Day 56: Good riding weather is back: sunny and 40s. Logged 66 more miles today. Started the day sitting down with a reporter at The Paris News to talk about Keystone XL and the ride. Happy to see “old school” reporters still exist. A little later, was flagged down on the side of the road by Julia Trigg Crawford, a Texas landowner in the appeal process of an eminent domain battle with TransCanada. Very serendipitous. Around lunchtime, rolled into Sulphur Springs for an interview with the News-Telegram. On my way out of town, a shop called Phoenix Rising captured my eye, so I dropped in for a quick sandwich. Was delighted to learn that Amy Fikes, co-owner of this women-run local shop, is adamantly opposed to Keystone XL. Look for her YouTube interview to be posted soon.
From there, Ron and I made the final push to Winnsboro, where we were eager to spend time with David Daniel, a prominent leader of the fight against TransCanada in Texas. David was kind enough to come out and meet us about 5 miles outside of town to trail us with his hazards. Moments later, Ron’s bike broke down again (same derailleur hanger problem as last time). Yet more serendipity. Thanks to David being there, we were able to simply toss the bike and trailer into his pickup bed, while I pedaled the rest of the way into town. There we met Eleanor Fairchild at Art & Expresso in downtown Winnsboro, where we were kindly treated to coffee by owners Jim Hollowell and Marilyn Armand. Eleanor generously treated us all to dinner afterwards, where we learned a lot about local efforts to fight Keystone XL. We then hurried back to the wooded home of David and Clara Daniel for a statewide planning call with Texas landowners and anti-pipeline activists. A big thank you to Chris Wilson for setting this up, and for introducing us to their powerful Texas network! TransCanada has picked the wrong people to mess with.
Here’s a good Kansas story on the ride that ran in the El Dorado Times: http://tinyurl.com/6rjjhg8.