Kirbeyville, Texas

The morning we left Cleveland was pouring down rain, but it was a warm 70's. We rode in the rain most of the morning and the sun finally came out in the afternoon. The terrain is really changing now and looking more like what we have seen in Georgia and S. Carolina. We had some rolling hills which are a nice change of pace. There was a really nice berm to ride on once again. There was alot of traffic but everyone gave us plenty of room......except for that ONE logging truck. There always has to be one! Riding in the rain isn't much fun, but I think that both of us really enjoyed the warm temperatures. We haven't had temps this warm since we were in Arizona (what was that about a year ago......?). The biggest problem is the bike and everything just gets so dirty. By afternoon the sun came out and we really enjoyed a great ride. Shorts and t shirts again. We also had a nice tailwind. The road we were on was a great cycling road. And we finally saw a longhorn cow/bull. Isn't he posing nice for us? Now we can leave Texas and know that we have seen everything, cows, desert, cactus, The Alamo, pickup trucks, mexican restaurants, Dollar Stores, Walmarts....... We stopped at a small store for some cold drinks and then road into Kountze. We were planning to stay there but with the great weather and tailwind we decided to go on to Silsbee. As we were entering Silsbee we heard a big thump thump thump and the back tire went squirrly. We stopped and discovered that the back tire had a big bubble in it. It was pretty impressive. Something we hadn't seen before. We were expecting to see a hole in the tire, but it wasn't a hole it was a bubble. Check out the picture above. We have been carrying two spare tires for the bike and one spare for the trailer. Hap put on a new tire and tube and we were good to go. In Silsbee there were no campgrounds, but there were three hotels. We had called one and decided to stay there. We got into town and couldn't find it. We asked 2 different people, one of them called the hotel, and we ended up calling them again. And we still couldn't find them. The lady didn't speakidy english very well. We ended up at another hotel up there road. It was alittle more costly but at least we were off the road. Traffic in Silsbee was very busy. I used one of the trash cans in the hotel room to soak all of our rain covers and rain coats to get some of the dirt off of them. We washed our clothes in the laundry and then walked across the street to a mexican (what other kind is there?) restaurant. When we got back to the room and opened the door I saw a flash of a little animal (we'll call him BEN) running across the floor. That's a nice touch! We figured BEN wouldn't hurt anything so we went to bed. After we turned off the lights we heard BEN "inside our bag" rustling around! We got up, put the food bag out of reach and closed up everything else. We turned the lights off again and heard him scurrying around again. This time we got out the flashlights to see if we could see him. Of course we couldn't. So we turned the lights out again. Now we are discussing ways that we can trap BEN. Hap is designing a BEN trap in his head. What do ya think? If we can get him to jump into the trash can by using peanut butter................ how about we just go to sleep Hap? BEN didn't bother us anymore that night. When we checked out of the room we told the manager and he did take $10 off the room rate. I told Hap that I thought maybe he would charge us more because we had a "pet" in our room and there was a big sign that said "NO PETS IN ROOM YOU WILL BE CHARGED".

Today's ride started out in sunny but alot cooler temps. 50 degrees and a headwind all day. We had a short day planned due to the fact that there wasn't any place to stay unless we road another 45 miles or so. We were on a four lane highway all day. Lots of traffic but we had our own "lane"/berm again. The temps were a shock after yesterday though. We stopped for lunch in Buna. It was then that Hap discovered that we had been riding with the rear brakes on. That's nice Hap. Maybe if we ride with our brakes on we can finally get in shape! We arrived in Kirbeyville about 3p and checked into a hotel. There are no campgrounds once again. For some reason we were both very tired today. Maybe because we spent half of last night planning how to catch BEN and the whole time BEN was laughing at us, waiting for us to get the peanut butter down from the shelf we had put it on. When we got into our room we both fell asleep. When we finally woke up, it was dark out. We had some soup in our food bag for dinner. We walked next door to a gas station and got a can of green beans. We fixed the soup and green beans in the microwave. Now we've had dinner so we can go to sleep again!! Tomorrow we will be in Louisiana. Another state!