With the campsite nowhere to be found and darkness enveloping, I walked right up to an older gentlemen's house and asked to borrow a patch of his lawn to set up my tent for the evening. Stan not only consented but also granted me a reprieve from fire ants and said killer mosquitos that ate my flesh by inviting me into his house, offering me dinner and putting me up in one of his cozy guest bedrooms. I accepted and, after a balmy shower, slept like a lamb.

The next night this little lamb bleated until his good shepherd arrived to rescue him. Flesh-Eating Killer Mosquito Island became Flesh-Eating Killer Mosquito Southeast Texas, and those flying denziens of death attempted to suck me dry. Although I managed to find a developed campsite in LaVaca, I cursed the stars for my twisted fate, not only because of the mosquitos--oh no--but because of the insane six dollars I had to pay for an evening in a well-lit, routinely patrolled gulag replete with all the utilities that I could ever ask for. Six dollars for toilets, showers and running water--could you believe the nerve of those campsite directors? Why didn't they just ask me for a kidney?

Spewing vomitous language through gritted teeth, I paid my fee. I began to set up my tent, the mosquitos began their feast, and more cursing ensued. The camp began to stir. I watched in the distance as the camp host climbed calmly into his golf cart and grabbed a silver-looking canister to tranquilize the howling beast. "It's still got some spray left in it," he said. "Not much, but enough to cover you." I baaa-d a meek little thank-you and praised the saint for his penitent show of mercy. As I was passing out soon thereafter, I realized that I would never again put six dollars to better use.

The next morning I woke up to another ravenous pack of mosquitos and an empty bottle of bug repellant. We all had a quick breakfast to start our day.

Skip to night number seven: Mustang Island Beach. Somehow the good fortune of my meeting with the saint continued well in through the following evening. My penance paid, the mosquitos were nowhere to be found. The vicious gnawing sound of their tiny teeth with I dozed at night? Gone. Instead, I was forced asunder by the gentle lulls of the tide thirty yards to the east. I slept soundly throughout the night, blissfully comatose.

Had I known that the next hundred miles held little more in store for me than dusty farm roads and busy highways cruising through vast stretches of nothingness, I might have stayed at the beach another day. That morning I set out with intentions to ride eighty miles and enjoy a precious couple of hours of light in the late afternoon. At the eighty-mile mark, I found myself plunk in the middle of Hellifino, Texas. So I rode another twenty miles. Still nothing. Another ten: two private hunting grounds straddling the highway and no one in sight. After hoppping a gate, I found a water spigot tucked away along the backroad of the easternmost property. As I walked back to my bike, I saw a truck pull through the gate on its way out, and I managed to flag down a gentleman for three bottles of water, an orange soda and permission to camp out on the land for the night. He happily obliged.

The next morning, I woke up to the same truck clamoring its way through the gate--this time with a complement of six hunters garbed in full camo. I scrambled out of my tent, put on my shoes and, in little more than my cycling jersey and boxers, greeted them with a hearty "Good morning, gentlemen!" They whipped their heads around to see who (or what) I was, started laughing and drove off. I could have sworn I heard someone saying "we should have shot it, Jim, we should have shot it" as they pulled away. I could have sworn...

And nights nine though fifteen (or something of the like): a comfortable little nook in the home of a Ms. Elizabeth Garcia, grassroots organizer extrodinaire. Over the last week, I borrowed her car, ate her food and shared in her experience. She showed me around towns in not one but two countries and did all that she could to make my experience in the Brownsville/Matamoros area a meaningful one. At times I felt awkward by her humble shows of generosity and felt that I had very little to give in return. This was life lesson number one on the trip: be open to receive from community.

There have been more life lessons, both on and off the bike, but I'll get to those in posts to come. I realize that more and more is going to change as this trip pushes on. For example, I won't have time to write very many posts like these. To be able to sit back, write and relax was a luxury of the first few days of this project, but one that is quickly giving way to more compact organization and structure. I still have fun, don't get me wrong, but things are changing. I'll send out another post when I can.

And to let you all know, I'm now staying at the Calpulli Tlapalcalli, a center for indigenous Azteca-Chichimeca culture and community. I'm doing well--I've even managed to hijack a computer a local library--and I'll be here for the next couple of days. All told, I should be in the Rio Grande Valley for a total of three to four weeks. One conversation leads to another, and each demands that I be more considerate of the depth of these communities. This is to say that I'll be here for a while, and I'm liking it. There are some good people in the world, and they do good things--like put a wandering cyclist up for the night.