I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that cross-country walkers are two a penny.

Sometimes, newspapers and TV stations have politely told me they're not interested in my story because they're often contacted by people like me, and I've thought they're exaggerating. But now I'm not so sure.

The Lamesa Press-Reporter published an interview with me today, and beside it was a piece about someone else doing exactly the same thing, though the journalist (who wrote both articles) never mentioned him to me.

Dan Lyons is walking from Florida to California, raising money for a homeless shelter and rehabilitation centre in Oregon. He's about ten days ahead of me. This is his fourth coast-to-coast walk, and I can see why he should want to do it so many times - for all its ups and downs, it's very addictive.

I've also recently been in email contact with Matt Gregory, who's heading in the opposite direction and, like me, raising money for cancer research. He's currently in Arizona, and we're hoping to meet for a few beers somewhere along the way.

As always, I read the paper avidly from cover to cover. In the age of satellite TV and the internet, newspapers are still the lifeblood of every small American town, and for an outsider like me they provide a unique barometer of what's on local people's minds.

This being cotton country, today's Press-Reporter has all the latest on the white fluffy stuff that blows snow-like across the highways and byways of Texas.

This week, an estimated 2,051 bales of Dawson county cotton have been ginned, bring the total for the season to 161,191. The average leaf grade for the week has been 3.04, and the average mike 3.81 - I looked this up, and it's short for micronaire, meaning the fineness of a fibre as measured by its airflow resistance.

In a region where water is a particularly precious commodity, the paper has a two-page, large-scale map of Lamesa showing every well and the amount by which its water level rose or fell during 2006.

And in a topic close to everyone's heart, the paper devotes 25 column inches to details of this week's menus at local schools and old people's homes.

This is my second rest day, and with a bitter north wind blowing there's little incentive to venture outside. But I did pay a visit to the excellent local library, and came away knowing twice as much about Texas as when I went in.

Here are some of the things I learned.

1. To be elected in Texas, one must believe in a supreme being.
2. Texas is not the biggest state; that honour belongs to Alaska. Nor is it the most populous; California is home to far more people. But it is 773 miles from the western tip near El Paso to the Sabine river, which marks its eastern boundary, and that's basically about the distance I'll have covered if I make it to the other side.
   
3. Barbed wire (they call it 'bob wahr') was introduced to Texas by a Yankee, John W. Gates. He arrived in San Antonio in 1876, and demonstrated the product's virtues by fencing in a herd of longhorn cows in the city centre. They stampeded, but the fence held easily, and local ranchers were deeply impressed. It was barbed wire that tamed Texas, chopping the state up to make it easier to settle and allowing ranchers to improve their stock by selectively breeding and penning cattle.
4. The state dish, chili, is not Mexican, but was invented in San Antonio in the 1880s. Beans are unacceptable in proper chili.
5. Less than 10 percent of Texas is true desert.
6. Dr Pepper, America's fifth most popular soft drink, was invented in Waco in 1885 by Charles Alderton, who named it after a doctor in Rural Retreat, Virginia.
   
7. The roadrunner, Geococcyx californianus, is a species of ground cuckoo. It can fly, but not very high or for very long, preferring to run at speeds of up to 17 mph. Its common name derives from the fact that when it sees a car coming, it runs away down the road.
8. Texas is the only state that permits residents to cast absentee ballots from space, thanks to NASA in Houston.
9. Despite its rightwing reputation, Texas is one of the most politically apathetic of all states. Forty-three percent of the voting-age population turned out for the 2000 presidential election; only Arizona and Hawaii were more lethargic. It must be something to do with all that sunshine.
   
10. The state flying mammal is the Mexican free-tailed bat.