You cant make this stuff up.

Mexico, right across Lake Amistad.

Date: 11.28.11
Location: Del Rio, TX

Del Rio sure is purdy. Purdy like I thought she might be. But not purdy enough to stay and sleep in with her. So I'm off to Marfa, TX.

More on Marfa later. I'll be staying here www.elcosmico.com, in a restored trailer. No less than 8 people in Austin told me I should go there. So that's a pretty good preface.

I'm excited to find a place I can chill for a while again, and the riding is apparently amazing there, just north in the Davis Mountains State Park.

leave it better than you found it

Lake Austin

Date: 11.27.11

Travel Day: Austin to Del Rio, Texas

I know nothing about Del Rio besides the fact that it's a border town. And so I can't tell you why I picked it as my next destination but when you have decision fatigue like I do, sometimes its best to just close your eyes and stick a finger on the map. 

Like the other night, in the dark, when I crossed South Congress at a traffic light that had that beeping tone for deaf people. I figured I'd give myself a little test. So I closed my eyes and I listened to traffic and when the beep went on I started across the street, still with my eyes closed. I kept them that way the whole way across. I don't know, stupid shit like this just occurs to me sometimes.

Desires Disappoint, Action Does not

Location: Austin, TX
Date: 11.23.11
Video: here
Pictures: here

I was feeling very desirous today. I didn't know exactly of what but there was a feeling in my stomach like a wee bit of anger and a little desire and both of those things tend to freeze me right up.

I think it was because that I was told something would happen, something that was good, and it didn't happen. It's like that feeling that you are pretty sure you are going to get that one thing that you wanted for Christmas and you open up all these other great presents and if you dont get that ONE thing, then all the other presents, eh, whatever.

Can't...seem...to...move...

Badass coffee and free wi-fi and
I think they are all high. 

Location: Austin, TX
Couple of ride days (45 on 11.22 and 37 on 11.20)

Yep, still here.

How can you leave a city when all she does is kiss you deeply and tells you how nice you smell and laughs at all your jokes and cooks you up the best meals and her pretty eyes glint in the sun and you make love all day and then take a nice long nap all tangled up together?

You don't.

Exodus: The Movie

Austin, I want to be on you.

Street food galore. 

Location: Austin, TX
Date: 11.18-11.19

But at the other end of the planet, there is Austin, and I'm staying in scha-wing apartment above a garage that I found through Airbnb.

The couple, the hosts, have some dogs, three I think, but I've only seen two. Sophie and the retard. I can't remember the retards actual name but my host said she kind of is, so that's her name in my book.

What's your story?

Location: Houston, TX
Ride Day

Houston gets an F for drivers. Is there an F-? Give it to them. Horrible. Unkind, erratic, angry. Could be because there are fifteen lanes in each direction and no one is happy with the lane they are in. It's a salmon rush.

I'm on my way to a ride that I downloaded. I modified it a bit so I can start from a house that two people live in that are friends of my parents that I saw last, maybe, 30 years ago.

Order the most expensive thing on your spiritual menu.

Location: Houston TX
Date: 11.15.11

First with a travel hint: You who have kids know this, but if you don’t and you are thinking of traveling let me give you a huge hint, if you think you want to pee, maybe even just a tiny bit, do it right then and there whatever you are.

I have peed, not like peed my pants all the way down to the shoes or anything, but I have dribbled a bit in preparation, and I've hobbled into some places (count:10). And I've gone in the bushes (4), into a planter (2), and into a bottle of empty beer (2). Killer boots man!

I'm sorry, can you please replete?

Location: Houston, TX
Date: 11.15.11

I feel so much better today because I felt myself becoming overwhelmed by what I thought was my duty as a citizen of the world. I was taking on too much.

I felt pretty sure that I was done with the blog altogether. It was too much. But then I got this from a friend I made in Bloomington Indiana;

"Gibbs, You've affected thousands of people in only 45 days. Don't let yourself or us down. If you're weary, rest if you must, but don't give up. Besides, you're kinda my superhero. :)"

I don't smile because there are bugs in my teeth.

Location: Shreveport, LA
Date: 11.12.11
Ride Day

Again, with the random free range pit bull....

I see him running across the road from about maybe a couple of hundred yards away and I have to turn the bike around, watch as he disappears into the bushes and then gauge the distance so that I make sure that when I am passing that spot that I am at full sprint.

This land is my land.

Date: 11.11.11
Location: Monroe, LA to Shreveport, LA
Travel Day

So with new vigor I get the out of Monroe. I'm not going far but I'm going to make sure and take my time today, because, well just because there is no particular reason to be in a hurry. Im staying off the highways again.

I stop off in a place called Gibsland, because that's just too rich to avoid. And again, its like all the others, one paved road, everything else cracked pavement or dirt and abandoned or burned out buildings and companies that used to be, still with their signs up, which do include an inordinate amount of BBQ places.

The winds change by themselves.

Location: Monroe, LA
November 12th, 2011

Rainbows only happen after a rain.

Someone said that before me. They can happen in waterfalls and with garden hoses as well, but that would make it a really long saying and it would lose some of its meaning if you said rainbows only happen when you set your garden hose on mist.

I'm driving out about 6 miles west of my hotel to go for a ride today. I didn’t feel bad, but I didn’t feel much like riding either. I've been in a bit of a funk lately, for sure. I admit it. I think since I wrote about my dog dying I have a had a rough couple of days.

I can pinch a horse from 100 yards away.

Location: Vicksburg, MS

I made this video not expecting at all to write about what I ended up writing about in the last post, and a lot of crap happened today that I haven't been able to sit down and settle out, so I'm phoning this one in, folks.

I think the take-away from this one is that the i-phone screen is really hard to see in full sunlight, and with sunglasses on.

You'll understand what I mean in about 55 seconds should you choose to press play.

Do it.Do it.Doooo it.

I take a ride with my best friend.

Location: Vicksburg, MS
Pictures: here
Video: here

When you are alone a lot, well, your mind tends to take the off ramp all by it's lonesome.

And that's the point of meditative journeys, that the mind searches about for a bit and then eventually it gives up altogether and what you are left with is no thought at all.

You gonna need some hot sauce, baby.

Location: Hattiesburg, MS to Vicksburg, MS
Photos: here

Man it is fun to drive in Mississippi. There aren’t many people on the back roads because most of them are on the interstates. It's a bit like Australia: town, nothing for 30 miles, town, nothing for 30 miles, and so on.

So you can really do some ripping and tearing, with care, if you care to. And I cared to.

Wonder twin powers, activate...

Dropping bombs...

Location: Hattiesburg, Mississippi
Pictures: Here

So yeah, I'm sitting in the bathroom at the Marriot in Hattiesburg, Mississipi. I've been saying I ess ess I ess ess I pee pee I, all day long. And I spend a lot of times in bathrooms in hotels because for one, I take great pleasure in having a poop, and two, I smoke and write in them because it is the only place that you can smoke in a hotel room these days.

Pensacola beach.

Sometimes I sit in the tub, depends on the quality of the crapper.

You cant lose when the only opponent is you.

posts with chicks get 2x the
response, so if this is what it
takes...

Location: Two days in St. Joe Beach, FL
Pics: here.
Video: here.

Yeah, so I wake up in St. Joe's Beach at a little cottage that I have rented for a couple of nights through AirBNB. My host brings me hot coffee and home baked blueberry scones. So that's a fairly good beginning to my visit.

I'm looking for nothing to do, and I found it.

Dont ask me if Im having fun yet.

Location: Tallhassee, FL to St. Joe Beach, FL
Pictures: here.
Video: here.

Since you know that I am at a college campus, if you don’t know how this day starts then you have not being paying attention.

And when I walk into this Starbucks at FSU there is a one girl whose eyes I meet. She is wearing a white shirt, and black leggings with black Uggs. Her curly black hair shields her face at first when she is bent over looking at her books, but when she looks up at me, her hair falls back to the side and reveals beautiful olive skin and brilliant blue eyes and lips, lips, lips.

If you map it, they will come.

Location: Tallahassee, FL
Photos: here.
Video: here.

I wake up at 10AM again after going to bed at 3AM. Just not nailing these sleep opportunities like I want to be.

I know I'm going for a ride today because I keep thinking of what it would be like to be back at home at have it be 30 degrees and wet and I would be an a-hole if I didn’t take full advantage of a beautiful 70 degree day in Florida.