Day 75

Firewood
The ants chewed through the plastic bag. I don't really know what I was thinking. If they can chew through a tent, they can chew through a bag. I spent an hour and a half getting them off my gear. Time to come up with a better solution. I got on the road and started thinking. I settled on getting a box of heavy duty bags from a gas station. If they can't get anything useful, they would come in mass. I grabbed some duct tape to- maybe my duct tape wasn't working because it was old and got wet. I also got icecream. A pint is less than two bucks here. I'm going to be eating a lot. I read that coffee grounds works as a barrier- maybe I'd find it somewhere. I spent ages looking for a post card today. The first city didn't have any. The second city didn't have any. I checked gas stations, the tiny airport, a museum, grocery stores, a tractor supply, a hardware store. I called drug stores. Zero luck. I could have tried other cities, but I don't want my trip through every state to turn into my year spent hunting down post cards on a bike. So I used a generic one that I got at the post office. By generic I mean it's blank with a stamp on it. I even checked two more places while leaving town. At the last one, they had banana split icecream for the cheap price- I had to have it. Finally I headed out of Texas on the tiny shoulder highways, where the speed limit is 70. Luckily there wasn't too much traffic but it was still stressful. As soon as I got to the border, the speed limit went back to a comfortable 55 and the shoulders widened out. I stopped by a gas station for the umpteenth time today. No post cards, but supposidly there was a truck stop just outside the next town. Yippy! I headed that way and soon discovered that it was the wrong way occording to Google. Not the first time today that I've missed a turn. It was faster to get where I was going by going back, so I did. And my shoulders disappeared again. Ugg. I crossed an awesome lake- it was full of green plants. Near sunset, I noticed up ahead that it looked like the road went basically straight up. I was preparing for the harsh climb when I realized that it must be a drawbridge. No problem, I would just have to end the day early. I occasionally saw a car coming down from it though- how in the world? But as I got closer, I realized that the structure of the part of the bridge above the road made it appear that it went much higher than it did. It was still a bit of a climb but nothing like what I expected. I passed by a few houses and realized that with my lucked, it would be best to find camp a bit early. I found a spot where I could see through the trees. I pushed my bike down to it and almost ran straight into the biggest spider I have ever seen. The body was really fat. It was scurrying along on its web- lucky for me. If I hadn't of seen it.... Let's not even go there. I went down a bit, looked for another spot to enter. Another spider. Just as big. Now I was really stuck. I can't go in the woods. I hopped to the other side of the road. There was more grass on this side. I set up camp in obvious view. There are probably huge spiders in the grass, but I didn't know what else to do. I sprayed the raid around my tent and climbed inside. I thought a cop was shining a light on my tent at one point but the moon had just traveled above the tree line.