1. Melted Handlebar Grips. Much thanks to the sun for boiling down on my bike’s grips so valiantly that it literally melted them onto my hands.
2. Woody’s Gas Station. Upon walking in, and me in my straw cowboy hat, an arrow head necklace and nearly completely unbuttoned, button up shortsleeve, the attendant calls out “Howdy partner.” I could sense the snide tone to his voice and his friend’s smirk indicated they were likely having a laugh at my own good expense before I came in. I countered with long slow drawl added to my voice, “Pack of Blue Spirits,” which roughly translates to “Can I buy a pack of American Spirit Regulars?” I think he then realized how serious this conversation had become, because he got them without delay and somehow sussed out that I was from Pittsburgh. He claimed to have lived there himself in the past and made some remark akin to “Yeah, the weather’s a helluva lot better up there.” To which I replied, of course, “Yeah, and so is the football.”
3. Natural Planet Health Food Store. My next — and what was to be my final — stop was this store with a name that clearly indicated it would sell healthy food. Upon entering I discovered shelf after rows of shelves full of vitamins and supplements, and a small stand selling granola. When I asked her if she had fresh fish, commonly thought of as “health food”, she looked at me as though I was crazy. In what kind of world do people think that taking supplements and vitamins can be considered eating healthy food?
4. Safeway. I was only introduced to Safeway a few months ago, but it’s nearly on par with Whole Foods, even though it’s basically just your average super market chain. Two great pieces of life happened here:
   • Bike Lock. I placed my key into the lock to attempt to lock my bike up and, somehow, beyond the explanations of man and gods, the key literally melted into the lock. Irremovable. Excaliburred into the lock for all time, perhaps?
   • Crocodile Dundee. The fishmonger/butcher, maybe 25 years old or so, was incredibly social and talked to me non-stop about the great boneless pork chops he’d just cut up (and how they barely had any bones even left in them, each one about 3 inches thick) and various hamburger specials. I just wanted the tuna. When he saw my attention drifting he finally handed me the two tuna steaks, but not before one last remark. “Are you from Australia? Your outfit looks like those Australian guys I’m always seeing.”

What a great ride.

A couple of days in Denton, TX might do you right. The downtown area is a really special little place, the rarish breed of Mayville that seems to be all too quickly disappearing in the face of our strip mall seas. Let this video not deceive, however, the majority of Denton is ultra-suburb.

Our return to Austin, greatest city in all of America. Spring is even finer than Fall, as memory serves, and the festivals are in full bloom this time of year.

Tristan David, my most esteemed assistant, joins me on this informative adventure in changing a flat tire on a bike.

Read about this day here or check out our picture gallery of Marathon TX or the nearby Post County Park.

Read about this day here.

Watch a video about this day here.

We rode our bikes there, to the Post, as the locals call it, though the signs officially read Red Rock County Park, a gift by some long gone ranchers to the area. Picnic tables surround the dam, a shallow pool sits empty and you wonder if it has any recollection of every being wet, let alone full. The place is in fairly good order, the bathrooms are working and clean, there’s a large pavilion with a massive barbecue pit. You can imagine 50 years ago parents bringing their children here, children bringing their friends and their pets, friends meeting neighbors, all of the women in red and white checkered dresses to match their picnic blankets, the men in cowboy regalia, the kids with their cap guns and everyone laughing and boisterous under the squelching sun. The barbecues flaming up while the beers were kept cold and no one concerned with the dangers of nuclear war or identity theft or a world running out of oil.

But today it’s empty, save for myself, my son and the stray dog who followed us here. The dam is full, surprisingly so given that it’s difficult to find a drop of water in town that doesn’t come out of a tap or bottle. But a full dam doesn’t make for a full park, and I get a little nostalgic for a time when a place like this might have been filled every weekend by chance, now I wonder if I could even fill it by placing fliers around town and inviting everyone out.

Even here, in the middle of nowhere, the closest thing to frontier left of the Wild West, you still won’t find the vestiges of yesterday. While some places’ buildings and streets and telephone lines grow faster than others, it seems that everyone moves away from nostalgia at the same pace.

Want more?

Read various other posts on Marathon, TX. You can also watch a video about this day in Marathon or check out our photo gallery on Marathon TX or the nearby County Park, mentioned in this post.

The morning walk pushed my feet one in front of the other down the hiker/biker trail, through Zilker Park and back again until I was downtown. I won’t bore you with the details of my every step but suffice to say that there’s nothing quite like the feeling of moving at a pace which is too slow to be measured by MPH as the city’s morning rush hour pushes by you, everyone hustling, half-asleep and on their way to work as I have time to literally stop and smell the roses. I stopped into the only CVS I’ve been able to find in the city and purchased a tube of toothpaste. When I left the store a young man, in his early twenties and sitting on the hard concrete, dirty with the misfortune that homelessness brings for whatever reason, stopped me. I’ve had a love/hate relationship with the homeless, having been one myself so long ago that it feels like another life by now, and when he asked me for a meal rather than a handout it reminded me that with all of the scheming street people you have to deal with on a daily basis when living in a city, there are those who are more than just looking for a workday-free dollar.

My trails lead me home and the family was waiting eagerly to head over to the local park, frisbee in hand, so that by noon we’d already had an hours worth of throwing the old disc around and Tristan was soaked through his genes with playing in the park’s fountain. Even while Olivia and I threw the frisbee back and forth, laughing at each other’s inability to throw and catch in succession, a group of “professional” frisbee guys did Globe Trotteresque maneuvers 50 yards or so away from us.

A full day of work would ensue, a good day, the type of workday that leaves you feeling satisfied with a job fully well done, accomplishment ringing in your ears a happy bell whistle. I made a motion towards our local coffee shop, Flipnotics, where I was to meet up with some guys from Austin’s local bike DIY bike collective Yellow Bike. Yellow Bike is an organization that provides free lessons for people to learn how to fix bikes, similar to the Free Ride program in Pittsburgh. The basic gist of it is simple: bring your bike into the shop and they’ll help you learn how to fix it, not fix it for you, and in turn you’re expected to help them out in some way. I don’t know the exact specifics but the general idea is to get more people on bicycles, and in my book there are few things more worthy. The guys I met from Yellow Bike were better than your average work meeting, though, and we sat around talking for at least as long as we discussed web site specifics. I’m continually impressed with Austinites and their tendency towards extreme friendliness and ease of conversation. There really is something to be said for this city’s people’s attitudes toward living. I don’t know if it’s something that’s somehow inherent to the place itself, if the geography somehow leans towards friendly smiles or perhaps the year round sunny weather that causes the best in show of humanity to flock to a place like this, but whatever Austin is doing, it’s doing it right.

I left that meeting in the thick dark of a late Autumn evening, expecting to head home and make a night of it around some Family Guy or light conversation with the Mrs., but alas our porch was covered in empty beer bottles and our outdoor chairs arranged in a manner which would indicate that the previous occupants had been engaged in conversation. Upon opening the simple steel door to our RV house and home, I was greeted by not only the beautiful Olivia, but also a neighbor here in the Pecan Grove RV Park whom I’ve been meaning to get to know a bit better. We sat around and talked about skateboards and rock climbing and professions and urban sprawl and the state of life in general, well enough into the night that by the time he left I could do little else but reflect on what a day like today means for a person.

To have so many events packed into one 15 hours period, exploration, new friends, good conversation, solid physical exercise…I feel like a lucky man today and were this my last day, I think would have been a life well-lived.

Here’s to hoping tomorrow is even a piece of the good that is today’s pie.

There are basically three areas that serve as RV areas, one which is close to the highway and is primarily filled with seasonal RVs, another that falls on the northern hill, and the primary visitors area which is basically a large field with multiple gravel spots, each with their own hookups and a small grass patch.

Cows on the southern hillside migrate from the bottom of the hill to the top of the hill, spending the hottest hours of the day under the shade of a tree, and this will be your primary view when looking out of your front door. An exclusively-goat petting zoo awaits your children at the bottom of that hill, and across the driveway are paddleboats that you can use to laze away a day in the small lake that’s right inside of the campground. Best of all, I’d surmise, is the giant “hillbilly slip n’ side” that the owners have built from a large farm tarp, some sand, and a hose. Seriously, if you’ve ever been on a slip n’ slide, or if you’ve never been but always wanted to try, this is a blast for hours.

The office also holds a small store, nothing special but if you need some snacks or camping essentials — from smores to toilet paper — you’re in luck.

We stayed in August and there were farm’s selling freshly harvested veggies and corn everywhere; drive between the campground itself and Somerset and you’ll likely pass four or five of them. There’s also an RV store nearby where you can buy your more substantial needs. Somerset itself is a very small city, and though it has a quaint little downtown and even a nice cafe with WiFi (Maggie May’s), don’t expect to find much to do therein.

The laundry and bathrooms are both amazingly clean, the staff is incredibly nice and told us about all types of cool activities in the area, including a county fair (which we ended up visiting), an ice cream shop known as Shepherd’s Farm (we didn’t have the time) and what is supposed to be an amazing bike trail in the nearby town of Rockwood.

All in all, we very much enjoyed our time at Hickory Hollow, it’s a very relaxing place to stay and we ended up doing so for more than two weeks.