#SD2KW, Day 32, Johnson City to Austin, 50 miles | Always Awesome Austin

Riding Stats

Accommodations

Route Tracker

Some days play out as planned and others not so much. Today threw a couple surprises at us beginning with when Tom opened the tent and the zipper broke. Our Big Agnes tent has travelled with us thousands of miles and it’s old. Broken beyond a field repair and unwilling to sleep inside every night for the rest of the ride, we bought a new tent.

Lucky for us we cruised into Austin today where there is an REI store. Unlucky for us they didn’t have the bikepacking tent model (with shorter tent poles). So rather than wait a few days to have one shipped, we bought a new tent (same model) and are using our existing tent poles. We set the tent up in our room to verify it works. Yep!

Secondly, I couldn’t get the blog to upload pics or vids. Sometimes finding bandwidth is the issue but not this time. It was driving me nuts as I’m a former problem-solving, technology teacher hack. Finally figured it out. Just needed to buy more cloud storage. Cha-Ching… add that to the cost of buying a new tent today.💸

The mister has been keeping his hair covered with a helmet, stocking cap or ball cap just about every moment of every day because of his shaggy hair. Today was haircut day for Tom. Cycling down the road all of a sudden I saw a barber trailer. Boom! Best. Haircut. Ever.

As mentioned yesterday we are staying in an amazing Marriott property in downtown Austin. We think we have reached the halfway point of our ride. Look what our daughter Anne and her colleague, Mary at the Element had waiting for us in a our room. Thank you ladies. 😘

You know how people often say “you can’t go back; it isn’t the same.” Sometimes it’s better! In 2014, Tom and I ran the Austin Marathon.

Nine years later (almost to the day) 29 marathons, five weddings and seven grands later we’re back! It’s better this time because we didn’t have to run 26.2 miles. 😂 Note in the pic below the guy running in the cowboy hat is running barefoot. Back then and now, still keepin’ it weird in Austin.

In 2014 we pledged to return to Bangers Sausage and Beer House and made good on that promise to each other tonight.

This post is already long enough so I’m not going to mention that hill going into Austin that Tom called a little bump. (17% uphill grade). Done with that one. Let’s keep riding east!

Click on the image below to view more pics and vids: