Day 87, October 27th 2007 (Jacksboro,TX to Denton,TX)

I was very motivated to get to Denton and have a nice place to stay for a night. It had been a couple of days on the road without a shower, and even longer since I had stayed with someone from warm showers. I was looking forward to being able to meet someone new from the area and to see what was happening in the town of Denton. I started riding at around 9. It was still a little chilly riding early in the morning, maybe 40 degrees. It seemed to usually warm up around 10 to 10:30 so I warmed myself up for the first couple of hours and then I would start to really warm up with the temperature. The wind seemed to continue to not do very much, and for that I was pleased. One thing that seemed to remain the same were the rolling hills in the area. I was riding up and down hills through farm land and I was seeing a lot of the same characteristics of back home in Iowa. I went for the first half of the day and then was just going to pull over for lunch. I figured that I would have a couple of my famous peanut butter sandwiches and then I looked down because my back was practically coming to a stop on its' own. I thought that I had a flat or something, but my bike was stopping on its' own. As I peered down I saw that my bread that had been hanging on the rear rack had swung down and was caught between my rear wheel and my chain. The bag had torn open and bread was being shredded out of the rear of my bicycle by the wheel as it continued to turn. It took me a little while to scrape out all of the remnants of bread that had become glued to my chain and then I started to look for other options for lunch. There was buffet for only $5.50 and so I decided to go and surprise some of the folk in the area. It's always great to see the reaction on people's faces as I come in and shovel a few plates down and then get back on my bike and continue to ride. The food was good and I was starting to approach Dallas as I left. The cities were definitely growing in much larger sizes and the traffic grew as well. I had heavy traffic blowing by me on the road and I was forced to deal with the shoulder of the road. I wasn't able to spend as much of my time looking around as I was spending keeping an eye on the drivers approaching me from behind. There wasn't much around me at this point besides business buildings and restaurants, so I really wasn't missing out on too much. The desolate land now laid behind me and it was the traumatizing large cities that laid ahead. When I was approaching Denton I called the host on the warm shower's list, Jay C, to let him know I was near. He gave me all the directions that I needed to get to his house and it seemed nearly impossible to mess things up. As I came in to the area I was able to see that this was a college town. I had no idea that it was a college area until now, but it was apparently a fairly large school. With about 25,000 students it was easily the largest town I had been in for a good few weeks. When I reached Jay C at his apartment , it was nice to be able to stay with someone my age for the first time. It was a very nice place that I was able to put my things in and call home for an evening. I was given that great warm shower that I had longed for and then I was able to get to chat with Jay C. He was going to school for an English major and he was nearing the end to the degree. I was able to watch football for the first time in awhile and tried to catch up with what was happening and what I had missed. The World Series was also in effect and I had missed a couple of the games and apparently I hadn't missed very much. The Colorado Rockies were being pummeled by the Red Sox and it sounded like a pour display for a World Series match up. Jay C had mentioned that for the evening there was a Halloween costume party that one of his friends was going to have in his home town, about 20 miles away. I had almost completely forgotten about Halloween and the idea of being able to where the same thing that I had been wearing as a costume seemed easy and could be kind of fun. So we went to this Halloween party that started small, but ended up being fairly large. It was funny with some of the conversations I had with some of the people at the party. It would usually start with them commenting on my sweet shorts. Then I would tell them that these were the shorts I had been wearing for quite awhile now. They guessed right away that I was dressed as a touring cyclist and then I would say yes, because I was. It usually took a few more minutes for them to realize that I wasn't just being in character of my costume, and that I was actually touring around the country. It was an eventful evening with some very classic moments. I really needed a video camera at this point of the trip to capture some of the expressions on some of the people's faces. They almost seemed mystified that I was actually on this journey, and some walked away thinking that I was lying to them. I was able to meet a few of Jay C's friends and one whom was Justin. Justin lived only a few minutes away from the place where the party was being held and when we had enough for the evening we went to his place to call it a night. Justin was great to chat with since he was also planning on taking some time off after this next semester to pull a long trip. He was going to attempt hitchhiking around Mexico and with the appropriate gear, it sounded like an incredible time. I tried to answer some of his questions as best as possible and only wished the best for his journey that lay ahead. I had an incredibly nice bed to sleep in for the evening and it was a great way to end an eventful day. I was running into so many great people along this trip. At a place like I was at for the evening, it was too difficult to write about all of the great people that I met.

Daily mileage: 66.1 miles
Average speed: 12.2 mph
Total mileage: 5,340.8 miles