December 4

I think I have cold feet. I'm wasting time in Corpus Christi, on the pretext of needing work done on my bike (work that I know how, and am equipped to do) and getting a copy of the Guia Roji (an excellent road map) for Tamaulipas. I called a couple of travel agents to see if I could book passage on a freighter from here to Tampico. Not possible. So to hell with it: tomorrow I'll take the big plunge, and in three days I'll be in Valle Hermosa. From there to Ciudad Victoria in about four more days. And then quien sabe? Maybe I'll stay there. I'm truly sick of travel.

I haven't been in many large cities on this trip. Poughkeepsie, Richmond, Baltimore, Washington, and Baton Rouge, and now Corpus Christi. Corpus seems to be a friendly, funky place. Lots of Hispanics, and lots of Gringos speaking Spanish. ( I had breakfast in a Mexican restaurant in Stinton this morning, with a Viet Nam vet who invited me to his table. His Spanish, when he patronized the waitress, was limited to about a six words and was atrocious.) Take New Minas, add a couple of refineries, abuse and do not repair the infrastructure, and you would have Corpus. Glad to see a city in overly proud Texas that is as messy, and perhaps as interesting, as New York.

I mourn the loss of my kitchen cover, which Erin designed and sewed for me. My kitchen is a milk crate tied onto the rear cargo rack of my bike. The bright orange cover shows up beautifully in the first few pictures I took, and in a sad, faded and torn state about three weeks ago, in the picture of the bike leaning against the Highway Sixty One sign. One of the reasons it got into such bad condition is that I kept it tied down with a bungee cord, which kept constant stress on the corner seams. I repaired it with Gorilla Tape somewhere in western Louisiana, and then, in order not to stress it further, I quit tying it down. That made it much easier to get at my kitchen, and for two days, riding into headwinds some of the time, and over some rough roads, everything was fine. The next day I stopped at a highway intersection to eat an orange. When I got to the next town, about ten miles away, it was gone. I think I took it off and laid it on the trailer, and then rode away without putting it back on the kitchen. It has gone to the limbo of lost objects, along with my sunglasses, a soap case, and my shoe covers, which is another reason I have cold feet.