Friday – Clarenden, Texas

I managed to get a hailstone massage today, very painful

After a blog post it was time to move, first stop was the post office, but my package from home had still not arrived, bummer that is 10 days via airmail. I arranged for the package to be forwarded on to a place in Florida. Hopefully it will arrive before I get there because I can see this thing chasing me around the country otherwise 🙂

Well, to start with the land was flat and boring, and of course I had a wind from the south this time, once again on my right shoulder.

I got to the small border town of Bronco, about 5 houses and a gift shop late in the morning.

Which turned to early afternoon under that sign, apparently I just lost an hour, I am now in Central time!

Now, the other day I mentioned about those pump things that I thought were used for oil, but I saw gas warning signs? Well, Jerry, a US chap in the Philippines I met over there, sent me a correction, yes they are oil well pumps and the gas cylinders are the fuel for the engines, so there you go. Anyway, the paddocks were littered with them out this way, some had storage tanks some did not, so maybe there were underground pipes, who knows 🙂 They also had a lot of agriculture around here, with spray irrigation, the pumps only used up a small above ground area.

Excuse the fingers, it was very windy and hard to control the camera at speed and not much easier when stationary either. The country side was greener than I expected, I had this image of Texas being dry and dusty like out west at home, but over the next few hours as I meandered my way east and north, it was nice, extremely hot though, up in the 40s.

I came upon this dam of the White River and as you can see, the sides of the roads were ablaze with wild flowers.

Heading north now, (why am I still getting wind from the right I just turned ninety degrees?), I was planning on a specific series of roads, which were supposed to be a scenic drive and thought maybe get a room at the town close to the beginning, then hit it early in the morning. But, the rooms I found were expensive with not much to go with them, so I kept on, into what looks like rain up ahead.

After a while, and checking room costs at each town (if there was a motel at all), I had no choice but to don the wet gear, it was still quite hot at this stage, so I was pretty reluctant.

Probably lucky I did though as I kept getting drops and misty rain and I could see lightning ahead as well, yuck!

Of course, I was now the back of nowhere between a small town called Brice and Clarenden when the rain hit hard and I mean hard, it turned to hail and that hurt I can tell you. 😦 I even pulled over for a short while, but that meant I was a sitting target, so I moved slowly with my flashers on until after about 5 minutes I cleared the weather, whew, I copped a few painful ones in the tackle, that brought tears to the eyes I can say, no armour down there and coming in from the side, no bike protection either!

The next town of Clarenden was where I decided to look for a room again, it was on a sort of major road, but it had 3 motels, an expensive one, no option, a real shoddy one which I did not bother to stop at and the 3rd one was a bit expensive also, but I wanted to stop, that storm was tracking me and there were others in the area. After booking in, I found the internet faulty, so the relief manager gave me a $15 discount 🙂 After I rebooted the server, the internet was fine, but I did not mention that 🙂 Of course by now, with the lost hours it was gone 7pm, way later than I am used to being on the road, so I would take what I could get.

So, in the end a cheapish room, quite comfortable, but not much to do around here and too late to think about a beer, so it was lucky I fixed the net 🙂 All in all a longish day for me over here, and I covered some of the scenic roads I wanted to do, but they were not that scenic in the rain, too busy watching the road etc. The forecast is for rain tomorrow as well, but I guess I had to run into some water eventually. Mind you, they are talking tornadoes and stuff around here, well I hope not, I don’t want to be sucked off my bike!!

Day – 364 miles and 586 km
Trip – 8,363 miles and 13,459 km

Cheers
TravellingStrom
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