I am writing from my tent in a clearing in the middle of a tree farm, the kind they use for logging, not the kind they use for Christmas trees, although really it could be either since they are all pines. I had made up my mind to camp in Texas for the evening, so I pushed myself down a long, straight road toward the state line just as the sun was setting. Just when I was a mile or two away, a woman with a carload of kids pulled over. "Is everything okay?"

"Yep, everything's great."

"Are you almost there?"

My first thought was about the state line, which I had almost reached, but I didn't think that was what she meant. "Well, I'm going to Los Angeles, so not really."

She looked at me with pity. "And you have to ride a bike there?"

I can understand her not quite grasping that I consider this fun. The other day in Hot Springs I was camped out next to a guy who was by himself, riding around on his motorcycle, towing a  trailer, and camping out in state parks on his vacation. I was kind of surprised, and found myself asking him things like "Really? All that way? By yourself?" until I remembered what I was doing.

And now I'm in Texas. I've never been able to truly get my mind around this whole trip at once, I've had to take it one state at a time. That's as far ahead as I could imagine. Texas always seemed so far away, so far into the future, so arriving here feels like a small miracle.

I didn't ride all that far today, just 40 miles. This was partly because I woke up with both hamstrings feeling like they were on the verge of something bad happening to them. As I was stretching these and other muscles out in preparation for the ride ahead, I noticed something rustling in the leaves: a walking stick! You know, those bugs that look like a 4-inch long twig with legs. This unfortunate one was missing 2 of his 6 legs so I guess he was more of a hobbling stick. I have never seen one of these before, and sure hope I see another, because the battery on my phone had died so I couldn't take a picture.

But the real reason I didn't get very far was that the girl at the counter in Stuart's Good Eats told me where the Broken Bow public library was. I considered drinking my coffee while walking my bike over there, but then I remembered the disastrous peanut butter smoothie incident of last summer. So instead I sat on a bench out front and contemplated the town of Broken Bow, people and pickup trucks passing back and forth along the main strip, on their way to wherever they go to start their day. It looked exactly the way I'd expect a town in southeastern Oklahoma to look: flat, dusty, and with more than its fair share of sky.

The public library also looked just as I expected it to, a solid-looking stone building trimmed with tidy hedges and flying the US and Oklahoma flags. I strode purposefully into the library as though going to my workplace, feeling like a very official bike tour blogger with my very own mini-computer and uniform of smelly T-shirt and hiking pants. "This is City Hall. Library's down the road." Oh.

It always feels like a real luxury to have plenty of electricity, internet access, and time. I finally sent Trisha in Nashville answers to some interview questions she'd sent, which will soon be published on her blog, and sent Jerry in Memphis the lyrics to the country song I wrote in West Virginia. He plays in a country band and they're going to write some music and play the song! I purposely did not give him the chords I wrote, because I think it would be interesting to see what they come up with independently. How weird would it be if they came up with exactly the same music?

Just now I heard all kinds of coyote sounds rising up from the woods, not just howls but shrieks and cackles. I know that coyotes normally steer clear of humans, and are likely harmless, but these eerie sounds are enough to ratchet up my heart rate and make me hold my breath to listen: what was that cracking twig sound? Is one right outside my tent?

I threw open the tent door to find the whole clearing awash in bright light from a full moon. No sign of coyotes, just the rustling of fallen leaves with each breath of breeze.