Week 144. Don’t mess with Texas! Texan people are the friendliest and most helpful people that we ever met anywhere. At the same time, they’re the craziest (and dangerous!) people that we have ever met. This week was yet another roller-coaster week. The road was rolling up and down and adventures led us from feeling on top of the world at one moment to falling down the cliff at another. From guns to rainbows, this week had it all! The desert is not for the lighthearted, they say. Distances between town are long and the summer heat is strong. And while the wild west is now a distant past, it’s legends here are still alive. We also may have left our imprint on history by accidentally starting some legends of our own.
Weekly Updates
Week 144. Don’t mess with Texas!
Texan people are the friendliest and most helpful people that we ever met anywhere. At the same time, they’re the craziest (and dangerous!) people that we have ever met. This week was yet another roller-coaster week. The road was rolling up and down and adventures led us from feeling on top of the world at one moment to falling down the cliff at another. From guns to rainbows, this week had it all! The desert is not for the lighthearted, they say. Distances between town are long and the summer heat is strong. And while the wild west is now a distant past, it’s legends here are still alive. We also may have left our imprint on history by accidentally starting some legends of our own.
Week 143: Cycling Texas
Week 143. Cycling Texas. This week started slowly: we were waiting for the rain and floods to stop. In the meantime, we were getting stuff done. More precisely we were trying to get stuff done and failing miserably, as usual. Once the thunderstorms were finally over, we dusted our bikes and hit the road. This week’s agenda: one National Park and one State Park. Oh, and Mexico too, to finish fixing Kira’s tooth.
Week 142: Welcome to the USA
Week 142. Tornadoes, surgeries and the end of Latin America! This week we finished cycling Mexico and entered USA. Mexico was huge, colorful and very diverse. Food was awesome, people were kind and nature was spectacular – we loved this country. Our last days in Mexico were intense: thunderstorms, tornado warnings and headwinds. We crossed the bridge into USA on Sunday. It was a big milestone and we felt on top of the world. The next day reality brought us back on the ground: our bank froze our cards due to ‘suspicious activity’ (using ATM in Honduras is perfectly normal, but doing the same in USA is suspicious? Seriously?!) and Kira got a terrible toothache. Timing could not be worse! We sorted out the bank pretty easily, but fixing the painful tooth was more complicated. Everything was closed due to Memorial Day and Eagle Pass doesn’t even have needed root canal specialist, not mentioning the price of the procedure. We listed our options and did what any other person living in Eagle Pass would do: Kira went back to Mexico and had her tooth fixed there. Turns out, the grass is not always greener on the other side…
Week 141: Extreme Weather
Week 141. Extreme weather. This was supposed to be a weekly update about how much we loved Mexico and how happy we are to enter USA, but destiny had other plans for us. We were cycling a lot this week and it was a hot week, with daytime temperatures averaging at +36C and nighttime temperatures at +30C. We were coping okay, until yesterday. Yesterday we were sleeping in the middle of the desert, when the Mother of all Thunderstorms had struck. The thunderstorm was fierce, but far away. It was moving from West to East right in front of us. There were four houses next to the crossroad in the desert. We pitched our tent behind one of them and joined the locals in storm watching. It was amazing: multiple lightnings striking non-stop so hard, that the sky was constantly bright. You could read a book, if you wished. Instead, we were mesmerized by the power of nature. It was quite far, and we couldn’t hear any thunder. At one point, the storm got a bit closer to us, and the wind started howling. We had to evacuate our tent in the middle of the night. Luckily, the home-owner offered his kitchen for us to stay. It was dark, the electricity was out and we were running back and forth in the wind, carrying our stuff to the house with the lightnings in the background. Our tent has survived a lot of strong winds, Patagonian included, but this was too much. The storm has passed without hitting us directly and after 6 hours the desert was calm again. And yet only next morning we realized the true severity of the storm. We woke up, sat on our bikes and started cycling. At first, we noticed that road signs were ripped out. Later, we saw that the desert was flooded. Cacti standing half in the water, grass completely submerged. And then we reached the town. At first it looked okay, but then we noticed huge road signs lying on the street, street lamps bended left and right, church towers broken off, roofs with huge holes, businesses without signs… It was surreal. We checked the weather forecast and there are active warnings for the next two days. Another major storm is expected as well as tornadoes, which are unusual in Mexico, but not impossible. We decided to wait out this extreme weather here in town. If you know a reliable online weather service, please let us know!
Week 140: On the Road Again
Week 140. On the road again. After a month-long marathon of sickness we are back on the road since Monday! A lot has changed during last month: we got out of shape and the outside temperatures became much higher, which is not a good thing when you’re standing in the beginning of a huge desert. Our start was rough: we got caught in a huge storm with no shelter, with heavy rain, thunder and lighting strikes oh-so-close to us. We’re still struggling to adapt to the new cycling conditions and try to re-establish our daily routine with a siesta under a lone tree in the middle of nowhere, that we used to practice in Argentinian deserts. Up next: #arewethereyet
Week 139: Tulku is Sick
Week 139. Tulku is sick. Tulku was diagnosed with anaplasmosis and it is a serious condition. The treatment is very long and slow and takes 3 to 4 weeks. So we are facing a dilemma: to continue traveling and possibly kill Tulku in the process, or to wait it out and possibly don’t reach Alaska before snowfall, and thus forever. While the choice is obvious, it still hurts. The thing is, we caught Tulku’s disease at super early stage, so she never felt bad or weak and prognosis is good. And yet her blood results are dangerously low with a chance of internal bleeding anytime. She’s getting treatment and we all are grounded until her blood results are back to normal. It is expected that her blood will be back to normal in 2 – 3 weeks and we are waiting for a miracle that it would be sooner. Which is much better situation than waiting for a miracle that your dog would survive, we admit that.
Week 138: Cycling Sierra Madre
Week 138. Cycling through Sierra Madre. This week we have crossed Nuevo Leon state and entered Coahuila state. It will be the last state in Mexico for us. We made a pit stop in Saltillo where we researched which route to take through mainland USA. The decision has been made and it was one of the biggest decisions we made during this trip. We also ran some errands in the city and made a vlog about it. Please take a look at what do we do when we’re not cycling here:
Week 137: Sick Part 2
Week 137. Sick, part II. Last week Kira caught a nasty cold, this week was Sven’s turn to be sick. It got us worse than we first anticipated and it took much more time to get well than we thought it will. Multiple doctor visits and 5 boxes of tissues later we are both feeling much better and preparing to hit the road on Thursday. Tulku on the other hand used her off cycling time wisely and made us play with her ALL THE TIME.
Week 136: Sick in the Desert
Week 136. Sick in the desert. People say that when traveling, the highs are very high and the lows are very low. This week was a perfect example of that. On Saturday we have crossed the 15.000 kilometer mark. At the same evening Kira got a cold, which turned very nasty overnight. We were stuck in the middle of the desert (technically still semi-desert) in our tent next to a lone petrol station. Being grounded in the middle of nowhere with a high fever is one of those experiences that we wish to forget as soon as possible. During the day it was +30C with no shade, during the night it was merely +10C. With no chance for a quick recovery we had to find transportation to bring us back to the next town where we could visit the doctor and find some better living arrangements than our tent for next couple of days. Good news: Kira is feeling better. Bad news: now Sven is feeling worse. The best news: Tulku is feeling great.
Boundless Biking 