I came upon a child of God, he was walking along the road. When I asked him where he was going, this he told me. (Lyrics from Joni Mitchell's...... Woodstock)
Steven carrying his cross outside of Corpus Christi
When I first saw Steven carrying his cross along the side of the road just south of Corpus Christi I had to turn around, I thought what a picture to have. Its these out of the ordinary things that make travel so much fun and reminds us of what is normal for us, is not necessarily normal for everyone (thank God, literally in this case). I look at meeting anyone different as an opportunity to learn, especially someone carrying a cross down the highway!
I stopped and offered him a drink of water and asked the obvious, "how far have you come", "how far are you going?". The why's were written all over the cross with Jesus Saves and the John 3:16 header plus he was wearing an Addicted to Jesus T-shirt. He also had that in Spanish on a index card sitting on the cross and read it off to me in very good Spanish.
At first he said he was walking to a place in Kansas some 600 miles to the north. My first impression of someone carrying a cross over 600 miles along the side of the road had me in awe, like wow that is walking the talk!
After a time he pulled out a cell phone and called someone he knew that had set him and his support car up before for a place to stay behind a produce stand, just down the road. He was trying to see if I could stay there instead of paying for a motel room or camp site. I appreciated his thoughtfulness. Then I began to piece together more of his story. He had a phone, he had a support car for the walk, there was 3 or 4 other people helping him, perhaps sharing the cross and the walk. He also talked about usually walking around cities short distances at a time, not doing a 600 mile hike as he said he was doing now. It appeared he was from the Corpus Christi area and this could just be a short get peoples attention type walk. Like maybe it wasn't a 600 mile trip after all. I didn't know since they did seem to be camping as they moved. Either way we had a wide ranging God based spiritual talk which I am prone to do at times (trying to find the universal principles underlying all religion). I appreciated what he was doing and didn't feel a need to judge it, after all, here I am driving a motorcycle 4000 miles to Costa Rica!
I asked him if I could take his picture and he was fine with that, he asked if I would pray with him and I did and then we went our own ways. Me on my motorcycle heading south, him carrying his cross heading north (little did I know on a cold blustery day in December our paths would cross again).
Later that day he called me on my cell phone to make sure I found the place to camp. Maybe it was because I have been alone so much the last week on the road, but a kinship of sorts formed and I was glad we had met.
Maybe like most of us, he was just looking for his own Woodstock. Of course as any spiritual teacher might tell us, there is only one place to look for that, one only needs to inquire within........
Distant Oil Refineries along the coast of Texas.
So I did not see nearly as much as I would have liked to in Texas, perhaps I thought when I come back through in December. A picture of an oil refinery in the distance here, long flat highways, palm trees, cattle ranches and oil rigs come to mind.
The road south from Corpus Christi to Brownsville.
The other thing that stood out for me are the people in Texas, especially the older ones. Being somewhat of an oddity, this lone bike man with a huge load heading God knows where would in other parts of the country either make people stare, or they might even come up and ask where I was going. Here people quite often either waved to me, or just said "hi", never asking anything. My best guess is in this state built on heavy individualism there is a certain respect for someone riding an iron horse to God knows where alone. It just came to me, the Lone Ranger, the Lone Star State, the Lone Bike Man, it all fits into place...... Its polite to say hi, but really its not respectful to ask about someone else's business out here in this country. It well maybe dangerous.
Its hard to describe but my feeling in Texas was that the people had genuinely acknowledged me in a way different then most places I've been, and it has been a nice change.
Oh and Mexico was the next day.....I was thinking
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