Day 30...A Sore Start

Eastern Texas Road
 Flat+ Endless with a blanket of clouds.

Today I woke up with a sore throat. Oh no!! It felt a bit sore yesterday morning so I made sure to have some throat losengers and chlorasceptic spray at my bedside last night. And boy did I use them. This morning it was definitely worse, raw and painful. Ugh.

I was weary about how the ride would go today as we had hoped to get in another 80+ miles. I gargled with warm salty water, popped a 500 mg Cephalexin (antibiotic) for good measure, had my normal vitamins which includes a 1,000 mg Vitamin C and loaded up one of my water bottles with a few "emergen-C" mixes.

I decided to go easy and reassess how I felt at each 25 mile increment. Our first stop was a local grocery store for some drink refills. My throat felt better although my knee was nagging me. I stretched a bit, applied some anti-inflammatory gel to my knee and walked into the store. I was greeted by 3 smiling Texan women and a plum of smoke ...they were all chain smoking!! Not a great thing for an asthmatic (me) and one with a sore throat! Wow, I guess you can smoke in the grocery store on Saturday? And in Texas? I held my breath and launched myself to the back of the store, grabbed a drink, and quickly zipped to the front again to pay and get out!

We met Jim and Jeff 25 miles later (at mile 50) in Shepherd, TX for lunch in the RV. The temperature rose and by the time we hit the pavement again, 30 minutes later, it was near 90 degrees. The roads were flat as a pancake and seemed to stretch endlessly this morning. But this afternoon there were some rollers and the wind picked up. We grunted up the hills and spun in the easy gears as much as we could.

My new friends

70 miles in we stopped for another drink refill. Kevin went into the store while I made some friends with a mule and a horse in the paddock next door. They were suspicious of me at first but after I hand-picked some fresh grass for each of them (they nickered for more), we were friends.

Today we road 84 miles to New Waverly, Texas. We are parked at the town's fire house and ate at a restaurant called Fish Pond Restaurant.  A nice home cooked meal. Tomorrow looks clear and dry.

Our "campground" tonight