Tour Divide is doneso!

Well, my race happened and it went a hell of a lot better than this blog. I'm switching gears and will be updating http://boneybikes.wordpress.com from here on out (maybe).

Hurricane Ida ain't got shit on us.

We're fucking here!! Nate and I versed God for ten hours, riding against thirty mile an hour headwinds to make it to New Orleans. It totally sucked but we made it, and are feeling pretty damn triumphant. NOLA is as awesome as I remembered it and I'm stoked for the next six days we'll be spending here. Even though we're done riding we'll be writing on here through the end of the week, and hopefully throwing up a batch of photos from the last leg of the ride. Thanks for keeping tabs on us.

11/9 we F*cking made it!!!

So, we started out from the old plantation bed and breakfast. There was supposed to be a hurricane weather report, so we tried to beat the shits by leaving at 6.00 am. We woke ourselves up at 5.30 just to do it. We started out, and immediately, the suckiness of the day was evident. The wind was blowing up a gale at probably about 15-20 miles per. The further we went, the more severe the wind got. We kept on pushing. We ate overly priced sandwiches twice. The wind became more and more intense, until we were basically leaned over at 45 degrees against the wind so we wouldn't be sent down the levee into the shitriver. We went by tons of shitty refineries, and we hated them all. But they look cool I think. then we were getting really desperate and just then, the wind shifted, coming from behind us. We rode like crazy, big ringin' it all the way to some park where Michael Lott-Manier picked us up and we just ate burritos and we are drinking. More from me later.

11/8 day number last night on the trail

Well its been nice knowin ya. This is the last night well spend on the road. Last night, since the route has been consistently levee with river on one side of the road and little houses on the other side, we spent the night in a motel. It was obscenely expensive (never stay at the piquimine best western, too pricey), but still better than stealthing it on some dude and dudettes land. We have been cruising pretty well the past couple of days, and right now we're camped at a plantation bed and breakfast. This place charges 15 buckies a person to take a walking tour, and their cheapest room is 130 buckies each night. Well, I was able to talk our way into pitching our tents behind the front office, right next to the bathies, and gaining "completely unrestricted access" throughout the grounds all night for a mere ten buckies. Pretty nice of them to let us do this and we will talk about it.

We are dreading tomorrows ride. The weather calls for hurricaine, so wish us luck. There is an actual bike trail leading us through the last 20 miles of the ride, but the first 20 are gonna suck with rain and high ass winds. We are determined though so we will make it. I'd rather ride in a shitstorm for a few hours than try to wait it all out in a teeny little tenty. We will do final analysis writes when we are dry and warm.

Sent from my fingers and brain.

11/6 day 19

We got superbreakfast at nikki's after leaving an rv park with 175 sites. Then we rode and rode and rode through louisiana. All the roads we were on today were really s. Except the last road to the rv park tonight. A place called maxeycare. Sounds like maxipad to me. We basically rode along the levee or whatever almost all day. It was windy and just over the top of the grass to the left, we could see the floody river areas. It made us think about how hard people try to manipulate the land to save having to move. We saw lots of big pelicans in the floodways, trolling for fishies. After a long while, we stopped to make some tuna sandy lunch and took a stretch and kept going. We read in the book that we would pass some army corps of engineers place that would have water and bathies, but it was all locked up and no one home. I walked around the back of the building to investigate further and there was a little walkway to nowhere and a plaque that said what you saw there was a of the mississippi river made for the 1985 worlds fair. A: I didn't realize they had worlds fairs that recently and what happened to that ? B: how the do you just make a river that is life sized? Wouldn't that just be a manmade river? It did look just like the real river though, which was about a mile away. Over the part of the river we crossed, or what we think was the river, were these enormous rock and iron structures. They were essentially bridges, but they had lots of other cool features such as catwalks, control towers, signs that said "old river control auxillary structure". Train tracks, a single track on either side of the bridge, made a path for these huge iron gate control machines to move on to each control gate. There were amazing x patterns made by enormous cables criss crossing the angled stone of the bridge structure and the whole thing looked like something from the future. But something from the far future that has been forgotten already and left to rust. Under the bridges the river ran and swelled and had some looking currents. We passed those things, and kept going and going until we finally came to a very small town, hit a grocery, and then kept riding to morganza, la. After chili and bread & butter and candy for dinner, we are retired. After 80 miles, we better damn be. We now have approximately 180 miles to go. Ahhh. Sent from my fingers and brain.

Going there to bullshit

Overheard at the Village Cafe, Morganza Louisiana:

"I went to Wal-Mart yesterday and got a buggie [shopping cart?]. Pushed it around the store for about forty five minutes. Talked to five, maybe six people. Didn't buy nothing, I just like to go there to BULLshit."

Today we made it to Plaquemine, LA. We should be just two riding days from doing our own bullshitting in New Orleans. I had my first shrimp poboy for dinner tonight, so we know we're getting close. Neither Nate or I can believe how close we are, or that our trip is almost over. At this point being somewhere new every day has become such a routine that its hard to contemplate things going back to 'normal' so soon.

11/5 day 18 (I can count)

After a generous car ride to a nonexistent bike shop in vicksburgh (I don't know if this was all told yet), we decided to take a very short day to a nearby campground on the natchez trace parkway. We rode only 20 or so miles because we really wanted to split up the traveling so as not to harm my wheel any further than I already had. It was really a beautiful 20 miles though. The route leaving vicksburgh to the south, though heavy with traffic for a bit, took us right next to a bunch of old ass houses, all big and damn. When we were getting close to leaving town, we saw two very weird signs. One billboard which had a huge embryo on it and said, "I had a dream, yesterday. (4 months)". So it was obviously saying abortion is bad because apparently little embryos have dreams I guess, but I'm sure it wasn't really what MLK had in mind at all. Then I spotted an awesome church sign that read, "pentacostal explosion". That could have only meant one thing: services done in death metal. After we really got out of townie, we rode through some really nice pasture land spotted with small patches of woods here and there. And cows. And finally we turned onto the much anticipated trace parkway. It really was every bit of beautiful. Lined with tall thin pine trees and smooth and cars an afterthought the five miles we rode on it were nice and we rode to the nearest campground. The camp was hosted by a canadian who, when I asked how much the site was for one night, told me "free. But you gotta leave by 8 am or you'll have to pay for another night." He was full of cheesyness in a good way, and eveyone around the campground was very friendly and chatty. Our neighbors came a bit after us on two motorcycles, pulled a trailer off the back of one, and the trailer turned into a little pop-top house-tent. Pretty cool. We even saw a dude the next morning on our way out, about our age, who was going from indiana to arizona somewhere. Totally loaded to the gills, he even had a guitar on his bike which reminded me that I wanted to bring a eukalele or whatevery. We camped and ate a feast and were back on the road after a sonic breakfast followed by a subway second-breakfast. Sonics breakfast just wasn't enough food for us on the touring diet (eat as much as possible whenever possible), so we had to get a six incher each. Once satiated, we went back to the trace as they call it here. The rest of the morning and early afternoon was all beautiful again. Just picture if there was a cool scene in a movie that involved bicycling...that is what the trace is like. It runs 444 miles from natchez to nashville, or the other way. Whichever way you prefer it is really nice. The only thing I didn't like, and it did get pretty annoying by the end, was that we were going uphill nearly the whole time. At least that's what it felt like. There were 2-6 mile stretches that were literally all uphill. Not like a mountain or a shithill, more like the long gradual hills. It got really frustrating for me what with the wheel rubbing the back break big time and my gears starting to kind be a bit wonky. Finally we reached the top/end of the trace in natchez where we immediately emptied the yellowish water from the campground (only thing available at the time, and until we got to town) and replaced it with cleaner water from the fountain at a gas station. Then we rode to the bikeshop/auto parts store to take care of that pesky broken spoke. The mechanic who helped us was an awesome fella with an interest in mountain biking. He did the work for only 2 dang buckies, which was awesome, so we got taco bell for late lunch. After getting a confirmation from ian that he'll be coming down for the big weekend, we rode to our current sleepy spot: a nice rv park with hot showers and clean water right on the river just south of natchez in vedalia louisiana, the last state we'll hit on the journey. All in all we rode a bit more that 55 miles in sunny and warmed weathers. Very nice and very very close now.

Sent from my fingers and brain.