It's been hard for me to even write about this day, as I don't think I've fully recovered from the trauma of it yet.

It all started when I woke up with the slightest trace of a sore throat, which for me is always the first sign of getting a cold. I tried to convince myself it was just my imagination. "I'm perfectly healthy," I said to myself out loud. I had to admit I sounded a little raspy.

By the time I packed up and finished my breakfast at Ward's, a diner where most of the customers chain smoked throughout breakfast, the sore throat was definitely not imaginary, and neither was the queasy stomach. I wanted to get to Sherman where I had a CouchSurfing host lined up and I could take a day or two off and recover. Being sick and biking 63 miles seemed like a tall order, but I had all day, and the weather was nice, so I felt confident that as long as everything else on my ride went smoothly I could do it.

Everything else did not go smoothly. Once I got out of the town of Paris, the pavement turned into popcorn-sized rocks embedded in tar. The road itself had been smoothed over by cars, but the shoulder could not have been bumpier. And did I mention my stomach wasn't feeling so good? On top of that, I got my first taste of prairie headwinds coming straight at me out of the west, at times threatening to blow me over with some of the stronger gusts. Furthermore, I seemed to be headed mostly up long, gradual hills. Benton had told me the other day that I'd be gaining about 2500 feet of elevation as I headed west from Paris to Lubbock, but I hadn't expected it to be all in the first day.

None of these factors would be a big deal by itself, but adding them all together amounted to sheer unadulterated misery. I checked for other roads I could take, but the only roads off Route 82 at that point were more of those Farm-to-Market roads that connect farms to towns, not towns to each other, and besides, they would probably not be any better paved than the main road. There was nothing I could do but plod slowly and painfully forward, my hands on the drop handlebars, my head bowed against the wind, my eyes gazing directly at my bike computer which, no matter what button I pressed, provided some heartbreaking statistic to reinforce just how slowly I was going. I lived for those precious moments when I'd be briefly pulled forward by the vacuum created by a passing 18-wheeler.

Then the screaming started. I didn't even have the energy to come up with anything more creative to yell at the sky, the grass, the passing motorists, and the puzzled livestock than things like "This sucks! This pavement sucks! This wind sucks! This is terrible! I feel like crap! This is not cool! At all!" Screaming eventually devolved into sobbing. I don't think I can remember ever feeling more frustrated.

But I did not stop pedaling. I made a deal with myself that once I reached the 20 mile mark I would then be allowed to fling myself down on the grass in exhaustion and sulk. That was all quite satisfying, until (here the poop-flavored icing was liberally slathered onto my sewage-filled cake of a day) I felt dozens of needles poking the back of my right thigh. What the. . . I sat up and looked at the ground. I didn't see anything out of the ordinary, but then felt another prick on my wrist and saw a little red ant scurry across my arm. Fire ants! So when I got back on the bike, it was uphill, over bumpy gravel, against the wind, feeling sick, AND scratching at the 20 or 30 ant bites on my butt. Curses!

I started questioning northern Texas as a whole. I had completed 20 slow, painful, excruciating miles. There were at least 400 more in front of me. As my wiseass brother said in a text message. "It took me 17 weeks to drive across Texas, and that was without stopping. You'll probably make it through by 2014." Would it all be like this?

I pushed on. Thankfully, I caught a break when I entered Fannin County, who'd decided to upgrade their share of the road to normal, silky smooth asphalt. Gradually the winds and the itching seemed to die down a little too. But at that point it was clear I was not going to make it all the way to Sherman. I'd shoot for Bonham, the next decent-sized town, and get a motel there.

And I wasn't going to make it to Bonham without a brief highwayside nap. At about the 30 mile mark I pulled out my sleeping bag and crashed. Thankfully, the nice guys in a pickup truck who stopped to ask if I was okay did so at the end of my nap, when I was just waking up again. They drove off, and about 45 seconds later a state trooper pulled over to ask the same question. I need some way to indicate that I'm sprawled out on the side of the road completely voluntarily. A large sign or something.

When I finally made it to Bonham, I picked up a bunch of sick-person supplies at the first grocery store I came to and rode off toward the Economy Inn which had conveniently placed prominent billboards with directions on the highway. I asked the Indian guy at the counter if there were any rooms free for the evening, a question I already knew the answer to since there was only one car parked in the lot.

"A room. . . free?" he asked, puzzled as to why he should be giving out free rooms.

"I mean, available."

I awarded this room third prize in the Worst Motel Room Ever Awards. Second prize goes to one dreary place I stayed at in the Dominican Republic whose one source of light was a dangling bare bulb, and first prize goes to a hotel in Puerto Rico where the walls only went 3/4 of the way to the ceiling, enabling you to hear all the noise from the other rooms: ALL of it. The Economy Inn held its own though, sporting dried up flies and cockroaches, a generous coat of grime on the bathtub shelves, and cigarette holes in all the bedding.

But for a sick, exhausted, ant-bitten person desperately in need of a shower and a bed, it could not have been more perfect.