Historical Post: 9907 XC bike tour, Vol 7

The saga continues...damn, is Texas big....

Thursday

We hookup with Cliff and Jerry near McKinney. Cliff has our first “moron” incident of the trip – some redneck throws a beer can at him from a pickup truck – this at 0800 – probably just got off the late shift stocking shelves at Wal-Mart. It misses and no harm done, but cliff wasn’t attired with the appropriate response armament – a .357 with teflon bullets. The moron gets away scott free.

It’s another HOT day in Texas, and we continue with more of the same- oil derricks, cows, vast prairie, and DOGS. More dogs than you can imagine. I drive Cliff and Jerry into McKinney for some R&R and laundry services at Pat/Len’s house, and then we reel the group back in a few hours later. Our goal for the day is Texarcana, because we want to get out of Texas and into the “real world” of Arkansas. God, what were we thinking…

We finally end route 380 in Greenville, TX. The road has been very, very, good to us all, taking us from western New Mexico to eastern Texas. The rest of today is rather uneventful, and we end at state line road splitting Texas and Arkansas (hence Texarkana, for those geographically challenged). We are all famished, having made the whole day’s run without a food stop, driving hard for time. We walk over to a Mexican restaurant and proceed to destroy the place, over $4,000 in tamales, tacos, tostados, and other T words. We are very tired, and only the moron setting the new bass fishing record at 0300 disrupts our sleep.

One of my favorite stories from the trip thus far occurs. We go into the restaurant for dinner, and the cutest little Texarcana-nite seats us, and takes our drink orders. But then, another waitress brings us our margaritas. We're puzzled by this, so, we ask the cute waitress, "Hey, we've got something to ask you". She replies (True story!), "Yeah, I know, I get asked all the time...we DO wear shoes here nowadays". Needless to say, we're in tears on the floor.