2004-06-01-2230Z


By midnight I had gone 30 miles; I decided to refill my water bottles at the next opportunity; and the next exit had - wonder of wonders - a bar. They normally even had Guinness on tap but they were out; they did have Dos Equis, that nice amber brew from South of the border, so I ordered a pint of that. Ron, the bartender, a sixtyish white guy, tall, neatly trimmed white moustache, wouldn't let me pay for anything after I had to turn down the $4 dinner plate "because I'm on a $10-a-day budget". All I managed to pay for was a pack of peanuts. The other guys, regulars I presume, were also very friendly and helped me plan the next leg of my trip. I could have taken I-8 and gone straight to Yuma then San Diego, cutting off hundreds of miles. But in the end I decided to go to Phoenix anyway, just to see it.

Two pints of ale is not good for Neanderthin Man, especially when he didn't eat enough. About 10 miles down the road, with still 10 ahead of me to the rest stop, I saw a clump of pine trees and decided to get some sleep there. Unrolling my Hennessey Hammock for the first time in many weeks, I was snoozing in no time; woke up a few hours later to the sound of farm machinery, giant monstrous-looking vehicles, harvesting the field next to me. I attempted, and failed, several times to shake off the carb-induced stupor before I could get back on my bike. I stopped about every mile to drink water as I headed towards the rest area.

And here I am, hours later, at that same rest area. A guy handed me a couple of BK Whoppers not long ago, for which I thanked him profusely, as the vending machines here only sell way-overpriced junk food and I needed energy to finish biking into Phoenix. Which I will begin shortly, now that digestion has sufficiently advanced and the sun is getting lower in the sky.

Realized, as I was about to practice some of my songs, that one thing I still need Windows for is my MIDI music. Apparently the MIDI utils on Slackware depend on some "Arts" software which seems to be missing. So until I either install that or figure out how to use /dev/midi, I'll have to reboot to Windows for singing. Ugly.

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