Twenty Miles per Cookie: 9000 Miles of Kid-Powered Adventures

by Nancy Sathre-Vogel

  “You’re doing what?” he blurted. “You’re camping here? You can camp anywhere you want,” he continued, “but this is a pretty scary area. There are lots of illegals coming through here. I don’t want to say you can’t camp here, but I sure wouldn’t do it if it was me.”

  “Any suggestions?” I asked.

  “I would think north of the highway would be a better bet.”

  “We wanted to go on the other side,” I told him, “but it was all fenced in. We couldn’t get back there.”

  “There’s a road to the north less than a mile from here. No gate, no nothing. You could go there.”

  By that time the sun was down and we had precious few minutes of light left. We raced back along the dirt road, squeezed through the gate, and dashed along the highway. Just as we approached the dirt road heading north away from the border, a border patrol truck turned in. We followed them.

  “Hi!” we greeted the agents in the semi-darkness. “We’re biking through the area and need a place to set up our tent. Any suggestions?”

  They looked at us like we were crazy. “Are you serious? You’re biking here?”

  After they recovered from the shock of seeing a family of four come out of the dusk on two bikes, they replied, “You’ll be much safer camping right here next to the road rather than going back in. The drug traffickers don’t hang around the roads because that’s the most likely place for them to get caught. If they see you here by the road, they won’t likely bother you. In fact, our truck will be right here – we’re taking off shortly on the ATV’s. If you camp next to our truck, the smugglers won’t come anywhere near you.”

  We set about the task of setting up our tent a few feet from their truck, while chatting with the agents.

  “You guys sure picked a winner of a night to come through this area,” one of the guys told us. “There’ve been a lot of problems with drug smuggling lately, so we’re on a major offensive right now.” A helicopter zoomed past in the night. At least we assumed it was a helicopter – it was using night vision so all lights were off. “We’ve got hundreds of officers out here tonight – the regular border patrol, the Army National Guard, and we are from a Special Response Team out of El Paso. We’re basically a SWAT team for border patrol issues. You’re gonna have lots of activity all around you tonight – hope you can sleep through it!”

  Davy and Daryl were fascinated with the idea of a SWAT team out there on the border. “What do you guys do?” Daryl asked.

  “We save a lot of lives out here – that’s mainly what we do. The US is putting more and more agents out here on the border and it’s getting harder for the smugglers to get through, so they are leaving people behind. Basically, there are two kinds of smugglers: drug smugglers and people smugglers. The drug smugglers carry a backpack full of drugs and come across the border alone. We try to find them before they get to the road.

  “The people smugglers risk a lot of people’s lives. For each group of people wanting to come to the USA, there is one man – called a coyote – whose job it is to smuggle the group across the border. They start off in the evening on the other side of those mountains on the border – can you see them over there? Right on the other side of those mountains is Mexico. They set out in a group and cross those mountains. That’s the easy part. Once they get on this side, they have to be very careful or they’ll get caught. They pass through this valley and have to get all the way over to those mountains over there in the north – you can’t see ‘em in the dark, but they are about twenty miles away.”

  “Why do they have to get to those mountains?” Davy asked.

  “They can’t hide here in the valley – there’s nothing to hide behind or under. If they tried hiding here, they would be caught and sent back to Mexico,” the agent replied. “But the worst part is if someone can’t keep up. The coyote won’t tolerate anyone holding back the group, so they just leave the stragglers behind. Almost every night we find people out here wandering around. If we didn’t find them, they would die. I rescued a mother with three kids once – the kids couldn’t keep walking as fast as the others, so the coyote left the whole family behind and took off. The family was out here for two days before I happened to find them. Another time I found an old man who had fallen and sprained his ankle. They left him too. If the stragglers are lucky, the border patrol will find ‘em, pick ‘em up, feed ‘em, and then send them back to Mexico. If they aren’t lucky… well, at some point somebody will find a pile of bones in the mountains.”

  Davy and Daryl stood in awe of the whole situation.

  “Want to check out our truck?” the agent asked. “We’ve got night vision on it which is pretty cool.”

  “Night vision?” the boys asked in unison.

  “Here – look through my binoculars. You’ll see what I mean.” He handed Davy a small pair of binocs.

  “Oohhhh!” Davy exclaimed.

  “What?” Daryl asked. “What do you see? Let me look!”

  The other agent took his binoculars off his belt and handed them to Daryl.

  “Oh, cool!” Daryl shouted as he saw the green details of his surroundings through the binocs. “Look! Look, Davy! Look at the fence!”

  The boys were in heaven looking through the binoculars at everything around them, while John and I set about getting the tent ready for the night.

  Eventually, the agents had to get to work and we sat down to a dinner of MRE’s (bagged meals designed for the military) graciously donated by our newfound friends, then crawled into our tent to settle down for the night.

  A few minutes later the agents were back – with reinforcements. “Hey guys! Are you in there?”

  John unzipped the tent and we headed out to see what was up. A group of five agents stood outside our tent.

  “We’ve got something for you,” one of them said. “We wish we had two, but none of us expected to find a couple of boys out here camping tonight. Anyway, we have this special collector coin that we want to give you boys. Each SWAT team has a special coin for their unit.

  “When we get together with other units for training maneuvers we swap coins, and we try to collect as many as we can get. This is the coin from our unit.” He handed Daryl the coin.

  “Wow! Thanks!” Daryl exclaimed.

  “Let me see! Let me see!” Davy insisted.

  The agents smiled, waved goodbye and walked away into the darkness.

  * * *

  Dear Grandma,

  We crossed the Continental Divide. It was very tiresome. It was an extremely long climb. We went up for about nine miles. It was a very gradual climb though.

  Last night when we were desperately looking for a camping place, we found a road going south off the road. We went down it. A while later somebody told us that there was a very nice place to camp less than a mile up the road. We decided to try to make it there. And we did make it there, but we were surprised to see two border patrol men pull in. It appeared that they were patrolling the area.

  They had lots of gear. They had four packs of bullets, a cool radio thing, a pistol, lights, and more! Their truck had four ATV’s. They were prepared for anything. We chatted with them a while, then they gave us some MRE’s for dinner. One MRE had a packet of Charms. The other one had a pack of Skittles.

  Then they went for a ride on their ATV’s. We had dinner after they left – it was good! Then a lot of border patrol men came and gave us one of their badges. It’s cool. We got to look through infrared sensors. It was awesome! Then we went in the tent.

  Love, Davy

  Davy was thrilled to receive a coin from the El Paso Special Response Team.

  By morning the agents were gone and we packed up and hit the road. It was a quiet day, the road was good, and we had a tailwind. We flew along the deserted road in the middle of nowhere. Nobody… nothing… for miles and miles.

  All of a sudden I saw a man walking along the side of the road. As we drew nearer, he started frantically waving his arms.

  “¡
Diez dias!” he shouted. “¡Diez dias!” He pointed to the mountains along the Mexican border. “¡Diez dias!”

  “Wait a minute,” I said in Spanish. “Slow down. Tell me what’s going on.”

  “Ten days!” he repeated. “We got lost… my friend… still lost… maybe dead… ten days in the mountains… no food… no water… Ten days!”

  I pulled a bag of bread and sandwiches out my pannier and handed it to him. He hungrily grabbed a sandwich and ate voraciously. John handed him a water bottle. He quickly downed the entire liter before returning to the bread.

  “Thank you!” he said. “Thank you so much.”

  As near as I could figure it, he and his friend had set out ten days earlier from Agua Prieta, across the border from Douglas, Arizona forty miles away, ten days prior and promptly got lost in the mountains. They spent days wandering in the mountains, trying to get back to civilization. At some point, Jose’s friend had gone down into a canyon to look for water, and never came back. Jose didn’t know if his friend was alive or dead, but he continued on, desperately searching for some sign of humanity. He had managed to find the road just as we came by.

  “Just stay on this road,” I told him. “The border patrol will come by shortly – they’ve been passing every thirty minutes or so. They’ll pick you up and take you to Douglas and help you get back home.” I handed him a bit more water and a couple of granola bars for his journey.

  I can’t help but think he is one of the lucky ones.

  It was cold and rainy. We were in western Texas where towns were pretty much nonexistent. The last thing we wanted to do was get wet and have absolutely no way to dry out. The little town of Cornudas would have to do.

  I’m not convinced that “town” is the best word to describe Cornudas, but I’m not sure there is any other word. After all, it is a bona fide, certified town according to the books in Texas. But there ain’t much there. Ain’t much at all.

  It was starting to drizzle when we arrived into Cornudas, and the skies showed no sign of clearing. We feared it would soon become a full-fledged rain and we were miles from a real town.

  The great town of Cornudas consisted of a closed-down restaurant and a trailer for the groundskeeper. We parked our bikes under the overhang in front of the café and set about the task of waiting the storm out.

  Waiting a storm out on a freezing cold patio was much easier said than done with two rambunctious boys. The boys had a grand total of ten feet across and maybe thirty feet long to run in and they quickly tired of the confinement. Within a few minutes of our arrival it was pouring rain, and there was nothing to do. It was too cold to sit still for long – our feet were numb within a few minutes if we left them on the concrete floor of the patio. We couldn’t read for long – our hands froze in the frigid air. We huddled together on the benches, keeping our feet off the concrete in our attempts at keeping at least some semblance of warmth in our bodies.

  “Hey look!” John shouted about three hours after we had arrived in our patio. “A truck!” Sure enough a truck went zooming past.

  A short while later, he shouted, “A car! Look guys – a car!”

  The boys became fascinated with the passing traffic. “A car!” Daryl called out.

  “Here comes a truck!” Davy added a minute or two later.

  “And look – another truck is coming!”

  “I’ll make you a bet,” John challenged. “I’ll bet more cars than trucks pass us.”

  “What’cha gonna bet?”

  “I’ll bet four cookies – two for each of you,” he replied.

  “You’re on!” the boys cried. “There’ll be more trucks – easy!”

  All three of them ran to the edge of the patio and started waiting for vehicles. “A car!” John shouted. “That’s one for me!”

  “Yeah – but there’s a truck!” Davy added. “One to one – a tie!”

  “And another truck!” Daryl quipped a few minutes later. “How many need to pass before we win?”

  “Whoever reaches ten first – cars or trucks,” John explained.

  “C’mon truck… C’mon truck,” the boys chanted as they scanned the roadways. “C’mon truck!”

  “Yay!” they shouted when a truck passed. “Ohhh,” they moaned when a car came by.

  “Three to one – my lead!”

  “Three to three – we’re tied!”

  “Another car!”

  “And a truck – woohoo!”

  “Another truck!”

  “Eight to eight,” Daryl exclaimed. “C’mon truck! C’mon truck! We just need two more… C’mon truck!”

  “Car! Car! Car!” chanted John.

  “Truck! Truck! We want a truck!” the boys called. “Truck! Truck! We want a truck!”

  All three of them hopped around at the edge of the patio, trying to keep warm as they kept their eyes peeled for traffic.

  “A truck!” the boys shouted. “A truck! Nine to eight our lead. One more… One more… C’mon truck!”

  “Something’s coming! Something’s coming!” Davy clapped his hands and hopped around in excitement. “C’mon truck!”

  “It’s a car… No, it’s a truck… It’s a…. Truck! Yay!” The boys ran around their small enclosure, jumping for joy.

  You know you’ve sunk pretty low when the highlight of your day is counting the vehicles that pass. But in times like that… Well, it was preferable to sitting around getting even colder. The boys spent the afternoon counting cars.

  By evening the four of us were wiped out. We huddled on the bench, shivering in the cold. We had pulled out our food and eaten a meager dinner. Setting up the tent on the concrete was unappealing, but outside on the grass was even less appealing – we really didn’t want to get wet knowing we had a long way to go to the next town. John unrolled the tent and pitched it on the concrete floor of the patio under the overhang. Daryl crawled in and arranged the sleeping pads and bags. We tidied up the best we could and climbed in for the night.

  Camping on the cold, hard floor under a restaurant awning was way better than being out in the rain.

  “Hey guys! Are you there?”

  I poked my head out of the tent to find the groundskeeper standing in front of us with a big tray of food. He had arrived back from town an hour before and had seen us hanging out.

  “I figured you could use something hot,” he said. “I brought you some soup.”

  “Soup?” piped Davy. “Hot soup?”

  The four of us piled eagerly out of the tent and dug into the piping hot chicken noodle soup and hot chocolate.

  “Wow! Thanks so much!” I said. “I can’t tell you how nice this is. It’s been a pretty miserable day hanging out here.”

  He smiled and walked back to his home, while we climbed into our tent with our bellies warmed and spirits lifted. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad day after all.

  “Where y’all goin’ on them thangs?” a kid asked.

  “Dallas,” I replied.

  “Y’all are goin’ ta Dallas?” he asked in wide-eyed amazement. “On them ba-cycles? How long that’ll take y’all?”

  Upon our entry into town, we had picked up a group of kids who were fascinated by our bikes. They rode alongside us asking all kinds of questions.

  “What do y’all do at night?”

  “What about rain?”

  “Do yer bikes get wet?”

  We arrived at the grocery store in Lamesa and John and I left Davy and Daryl to deal with questions from the kid contingent while we went to buy our daily provisions.

  “What about takin’ a bath?” I heard as I walked away from the bikes.

  Davy and Daryl did an admiral job answering the curious kids. By the time I emerged from the store a while later, Davy was off for a spin around the parking lot on a single bike he had managed to borrow for a few minutes. He came skidding up to us with a huge smile on his face.

  “Do I have to go? This is fun! I wanna keep riding this bike!” He took off for another lap around
the parking lot.

  As we pulled out of town, the kids followed along, dropping out one by one, until we were down to only two escorts.

  “How long y’all been ridin’ those bikes?”

  “How do y’all warsh yer clothes?”

  Eventually, they decided they needed to turn around and go home. We continued on solo.

  “I wish I could have my own bike,” Davy grumbled. “That was fun back there!”

  “Yeah – I’d like a single bike too,” Daryl added.

  “But the real question is: Do you really want to ride a single fifty miles a day?” John questioned.

  “I guess you’re right. The triple’s okay for that.” Davy suddenly broke into a huge grin. “But can we get a single and tie it on top of the trailer?”

  * * *

  Dear Grandma,

  When we entered Lamesa we went to a grocery store like we usually do when we find a town. When Dad came out he brought a box of Zingers. We decided when we went fifty five miles we would stop and eat the Zingers. We had to pedal really hard because we were fighting the wind, but we made it. After fifty five miles we stopped to eat the Zingers. Dad told us the pack was $2.50 for twelve Zingers – that’s a good deal! They were good! I like Zingers, but I prefer raspberry donuts. Those are better.

  Love, Daryl

  * * *

  We woke up to very heavy fog. As we packed the fog thickened, and we stood around trying to figure out what to do. Even though there was a nice wide shoulder on the roadside, the dense fog led to very limited visibility and we didn’t feel good about being on the road, but we also didn’t want to hang out in our host’s lawn for hours – he had been kind enough to allow us camp there the night before, but we certainly didn’t want to impose any more than we already had. We headed to the local McDonald’s to pass time until the fog cleared.

  Our bikes were about as out of place in that small Texan town as a Martian spaceship would be on Pluto. As we walked into the restaurant with our shiny spandex shorts and cycling shoes, every head in the place turned to stare. Grizzled old men, their faces lined with wrinkles from the many hours they’d spent in the sun over the past several decades, stopped their conversation and sat holding their coffee, gawking at the spectacle that just traipsed in through the door.