The Desert.
I’ve driven across the country a few times. One thing that always amazed me was how quickly the landscape can change. You can pass under a bridge and be welcomed by starkly different land features, colors, and even weather. It’s as if someone drew a line in the sand that segregates these changes. Crossing between biomes can be as quick as stepping over that line line. I’m sure these natural transformations aren’t as sudden as they seem. Instead, they are prolonged and subtle. So much so that the change is imperceptible until everything is different. Only then can the brain compute and begin to take notice of its surroundings that have become altered from before.
I thought that these shifts in nature would take place more noticeably on my bike ride. I was traveling at only 10 mph after all. For the first half of my journey, I saw little to no difference in the landscape from day to day. That is, until I reached Austin. As I entered the city from the East, I was bounding through the rolling green countryside with hardly a sundried blade of grass in sight. Upon exiting the thriving metropolis to the West, I was greeted with a terrain more akin to what you see in the photo above. Once I crossed that line, I didn’t see the color green for 1400 miles. Trees were few and far between. Seldom did they have leaves that could provide even a trace amount of shade. There was no hiding from the sun. Whatever clouds would form in the sky were thin and whispy at best. Now, I belonged to the desert.
Despite all of the visual changes, riding felt the same. My butt still hurt, my hands lacked their usual dexterity, and I still couldn’t quite feed myself enough to keep the hunger pains at bay in the night. With the added heat in the day and dryness in the air, I began drinking absurd amounts of water just to keep my mouth from drying out entirely. At least a gallon, sometimes more became an unnegotiable resupply item at each stop. I was eating salt tablets like candy to keep my electrolytes at the correct level. I was sweating so much that if I didn’t, I could have ended up passed out in a ditch somewhere. If you don’t have enough electrolytes in your body, your brain can no longer send signals to your muscles telling them to move. If you still continue to exercise, you could run into some serious short-term health problems. I never let myself get there. On a few occasions, I found myself light-headed with some serious cramps. The best thing to do in that scenario is stop, find whatever shade you can, and hydrate with both water and electrolytes. Just drinking water could dilute your system further and escalate your symptoms. You don’t want to do that when you’re alone in the desert.
Another thing that bewildered me, was the incredible changes in temperature that would happen daily. The desert is supposed to be hot, isn’t it? I came to realize that this is not always true. In fact, my water bottle would freeze most nights unless I took the necessary preventative measures. The days would routinely reach the 80s and 90s. The evenings, on the other hand, would dip into the low 30s. I spent several nights even colder once I made it to higher altitudes. It would be so cold that I would find it too difficult to stir from my tent some mornings. I'd eventually muster the courage to brave the icy temperatures and begin my day of riding.
My face would be the first to go numb. You have to remember that whatever the temperature was, it felt much colder to me on the bike as you would need to factor in my speed as an additional wind chill. I brought a thin pair of gloves with me in preparation for colder days. However, they did little to shield my hands from the wind. Most mornings, I would ride one-handed as I alternated which hand I kept on my handlebars, and which I kept stuffed into my coat pocket. My feet would turn into clubs of ice and lose nearly all feeling. This was mostly because of an arbitrary challenge I gave myself before I had left on my trip. I thought it would be “cool” to ride across the country in sandals. I brought a pair of sneakers with me, but am proud to say I never caved and instead kept them neatly packed away for the duration of my trip. On these cold days, I would triple-layer my socks and patiently await the rising sun to bring sensation back into my toes. By noon, the temperatures would reach uncomfortable heights once again, at the opposite end of the thermometer.
Some parts of the desert were so remote that a passing car would sometimes startle me as I’d only see a handful throughout the day. On one of these particularly quiet roads, I stumbled upon a pretty sizable road construction site. Like any section of roadwork where a lane of traffic was closed, there was a gentleman holding a two-sided sign to direct traffic. The only thing unusual about this scene was the fact that there were no cars in sight. I stopped in front of the worker since the side of the sign reading “STOP” was facing me; a cyclist must obey all traffic laws. He looked at me in what seemed to be a state of confusion. I watched his eyes scan my bike. They shifted towards me and continued their analysis.
“Do you live out here?” he asked. The pitch of his sentence raised rapidly at the end, conveying his genuine perplexity. I looked around and took in the scene. There was no trace of civilization besides the road and the man holding the sign. I looked back at the worker.
“Does anyone live out here?” I inquired back. The man had a long pause as he held his gaze. After several moments, he chuckled and turned the sign around so that it now read “SLOW”. I began riding once again. I think of this man as the desert’s gatekeeper. The few days I had spent riding through the barren landscape, up until this moment, had been mostly pleasant. Not long after this brief interaction, my experience became decreasingly bearable with each passing day as the desert began to test me physically and mentally. But that’s a story for another time.
