I woke up at the crack of dawn in a bad Brownsville motel, located next to I-69E, and set off to bike the remaining 26 miles to the Gulf of Mexico, or as people in Mexico refer to it, “the sea.” My plan was to finish the trip, snap a few photos, turn around, and head for the airport. I needed to find a way to get my bike home before my 5:00 flight, which is always an enormous hassle.
The city of Brownsville sits on the far east end of the U.S.-Mexico border, but falls short of the coast. There are two highways that lead to the beach. I took the one closest to the border, Texas State Highway 4. Dogs perked up to chase me as the sun rose. Suburbia quickly faded, and I was, once again, left alone on the open road. Two enormous wildlife management areas and the Boca Chica State Park keep the area wild and undeveloped. High winds whipped off the ocean, combing the high grass against the ground. The final miles of the Rio Grande flowed to the right side of the road. The bay, dotted with islands, was at low tide to the left. Overcast and cold, it was difficult to believe that thousands of college students drunkenly celebrate spring break every year on nearby South Padre Island. I caught sight of what must have been the last section of the border barrier, nearly invisible behind high jungle foliage.
I passed through a U.S. customs checkpoint without so much as a sideways glance from the officers. Normally there’s more pomp and circumstance to our interactions: A single agent, surrounded by millions of dollars worth of sensors used for searching semi-trucks, steps from behind a bullet-proof shield and waits till I roll to a stop.
“Are you a U.S. citizen?” I’ve been asked over and over again.
“Yes,” I reply. And that’s it. The agent and I say our goodbyes.
Now I found myself missing our witty banter. The end of a great journey should be triumphant, not lonely. With five miles to go, I was relieved to see two cars parked on the shoulder. A posse of birders, surprisingly young considering their stodgy hobby, stood in a row scanning the marsh with enormous binoculars and cameras. South Texas is one of the most species-rich areas in the country, and a large portion of the border is included in the Great Texas Coastal Birding Trail network. This is perfect, I thought to myself: These bird nerds can take my picture and congratulate me on biking nearly 2,000 miles. Biking is orders of magnitude cooler than birds, as everyone knows, and I was feeling pretty good about myself.
The tall fellow in the khaki vest was more than happy to take my picture and was impressed that I’d started in San Diego. As the camera clicked I imagined a hero’s welcome back in Washington and the speech I’d have to start preparing immediately. That is, until somewhere behind me, I heard the red-headed birder say to a colleague, “I’ll be impressed when he reaches Florida.” Coming from someone on the lookout for an obscurity like the orange-billed Royal Tern, more specifically the guy who had just described his sport to me as “the original Pokemon Go,” this was crushing. Head deflated to a size that would fit in my helmet, I pedaled to the beach itself. Signs warn visitors to watch for sea turtle hatchlings. Supposedly there’s a SpaceX launch pad under construction in the park, but I never caught sight of it. Unlike the beach in Tijuana and San Diego, there was no sign of tourism, just miles of untouched coastline.
I congratulated myself for making it this far, birders be damned, but it was time to wrap things up. My Bontrager bike shorts started to disintegrate the week before and were now dangerously close to falling apart. Sunburned, scabbed, and chaffed, I reached the sand and reverently baptized a wheel in the salt water. A nice old couple from Odessa-Midland, the city immortalized by Friday Night Lights, gave me a ride back into town. I found the nearest bike shop, disassembled and boxed my battered Trek 520, and organized a pickup from Fedex. I then hitched a ride to the airport. The grind complete, I was ready to head home.
