Day 40
Austin to Bastrop
Morning. Along the way I acquired eight 50ml (small) bottles of various Bourbons: Maker’s Mark, Woodford, and Pendleton. This morning packing to leave Austin I committed the ultimate sin, I combined them all into a single 16 oz flask. I will be reporting on the result in a future post. Please forgive me.
This will be the first day of solo riding. I’m carrying a bit more weight. A stove, two bottles of fuel, some cookware, misc food items (I’ll have to carry more food now day-in and day-out). To handle all the extra gear I had to buy a 40L duffel bag to strap onto the back of the bike. The additional weight is significant, but the good news is the mountains are now behind me. Of course I could turn around and head back to San Diego to see if I was up to the challenge of hauling all this over mountain terrain, but I think I will press on instead. I would like to weigh all of this to see exactly how much weight I am carrying.
I bought a cargo net so I could carry my palm leaf hat without it flopping around and acting like a drag chute. I resisted the temptation to buy a jersey at Mellow Johnny’s Bike Shop. They have very cool clothing there, but I don’t need more clothes and I’m already at capacity when it comes to carrying things. They did an excellent job tuning up the Davidson. I had them replace the Brooks B17 with a Selle Royal M1. When I arrive at my campsite later today we’ll see if I am happy with the change. The Selle Royal is supposed to be the best “anatomical” saddle available. Everyone has their opinion. I know that a lot of long distance cyclists prefer it over the Brooks. This will be a good test for me, I have always ridden a Brooks. I don’t plan to change the name of the Blog from “Life on a B17” to “Life on a Selle M1” so you can keep on reading right here.
End of the day. Today was only 38 miles but I’m still tired. I need to get used to the extra weight as well as the bike’s handling. Every pound that you add changes the handling just a bit. Right now the bike feels very different than it did before I arrived in Austin.
Not much of interest to take pictures of today. Today was “get out of town day” which means navigating a lot of big city sprawl for the most part. When I did finally get into the country side it was not very picturesque. I’m staying in a KOA Campground and the lady that checked me in gave me a great discount. My main objective tonight is to fire up the new stove, cook dinner on it, and also cook breakfast on it in the morning. Liquid fuel stoves can be a little bit fussy. I’m planning to make tortilla spaghetti for dinner and French toast for breakfast. I already see that I am missing a skillet so I may have to alter my breakfast plan slightly.
The Selle will take some getting used to.
Miles: 38
