Riding for me has changed over the years. At the ripe age of 68, speed and stamina are no longer as important as the overall experience, whatever that currently in-vogue concept may mean. Hammering out a longer-than-originally-planned loop has now been shifted from holy grail to medieval torture. Riding side-by-side and talking about what's happening in our lives has become the raison d'être of the civilized cyclist. As Bob Dylan so wisely rasped, The times they are a-changin'. 
As is so often the case with trips, this one somehow planned itself, with a few components falling into place at just the right time. I had to stitch together a road race in Wimberley, friends' schedules and freebie hotels before said race, and snag a rare timeshare stay to finish things up (more on that in the next blog post). I had a good look at the map and figured out what distances, on what days, would have to be covered to make it all work, and of course I needed to contact my friends to see whether they would be around to welcome me. Somehow it all came together in just one evening.
My first stop was Oklahoma City. It was a stinkin' hot Thursday when I left Lubbock, and it became only hotter as the afternoon progressed. The thermometer kept undulating between 102° and 107° Fahrenheit—for my European readers that's 43° Celsius! I was glad when I finally made it, roof-down, to OKC and checked in for my free night at the Wyndham Grand (almost free as there were taxes and the night's parking to be paid, less than $25 total). This hotel is located right next to the Bricktown area of OKC, with numerous brewpubs and eateries. The obvious plan was to check out a few of them, and by bike I covered a grand total of four miles and enjoyed a pint in four different breweries. (For the record, the Mellow IPA at Stonecloud Brewing took the cake in my book, even though it was the last stop when the palate has already been overstimulated and things often start tasting all the same. The personnel at Lively Beerworks took the prize for being a bit nutty. And all four establishments were almost totally devoid of customers, which nobody could explain.)
The next morning I drove on, going north to Carthage, Missouri. Martha had given me strict instructions to not be late since this was the big weekend of the annual Marian Days pilgrimage that sees the population of this small hamlet catapult from around 15,000 to close to 100,000! I had never heard of Marian Days but quickly learned that the festivities originated in 1978 (the year I arrived from Germany) when Vietnamese Roman Catholics from all over the US started to congregate for a long weekend of paying homage to the Virgin Mary.
I hadn't seen Martha and Alan since they had moved from Temple to Missouri almost two years ago, and catching up with them in person was the real reason for my including them on my itinerary. Marian Days was just an extra highlight, what with the literally hundreds of temporary food tents of the revival style on the campus of the Congregation of the Mother of the Redeemer that happens to be in Carthage. It was all a bit like going to Oktoberfest, just without ferris wheels and other rides but instead thousands of friendly Vietnamese people and more Asian food than you could ever imagine. 
I stayed four nights with Martha and Alan in their lovely home, which is situated on 32 acres of prime ranchland. No, Alan hasn't given up being an infectious disease doc (his position in the Joplin hospital's ID department had been the reason for their move from Texas), but as a Panhandle product he has a certain affinity for the bovine species, and now he owns five heifers, one of which had already calved, a second one produced a tiny bull while I was there, and the remaining three are getting ready to give birth as well. 
Alan and I had a chance to go for a ride in the rolling countryside that surrounds Carthage, which is a surprisingly attractive town. The three of us had a lunch quaff at Chaos in Joplin, and Alan and I also hit Beard Engine Brewing in Alba on our Sunday outing. Over dinner I got to meet several of their eclectic friends, including the local vintner and his wife as well as the couple who own the gourmet shop just off the square where you can buy French cheese and fancy wines (no, the Oovvda Winery bottle is way too special for that!). Another couple is the motor behind the Chill Monday ride that brings a dozen or so folks (plus numerous offspring) out for an easy-going ride through Carthage's sleepy town center. 
On my own, I added another couple of rides and enjoyed the quiet, smooth country roads of the area. Sure, it was hot and humid, but that's to be expected this time of the year—the mornings and evenings were actually cooler and more pleasant than what Lubbock is currently offering.
Tuesday morning, I bid farewell and headed farther northwest, to Kansas. It didn't take long for the scenery to change when Missouri's rolling hills and their forests gave way to much more mundane and less attractive, flat farmland. It was only about a two-hour drive to Humboldt, where Andrew has been living for the past few years, working for well-to-do investors and establishing an ultra modern brewery in what has to be seen as an odd market for such a fancy place. Longtime readers may remember that Andrew, after his bike trip through Europe and southeast Asia, had settled down in Bosnia and founded Oz Brewing in Trebinje. Alas, the pandemic got the better of him and his enterprise, and eventually he had to close shop for economic reasons. And now he's the mastermind behind Union Works Brewing Company.
When I arrived in this tiny town of barely 1,500 inhabitants (small enough to not even have a Super 8 or other motel so that I had to overnight a few miles farther north in the only marginally more populous Iola), Andrew was waiting for me at the brewery, which is closed on Tuesdays. That gave him a chance to show me around the ultra-modern brewhouse, and after that tour we sampled our way through his excellent beers while catching up on our lives. Andrew is a chemical engineer (he used to work in the Permian Basin oil fields when he lived in Lubbock), and his scientific approach to making beer results in some of the finest IPAs that I have been privileged to enjoy in a long, long time. 
The next morning the two of us went out for a ride, something I had been anticipating with quite some dread since going out with someone almost 30 years my junior can quickly devolve into torture and worse. Thankfully, Andrew showed mercy (and was somewhat hobbled by a mysterious issue with his knee that he has been nursing for a while) and the ride was enjoyable. Kansas roads are just as straight as those on the South Plains, and the pavement is just as crappy. That afternoon I drove back down to Humboldt for another round of IPAs and a BBQ pizza and more conversation with my old friend.
Thursday morning started with thunderstorms and rain, and for the first few hours of my drive south to the Ft. Worth area I kept the roof up for the first time on this trip. At almost 450 miles, it was a long day, and I can't really say that Oklahoma is very scenic this time of the year. So, I was glad when I pulled into Keith and Cindy's driveway in Keller, on the north-west side of the metroplex. Keith and I go back all the way to his days in New Mexico, where he used to be an air traffic controller and we both did crits in Juarez. Man, the cool folks I know!
Before scooting out on Friday morning, he and I went for a ride in the commercial warehouse district of that part of the world. At least there are some small roads with little traffic (but rough pavement), but overall, this certainly is not a scenic part of Texas—probably too close to Oklahoma, I s'pose! 🤣 What sets this area apart from Lubbock is that there are simply too many people (and cars), and when you get onto one of the various interstate highways, you're suddenly in the middle of slow-moving molasses. I knew that I was going to be faced with heavy traffic for the entire trip down I-35 to and through Austin, and so I just sat back and tried to stay even-keeled. But seriously, who would want to live here? The toll rates are astronomical, as Keith pointed out to me on this empty stretch of highway.
Thanks to my noon departure I avoided the worst of the Friday afternoon Austin rush hour, and by five o'clock I was checked into the Comfort Suites in Kyle, my ultimate domicile for this first part of the trip. The hotel had been provided by the organizer of the Wimberley / Jacob's Well road race on Saturday, to which I had been assigned for unknown reasons. I mean, roundtrip mileage from Lubbock runs well over $500, but I suppose nobody cared, and I certainly wasn't going to complain as this race paid for almost all of my entire trip. And so I went to the nearby HEB on my bike to grab a microwaveable pizza plus some libations, started working on this blog entry, and set my alarm for really early Saturday morning so I could make it to Wimberley 45 minutes before the morning's first start at 7 a.m. As I said, it all fell together perfectly, thanks to the generosity and hospitality of my wonderful friends. Thank you from the bottom of my heart!
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