Day 23: Harleton, TX to Bossier City, LA (6/28/2025)—Ride Across America now on hiatus until a later date

 My plan was to do the ride across the southern United States all at once, but things have changed. I need to break this trip into two parts. Part 1 (LA to LA—i.e. Los Angeles to Louisiana) is now complete. Today was my last day of riding for awhile. I have some important issues going on at home with my family that require my immediate presence there, so I am headed homeward in the next few hours via train/bus. I want to think everyone who has helped me out along the way—I’m sorry we weren’t able to complete the journey this year, but I’m still planning on making it happen—Bossier City to the east coast of Florida will be completed in the future Lord willing, probably next summer.

Today Cherry Chicken and I crossed into the state of Louisiana! We had been in Texas for 16 days—that’s a long time! It was cool to cross into another state finally. The sign says “Welcome to Louisiana” in English, but it also says “Bienvenue en Louisiane” which means “Welcome to Louisiana” in French. The reason the sign is also in French is that many people who originally settled in Louisiana were from France. Here are some pictures at that sign, just outside of Waskum, TX:

Since there wasn’t a “Welcome to Texas” sign on the road on which we entered Texas in El Paso 16 days ago, we also got some “Welcome to Texas” sign pictures, even though we were actually leaving Texas. Here they are:

I got some pictures of pink flowers that I saw a lot in Texas and that I’ve also seen in Louisiana. I don’t know what they’re called. One thing I’ve noticed, though, is some of them are a darker/richer pink color, and some of them have a lot more white in them. What do you think of these flowers?

Here’s Cherry Chicken as we went through the city of Shreveport:

Here’s a few pictures going over the Red River bridge between Shreveport and Bossier City. Look at the color of the river here. Why do you think it’s called the Red River?

Here’s what my bicycle looks like right now. In the second picture, you’ll see the brand new sign that my cousin Aimee made for my bicycle for the rest of the trip. She was very helpful to me and I appreciate the sign she made for me and for giving me a place to stay on Thursday and Friday nights! My old sign was a bit torn up from the weather but this new one is made of better material, and in my opinion it looks a lot nicer than my old one. Do you know any of the letters on the sign? It’s a sign that shows “cycle4kids.blogspot.com” and if people type it in on their computer or on their phone on the internet, it brings them to the same website you’re looking at now!

I hope you enjoy the rest of the videos—the city pictures are from either Shreveport or Bossier City. If you scroll to the end, I have a link to the video I made ending this leg of the trip and putting the ride across the southern US on hiatus. Have a great rest of your summer, everyone!

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Day 22: Grapeland to Harleton, TX (6/26/2025)

To donate to Ryves Youth Center (all money goes to them, none to me:) https://secure.qgiv.com/for/ridacrame/

For more information on Ryves Youth Center: https://ccthin.org/ryves-youth-center 

Today was a long day of riding! Last night I camped out in the forest and had to ride out on about a mile of roads made of dirt and rocks before I finally got back out to the highway. When I got out to the highway I saw this sign:

It says “Weeping Mary.” The word “weeping” means “crying.” Why do you think the people named it “Weeping Mary?” I looked it up and nobody knows for sure. Some people think it was named after Mary Magdalene, a lady that is in some stories in the Bible who stayed close to Jesus when He was on the cross and may have cried after Jesus died. Some people think it was named after a woman named Mary who got her land taken away.

I’m not in the desert anymore! In fact, the land out here is quite wet in some places. When I was out west out in the desert, even some of the river beds were dry—they had no water in them! I took this picture at or near a river today, and you can see some trees that are in the water!

Today I went through Longview and before I passed on through, I called Woolley G’s bike shop. I had spoken with David, who works there, a few days ago. He told me that my wheel probably wouldn’t be in until Friday, and today was only Thursday. But when I called, they told me that they had the wheel for me! I pedaled over there and I met Charlotte and Ira, who work at the bicycle shop. Charlotte told me that David (whom I’d talked to the other day) wasn’t there, but she sold me the wheel. I talked to Ira and he told me I could use the area out back with the picnic table to put the new wheel on. Here’s what I did:

1.  I took the old wheel off the bicycle. After this I took the wheel and the tube off the old wheel. Notice how some of the spokes are broken—If you zoom in, you can see that I got two of the broken spokes out of the way by wrapping them around other spokes.

2. I used a wrench and a freewheel removal tool to take the freewheel off the old wheel. The freewheel is the set of cogs on the back wheel—the chain of the bicycle pulls on the cogs to make the bicycle go.

3. I put the freewheel on the new wheel and then put the tube and the tire back on it, too. Charlotte in the bicycle shop filled the tire tube up with air and I put the new wheel back on the bicycle. I was ready to go!

One of my water bottle cages was broken. A water bottle cage is not like a bird cage—it’s just a few wires that hold water bottle on the bicycle. Here is the broken one that I took off:

Here I what it looked like after I put the new one on:

Before I left, I took my picture at the bicycle shop:

And a picture of my bicycle at the bicycle shop, of course:

Ira and Charlotte were very kind and helpful to me while I was at the shop. Ira showed me some lubricant that I ended up buying for my chain. Lubricant is stuff you put on the chain to keep it from getting rusty and to keep it working. I told him the story about how I’d damaged the wheel and then tried to save it. I am thankful that the bicycle shop had what I needed.

While I was there at the bicycle shop, Charlotte told me that she wished should could be touring on a bicycle (traveling a long distance) like I was. I can understand that feeling. For many years I wanted to take a trip across the United States by bicycle but my job didn’t let me take that much time off. Did you ever feel like Charlotte did—that you wanted to go somewhere to see something or to visit someone, but you couldn’t? When you’re a child, you can’t really decide very much about where you get to go or what you get to do. That might make you feel frustrated. But even grown-ups don’t get to where they want and do what they want all the time. They have jobs they have to go to, or people they have to take care of. 

What Charlotte said, about wishing she could be on a bicycle tour, made me think of the story Jenny’s Journey that I’ve read to you a few times already. I’ll be reading it to you again very soon, before I leave Texas. Remember, Jenny wanted to take a trip to visit her friend Maria, but she couldn’t? So instead, she wrote a pretend story about sailing on a boat to visit Maria. Do you miss anyone like that? How does it make you feel?

I’ve been blessed on my bicycle trip to be able to visit my friends the Gulleys, the Powells, and today, I arrived at the house of some more special people…my cousin Aimee and her family! It was over 2300 miles to get here, and it made me happy to see her and her husband and children. And some of my friends (the Gulleys and the Powells) I hadn’t seen in 11 years! There are some people I can remember in my life that I haven’t seen in much longer than that…25 years or more. Even if we can’t visit people, we can still do many things to show our love for them. Maybe we can write a letter to them. Or we can pray for them and think of them. Or any time we do something nice for another person, we can say, “This is for my friend! I’m doing it in her honor.” The love that you show can make a big difference for other people. 

I hope you like the rest of these pictures I took today!