Finding Myself On Google Street View! // Ep.12 Unicycling Across America

Last time, my cycle touring mate Jauwe and I took some time off our bikes in Winslow, Arizona. We stayed with a lady called Sondra in her converted church and unexpectedly found ourselves flying over a meteorite crater in a pipe of Cherokee. Onwards, we carried on following the Route 66 and soon got ourselves a little caught out in some pretty chilly conditions. Oh my god, so it got a little bit heavier then. My name's Ed and I'm riding a unicycle around the world. Join me on this series as I attempt to cycle 4,000 miles across the United States of America. A couple of hours into the day and we were really feeling the cold. What seemed fun at first was now just a bit of a slog, with our clothing getting soaked through and our extremities going numb. I was very grateful that Jauwe was out here with me because even though we were both struggling, we could at least laugh together about the ridiculousness of the situation we found ourselves in. In the excitement of battling through the snowfall, we both missed the sign that we'd just left Arizona and entered New Mexico. Pushing on into this new state, we managed to find respite in the tunnels that ran underneath the I-40. Sheltering from the weather, if only for a few minutes, was bliss. Oh my god, so it got a little bit heavier then. Back at it, we pushed towards the next town on the Route 66, Gallop. Unfortunately, three miles out, Jauwe suffered a puncture. It was while Jauwe pumped up his tyre that I got a call from Mike. Who's Mike, you may ask? Mike is a truck driver we met a few days ago, just after leaving Winslow, and he had a pretty cool attachment on the back of his truck. Yeah, that's great. You're gonna show me your skills. I am. Just you? I've just met this guy, I wanted to talk to him. The issue is, you kind of have luck in the off-ramp. I'll be in touch. Yeah, keep up with the unicycling, eh? I'll try. Back to fixing Jauwe's puncture two days later, Mike happened to be passing through Gallop at the same time, and offered to get us dinner in town when we got there. We've got another maybe three or four miles, so pump it up and we'll fix it when we get there. Stop properly. When we arrived, he also offered to pay for a motel room for us, so that we could dry off. How amazing is that? Nice to have a bit of a warmer night tonight, and a drier one. And I think finding someone to camp would have been pretty tough. He took us to a Cracker Barrel that had a wonderful roaring fire. It was a fun evening learning about Mike's work as a truckie, but too soon he needs to keep driving, and Jauwe and I need to get some sleep. Nice. It's good. We were relieved the next morning to wake up to blue skies and snow-free roads. Can you believe that there was snow on the ground yesterday? I can't. It's warm as anything. Sun is out, blue sky. This weather is so changeable. We're following the route 66 at the moment. It's running parallel to the I-40, which is out there. All the big trucks. I think we're going to need to join that at some point today. But for now, we can just enjoy the kind of less traffic, less busy parallel road. Yeah, gorgeous day. For the next few days, we once again settled into our routine of riding during the day and wild camping at night. One morning, while riding slightly behind Jauwe, I spotted the Google Street View camera car whizz past. If I find it, I'll put a photo of me on Google Street View. But I kind of doubt that it's going to be there. Yeah, I was pretty surprised to see it too. We made pretty good progress over the next few days. The roads were smooth and the wind was on our side. However, there was one thing that kept slowing us down. Did you find another? A car. If I remembered one thing about following the route 66 in New Mexico, it was the sheer amount of punctures Jauwe and I seemed to pick up. So far on this tube, we've got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Oh, and eight. There you are. Oftentimes, they seem to be little pieces of wire. And searching around for a culprit, we came up with truck tires. More specifically, mangled truck tires laying by the side of the road. These guys are filled with steel wire. And once broken up, these tiny curls of metal find themselves scattered all over the tarmac and eventually into our own tires. It was infuriating. The one silver lining to all this is that we got pretty good at fixing them over those few days. One very blustery day approaching the Texas border, we had the pleasure of meeting Marcus, a young unicyclist who persuaded his dad to drive 300 miles out to find me. You might have to shout because it's quite windy, but what's your name? I'm Marcus Martinez. And what are you doing out here? I'm actually looking for you. The strong headwinds certainly weren't ideal, but Marcus was determined to join us. We slowed the pace to allow him to keep up on his 29-inch wheel. Come over this side if you want, I'll go near the traffic. He hadn't ever ridden more than about six miles in his unicycle, so it was good to see that after 10 miles, he was still going strong. Have you ridden the wrong way down a highway before, Marcus? No. What do you think? It's pretty sketchy, but it's happening. But Marcus wouldn't be the only person to drive out and find us that day. Do you remember Sam? The chap I met riding across the Australian Nullarbor many months ago. So tell me, Sam, why Australia? Why come out cycling here? I don't know. I don't know why I do anything. I wake up one morning in the middle of a song winter and go, God, I've never been there. What about that place? Well, he happened to be driving across New Mexico, saw I was out here and decided to come say hi. What are you doing out here, Sam? I'm on spring break and I like deserts. Yeah, you told me that six months ago. Yeah, no kidding. Oh my God. It was great to see him again. We decided to all meet up later at a Mexican restaurant in a town called Santa Rosa, just 15 miles away. After dinner, Marcus' dad asked if I could sign a few things, including an old seat post. So these are some pictures off the internet and then this is the seat post from his unicycle. When we cut it down, when he got that, if you could... You realize this is mad, right? Yeah, absolutely. What are you going to do with this? The seat post? I just think it's cool. The first day I got my unicycle, couldn't ride it. It was too tall. I had to cut that off with a pipe cutter. Oh, I like the little unicycle. That's cute. There you are. No worries. Thank you. Good meeting you, sir. Good luck. Cheers for coming out, eh? Good luck with the rising. Sam generously bought us a motel room that night. The guy that ran the joint was a total character. He has been unicycling around the world. Just thinking I'll be a little bit hard on the kush. All right. Eddie, Eddie, is it? Yeah. Good name, Ed. Okay. Huh? Your name Ed too? I'm Eddie as well. You're not Ed. Chaiway. Chaiway? Yeah. Hi, Chaiway. Sorry, not Chaiway. Wrong country. Hey, we need one more and then we can have Ed, Ned, and Eddie. Yeah. Oh, yeah. We can have an organization. I thought you were going to say something else then. All right. Well, you thought I was going to say something else. That's what you get for thinking. Ring the bell, send you to the principal. All right, Eddie. Thank you. All right. Y'all have a good night. Safe journey. Cheers. Well, all right. You're off. I'm off. We're all gone. In the world of crazy bastards, you're royalty. Have a good trip, guys. Thank you, sir. Happy New Year. And thank you everyone that has watched the channel, supported the channel, enjoyed my videos in 2019. It's been a pretty big year for the channel. We've like tripled in size in the last couple of months and hit 100,000 subscribers. So thank you very much for that. But honestly, my biggest thanks goes to all of you that decided to support me on Patreon. Thank you, Adam Fink, Adam Stevens, Alex Britto, Alex Lee, Annabelle Miley, Anson Liang, Anthony Palmezano, Axel Fontaine, I.P., Carrie Cleland, Damon Walker, Daniel Thorpe, Elijah Legenda, Dakota Morehouse, Derek Donovan, Gaya Dunavaya, Jeff and Kelly Elder, James Little, Jess Asin, Kelly Jackson, Kentaro Tsukino, The Madstone Brothers, Malvin Zen, Mario Yegas, Mark Paris, Mike Foxwell, Sam Richardson, Stephen Jones, Neil Brooks, Thin Cellar, Toby McTobeface, Tommy Nourmezhavi, Ricky Roux, Tyson and Bethany Hodge, Warren Snyder, and Weston Hawkins. I hope you all have a very wonderful 2020. The next morning, I awoke to an irritating surprise. Not gonna lie, I'm pretty sick of fixing punctures at this point. It's been, this is number 15? Puncture number 15 in the last two weeks. So we're pretty much averaging one a day, which is ridiculous. The culprit was once again a tiny piece of truck tyre wire. I need to get this guy out and fix the puncture and keep moving. But it's, I'm just annoyed. Woke up this morning, had a nice rest, felt the tyre and it was down. With one more patch on my tube, Jawi and I continued down the Route 66 towards Texas. The going was tough over the next three days. The headwinds just didn't seem to ever let up. So in search of shelter, we opted to camp in some under-highway tunnels. Surprisingly, once you get used to the noise overhead, these can actually be quite comfortable. After celebrating crossing New Mexico and reaching Texas, Jawi and I had to consider our plans for the next few weeks. We'd travelled over 800 miles together since meeting three weeks ago in Arizona. And with Jawi's aim of following the Route 66 to Chicago, and my sights set to see more of the southern states, we would soon have to part ways. After two uneventful days riding through Texas, we reached our splitting point, Amarillo. Riding into the centre, we met local cyclist Mark, who invited us out to the Big Texan Steakhouse that night. These are, well, Rocky Mountain Oysters or Mountain Oysters, or in English, testicles, cow testicles. It was there that we witnessed a guy attempt the 72-ounce steak challenge, which, if you couldn't guess, requires you to try and eat 72 ounces, or 2 kilograms, of steak in just one hour. If you manage it, the $72 meal is free. I've eaten three 28-ounce steaks with three baked potatoes and salad and a whole bit. We had a cattle mince once, but that was 40 years ago. I came through here 35 years ago. I regretted not trying it. I would have done it easily, but I'm 65 years old. Good luck, Jeff. Thanks. It was a really fun last evening with Jawi. And if you were wondering, no, the guy attempting the challenge didn't quite make it. But he did give it a pretty good stab. It was a good effort. Thank you. No worries. Have a nice seven days evening, man. Thanks, man. Appreciate it. The next morning, it was sadly time for Jawi and I to cycle our separate directions. His aim was to complete the length of the Route 66 further north, and I had people I was keen to meet in the south. Even so, it did feel a shame that we couldn't ride more miles together, because the last three weeks have been an absolute blast. But be it down to poor route choice forcing us into dangerous situations... Hope we don't get shot tonight. ...or bitterly cold snowstorms causing our hands and faces to go numb, these last three weeks weren't always plain sailing. But sharing the road and the difficulties that it threw at us definitely made these potentially demoralizing circumstances into something actually quite memorable. Take care, all right? Okay. See you. Good luck, Jawi. So there goes Jawi. It's a little bit sad, not gonna lie. It's always the same. I only knew him for three weeks, but it's, you know, it's intense. Whenever you meet someone cycling on the road, it's an intense time that you spend together, because you're pretty much literally day and night with somebody. It's almost like being in a relationship. Not in that way, but you know what I mean. So yeah, Jawi, if you're watching this, just thank you for the last three weeks, it's been great. And I'm glad I could be a part of your trip, you know, a small part, three weeks on the 66. It's been fantastic. Alone once again, I peddled southeast into the USA's second largest state. I had a hunch that Texas, just like everywhere else I've passed through so far, would be full of warm-hearted, generous people. But little did I know just how generous. Because at this very moment, there was a man living in Tyler, a city just east of Dallas, who was preparing to hand me a check for $100,000. But this is definitely an instalment for next time. If you're feeling impatient and can't wait for next week's video, you're in luck because the next episode is available right now on my Patreon. And if you're feeling really impatient, you can head over to Vimeo and watch the entire Ed Unicycles the USA series from start to finish over there. Your support is greatly appreciated.