Christmas in Marathon, Texas 25/12/2009

I decided to ride on Christmas Day.

It was sunny with a light wind was blowing my way. It was generally down hill for the next 60 miles too. It was going to be an easy day, a sort of Christmas present for me.

Plus I couldn't afford two nights in this extortionate motel, the most expensive I'd found in over 1,000 miles of riding.

Fort Davis is a very nice little town but it is definitely a tourist trap. Situated amongst really fantastic scenery in Fort Davis State Park and miles from anywhere else, you have to pay whatever they ask for goods and services. No doubt it is more expensive to get things there, like it is in the Highlands of Scotland.

All the same I would have to leave for financial reasons.

The German cyclist had told me about a hostel in the Marathon, Texas where they welcomed cyclists with open arms. In fact you could stay for free if you arrived on a bike. The hostel was run by a long haired guy apparently and their card said, " Come and join us on the scruffy side".

It sounded like my kind of place, maybe I would take two rest days there and recover from the recent challenges.

I ate a slap up breakfast in a local cafe and had a pleasant chat with a very friendly Texan couple, before finally getting out on the road.

The ride went by easily enough. The road snaked down between the hillsides for a couple of hours. There were weathered sandstone boulder fields or long hill-top escarpments around every bend. It looked like you could have a lot of fun here on a climbing trip.

In the afternoon I rode into the Marathon Basin, the flat grasslands stretched off to rounded ridges on the horizons. Once again it seemed to take an absolute age to to cross these vast open plains.

I was worn out when I got to Marathon, the previous days were catching up with me. Soon I would be resting at the hostel I told myself. They'd probably be pleasantly surprised to see a long distance biker arriving to join the celebrations.

It took a while to find the place, on the edge of the little town up a dead end road. When I finally made it there it was very much closed, no one was there at all. They'd all gone off to celebrate Christmas elsewhere I guessed.

A little disappointed, I went to see if the local RV park would have me. If not it looked like I'd be eating pasta at the side of the road this evening.

My luck was in, I could stay and there was just time to get the tent up before dark.

As I was cursing the rock hard, stony soil, a helpful fellow came over and pointed me in the direction of some softer ground. Ten minutes later he came back and invited me to share Christmas dinner with him and his wife. I was overjoyed, I wasn't going to be eating pasta on my own on Christmas day after all.

Forest and Cynthia are American Nomads. They live in their trailer with their dog and travel around the US. They are in their early sixties and their kids are all grown up now and they have been on the road for a few years.

They are not completely retired. Forest went back to school and trained to to repair RVs when the work was drying up in top end construction. Hence they can travel wherever they want, so long as there are people in RVs who need to get them fixed.

It sounded like a pretty good life compared to many and they seemed to be very happy.

They were kind and generous warm and intelligent people. It was their first Christmas with no other family and they told me they were glad to share it with me.

They settled in Northern California when they were young. Forest was a long haired hippy then. He had built them a log cabin in the Redwood forests and it was there that they had their first child.

Far out hippies from the commune, small- town settlers(like Forest and Cynthia)and old-time loggers all co-existed on the mountain at that time. At the weekends sometimes they would all get together and play soccer!

It sounded like a lot of fun but like all good things it all came to an end. Growing Marijuana became big business on the mountain. Organised crime got involved and it became a dangerous place to bring up kids. All these crazy characters went their separate ways.

We ate chicken and mash, carrots and cranberry jelly. It was similar to what we might have for Christmas dinner but less over the top. I think Americans go overboard on Thanksgiving more. It was probably the best meal I've eaten in the US and it certainly made a wonderful change from my constant diet of porridge, bagels, cereal bars and pasta.

We had pumpkin pie for dessert, I'm told this is the real American traditional celebration pie. Forest had made it himself. It was delicious and I went back for seconds.

We drank a little wine and chatted into the evening on all sorts of topics. It was the first time in a month of being here that I've had more than a passing encounter with an American. The first time I've felt invited into somebody's life. I was deeply touched by the thought and it was great to get to know them. I left feeling like I had made new freinds.

Thanks to Forest and Cynthia it felt like Christmas after all.