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.

Vicksburg

I'm going to make this short, since I'm sitting at an apparently coveted public library computer, being sized up by FOUR Morman missonaries who obviously want to get on it.

Yesterday afternoon Nate realized that he had broken a spoke in his rear wheel; I won't bother talking about it much because I'm sure he has a lot more to say on the subject. Long story short, an infinitely helpful owner of the resort we stayed in last night offered us a ride into Vicksburg MS, which saved us about thirty five miles of riding. Turns out the only place to buy bikes in this town rhymes with Ball Fart, and I'm pretty sure they don't have a cassette tool for us to use.

It looks like we're going to keep going and try to hit Natchez tomorrow. I spoke on the phone to a mechanic there a little while ago, and it sounds like we'll be in good hands once we get there. Nate will spin circles and hope to Satan that his wheel cooperates.

Asides from unexpected mechanical gnarliness, things are going swimmingly. Its warm to the point where I might be busting out the sleeveless jersey, and we're just a few miles from hitting the Natchez Trace Parkway, which is supposed to be a gorgeous stretch of trail.

Finally, I need to mention that I opened my email this afternoon and found two completely separate offers for places to stay in New Orleans. Even though we've already got lodging lined up, I think its amazing that people are actually keeping track of our progress and looking out for us. Thanks a ton to everyone who has been reading this thing.

11/3 missip

We left roys cabins, fishing, grocery store and restaurant bright and early after a night spent checking the moon out. It looked so huge up there, I'm sure pictures we took won't do it justice. But maybe well share them with yall. We woke up and our tent flys were totally saturated with the most dense dewey ever. It was unbelievable. Water began to drip on facer right as I awoke. We got our stuff ready to go after eating a hearty breakfast at roys restarant. I had been craving some eggs for days. Finally I got a bacon cheese omlette. Perfect. Ben got flapjacks or something.

We began riding along this lake, lake washington, and we had no idea it was so vast. We rode the perimeter for almost an hour on a totally shit road. It was annoying. (I got almost no sleep last night, so I was cranky all day.) Then the road we turned onto to go back to the highway we'd been on which was immensely smooth. Then we turned onto the highway, which was smooth yesterday but today it felt like someone had place inverted speed bumps literally every ten feet. Something you'd never notice in a car, but to me it was the most annoying part of the ride so far. Even worse than the shit-for-brains drivers in greenville ms. Finally, after an hour or so I figured out that if I rode all the way to the right, right on top of the painted line, it wasn't so bumpette. That was relieving. Even more relieving was the burger and fries lunch we got in meyersville, ms. Great fries, you know the ones that are really crispy and somehow less oil saturated? Those. A woman hanging out in the store was asking about our ride. She asked all the normies, where from, how far, what if you break down, just for excersize or what. Then she asked where we stayed, another normal question, and told her that we usually camp in state parks or rv places and sometimes we just pull off the road and go into the trees a bit. This prompted her to ask, "so what, yall homeless then or something?" I told her no, we have tenties. She then offered to sell us weed, and we wondered if she asked everyone who came into that store/gas station/restaurant, then we wondered if anyone in history had ever bought weed from her while wearing bike shorts. After we left we wondered if we could ever go back with the guiness book of world records people and set the record for most weed bought from this strange lady in meyersville, mississippi while wearing bike shorts. Probably better never to find out.

As we left meyersville, waving goodbye to that strange woman, I thought I heard a pop but didn't think anything of it. The road eventually smoothed out until we turned onto some kind of smaller road that actually went through trees and not farmland. It wasn't so bad until we hit what is called a cattle guard. Without warning, the increasingly smaller road was interrupted by steel rods about a foot apart. We had no clue it was coming, so we skidded to a stopand I toppled over again due to not being a very good "clipped-in rider". Unhurt, I got up, picked up my bike, and walked it across the cattle guard. After I remounted, I realized my tire was feeling and looking very squishy (as ben says) so I asked ben to get behind me to give me a sense of how bad it was. The tire being low on air was the least of my worries. Ben said the wheel looked totally out of true, so we stopped and to my dismay found that I had broken a spoke. So, we teetered along the levy towards chotards landing where we were to camp.

Now we are in vicksburgh or something. We got a ride from a nice guy called mark because we thought there would be a bike shop in town. Unfortunately it closed down a couple years ago, so we are at the library recooping and getting ready for a light two day haul to nachez ms. Supposedly, we will soon be riding on one of the most beautiful bike routes of all time, the nachez trace parkway. We'll hit up a bike shop in nachez, get the spoke fixed, fill our bottles and tires up, and its only a couple hundred miles more to new orleans. We can already smell the poorboy sandwiches.

Sent from my fingers and brain.

11/2 Day something

We have been riding in Mississippi for a couple days now, and we are doing pretty well. We rode a whopping 95 miles yesterday or maybe 90, but still a shitload. The day before, we rode about 65, so we're covering some serious ground at this point. No reason to doddle around, we want to get to New Orleans to see our friends and party. Ben wrote about most of what's been going on, and my internet hour in the library is coming to a close so, I'll just add this.

We rode through some shitty town in the south here, and this guy said, "you know, you two ought to be careful around here, these folks are mean. They should be giving guns out at the county line, know what i mean?" Another clever euphamism for declaring his complete racism. I hate it how all racist honkeys expect, if you're white, that you're a racist too. I am so through with just laughing and playing it off. The south is a very depressing place. Easy Rider ain't no joke. Don't piss off the rednecks down here, they are serious.

We also got yelled at twice yesterday by two different young fellas in two different towns. They both said this same thing, "Ey! EY! Gimme yo' bike." So we figure that is the thing to do down here, tell strangers to give their bikes over. It's really been an uneventful couple of days, save the amounts of superman riding. Keep ya posted.

Clear skies and evolving racial epiphets.

We're taking an extended luch break in Greensville, MS, a fragrant city with a nice historic downtown and some of the most maddeningly ignorant drivers I've ever run across in my life. Nate and I had three separate cars slowly veer into our lane as we approached a light, all in the span of about five blocks. Fortunately most of the past few days have seen us riding along pleasant (and really, really flat) rural roads with minimal traffic.

Yesterday we hauled some serious ass, covering over ninety miles of the MRT. Our route was almost entirely along Highway 1, a straight, flat shot across the Delta that was almost entirely rural. A nice tailwind and a desire to make a state park by nightfall helped motivate us to stay in the saddle. Asides from covering a ton of distance, the day was pretty uneventful, save for a short stop at a touristy convenience store towards the end of the day. After asking directions from a cheerful middle aged man who was filling up his ATV at the pump, we were warned to be careful when entering the town of Rosedale, since "there are a lot of Democrats down there that will slash your tires." Nate and I were pretty confused, and hoped that we weren't about to do something to give us away as closet leftists. We got back on the bikes and took off, and a few seconds later we realized that he didn't have anything against Democrats at all; he was just really racist!

The forecast for the rest of the week calls for clear skies and temperatures in the seventies, so hopefully we can take full advantage of it and continue to move at a good pace. After leaving Memphis it started to sink in that I'm on the final leg of this trip, and although we still have hundreds of miles ahead of us, I'm finding myself looking ahead and getting excited for New Orleans.

10/31 spooky

Well, we left the dang hotel round 9.00 under clearing skies! Finally the rain was behind us, plus from the balcony outside our room, we could see the pedstrian walkway on the bridge of i-55 where we were supposed to enter west memphis, arkansas. If you don't absolutely need to go to this place, avoid it. It is the most depressing place we've been so far. Lining the main drag were payday loan places, used car dealerships and an inordinate number of beauty/hair cut shops. Just off the strip of exploitation to the right and the left, we could see neighborhoods of campers and r/vs sitting there in the fresh mud like it might be after a nuclear apocalypse. Signs on the lightpoles read "west memphis...wide open" which sounded like the tagline for a whorehouse commercial. The signs were obviously brand new, yet still suffered from a drab brown and faded black disorder, and had a series of lines in muted orange, red and yellow, making them look cheap and retro (in a bad way.) We stopped in a burger king to satisfy the hunger left by the shittiest continental breakfast I've ever seen. I know those things are supposed to be cheap and crappy, but this was supreme with the cream cheese tasting like rotten carrots, the milk for the frosted flakes cereal in a caraff warming on the counter, and the juice full of concentrate glops and gloops from being insufficiently stirred. We made our way into arkansas with a feeling of "finally". We were both so ready to get the hell back on the road, to feel exhausted from a long days ride again...to actually have a reason to sleep other than alien vs predetor being over and the encore showing of panic room not being as enticing as the first go-round. Well. Here we are just outside mirianna arkansas, stealthing it off the road a bit in a national forest reserve, somewhat surrounded by a family/gang of friendly foxes. I was feeling a little shaky in the stomach after a highly greasy burger at a gas station (which was highly good all the same) but I skipped dinner and I'm starting to feel a bit better. We are both looking forward to tomorrow, after riding 60+ miles today, while also shaving off 8 or so miles due to more direct routing, and ready for a solid week on the road. Hopefully we will get the chance to shower and properly clean ourselves before too long.
Sent from my fingers and brain.

10/28-10/30 days 9-11 I think

We have made it to our first big destination, memphis tn. The ride in was simple and we got here with a severe quickness. After eating an amazing lunch at dixons southern buffet, the best damn buffet in the world, we shot like bullets down 51 to memphis. Getting into the city limits, we were overwhelmed by the stench of garbage and rotting flora and fauna all around us and it was highly unpleasant until we saw that crazy damn pyramid. We snaked our way along the river until we had entered the downtown area. Memphis, we decided as we rode to our hosts house, is definitely cool as shit. Even though the city is obviously hurting severely from economic woes past and present, there is a certain artistic charm to most of the places we went through. Even though the country seems to have somewhat forgotten this historic city, its residents, both young and old, have not let it fall by the wayside. Our host, dan, works as an assistant studio manager at the oldest continually running recording studio in the country (maybe even the world.) He is cools as shit, and his roommates, what little we saw of them, were very cool too. Our first night there, we tagged along with dan to a friends place, located in a very rich part of town with huger and huger houses and big ole lawnies, where he and his friends carved up some pumpkins. Dan made one of his face, another guy, jeremy, made one of lionel ritchey, anf the third was turned by katie into a ghost. They all turned out speccy, and we were highly amused at how long it took them. Not too long though, as we got to go see a show later on with jeremy and katie and her boyfriend aaron. This was not just any old showy, all local and damn. No, no...we had stumbled into a somewhat metal loving crowd of folks, and we saw f*cking toxic holocaust and skeletonwitch. Both totally awesome. The pit was shitbat crazy, both ben and I made our ways into it, and beer was cheap and getting all over everyone and everything. Some one even spilled some into a puddle on the floor which was icked numerous times into a fine beer-mist-spray in the air. It was so much goddamn fun! I love metal. One thing that was really cool was that everyone was actually really nice, not stand-offish, and they would do a double take if they didn't recognize you from shows past. It was a real welcoming crew of folks, just out having a great time. I also highly recommend both bands to anyone who likes metal and hasn't heard of them. Seeing them live was especially fun, in a small intimate venue called the hi-tone which is a variety venue. Whatever comes that is good, seems to end up there. Islands was playing the next night! But we didn't want to tempt ourselves with two nights of drinking before an extreme rain departure. Our second day in town, we lazed around got some ridiculously spicy pizza, and it was rainy pretty much all day. I decided that my sharpie-custom walmart shoes weren't cutting it in all this wetness and outdoors situations, so we headed to the local outdoors shop where I purchased a new pair of hiking shoes with the gore-tex tech. Very comfy and much more appropriate footwear for a trip like this. I unfortunately had to ditch my old pair (custom...so custom) in the garbage, along with my old helmet in which I discovered a crack. I normally wouldn't worry, but after hearing about poor joe reistetter, with his cracked skull, I made a point of replacing the old thing. After doing all that lazin' like a craisin, we were invited by dan to see a private live in studio performance by a band called star and micey, a three piece singer/songwriter type band (all members play at least two instruments on the simo.) The music was a little starry-eyed, touchy feely, I love you in the most innocent and christiany way possible type for my taste, but they have certainly honed their craft and they were all very nice dudes. The fact that the music wasn't up my alley made the fact that I was seated on the floor, front and center of the decorated make-shift stage, with three cameras trained on the band and the small audience, very very awkward. My feet kept falling asleep, and I kept trying to watch the cameras and wait till they were all on the band so I could inconspicuously rearrange my legs and feet, only to make eye contact with each of the cameras at least once. The studio was truly gorgeous, and of their accolades the one that stood out to me was the gold record certification plaque for the 1992 world wrestling federation soundtrack, forceable entry. Also they had some gin blossoms album covers on the wall, but despite those two, the studio has done some seriously awesome things (look em up: ardent studios.) So after that, we went back to dans and listened to some cool obscure rock music (you just wait ian) and then got our stuffy packed up and ready for our early morning departure...which turned out to be a shitsville exit if ever there was one. We left dans at around 9 (much later than we anticipated leaving), went to $acdonalds for a breakkie sand, back to outdoors store to borrow a floor pump to top off our tires and left...in pouring rainy. It was shit raining pretty hard, windy, cold. We made our way back toward the river, only to find the directions from our less and less trusty guide to be unclear and shoddy at best as to how to get out of the city via the pedstrian walkway on the bridge of i-55. After less than five miles into our ride, an hour and a half of getting soaked to the gills, getting turned around several times, almost getting routed onto the highway itself, ben getting acid rain in his eye, me falling over and cutting my leg up, and us not knowing where the f*ck to go anymore and beginning to get at each others throats a bit, we decided to bitch out and spring for a goddamn hotel room for the day and night and hopefully wait out the rain. So here we sit, feeling significantly less defeated than before and very full on papa johns pizza, in a hotel 8 or something, just waiting to spring out into arkansas and beyond to our final destination. We hope to reach new orleans before friday the 13th of november. We hope to meet our friends there for many good times, and we hope to meet my roommate and best friend ian there too. I hope we get to leave memphis, nothing against it...I am just so ready to move on. We figure if we can ride a few more miles per day, and shave some miles off the distance tally, we can get there even sooner.
Sent from my fingers and brain.

Memphass

We're doing laundry and re-packing our junk after an awesome thirty some hours in Memphis. We got into town late yesterday afternoon after a roughly sixty mile day, much of it along busy ass highway 51. A friend of a friend hooked us up with a place to stay in Midtown, inhabited by three really cool folks who are into bikes, music, and other such awesomeness. I ate the best barbecue I've ever had and we went to a metal show and drank cheap tall boys; Memphis seems like a ton of fun and it sucks that our time here is so short. Tomorrow we're heading into Arkansas, and we're hoping to pick up the pace and cover some serious ground so as to have a few quality days at the end of our trip to enjoy New Orleans. The next stretch of the MRT covers about a hundred miles before crossing any camping facilities, and we'll likely be riding through heavy rain throughout the day. Should be awesome.

10/27 morning

Ech. Rain in pillow fort as we awaken. Forecast calls for thunderstorms all day long. Shitty.
But my tent is dry thus far and the bikes are under cover so all isn't so bad.

I am convinced that it is only a matter of time before daddy longlegs spiders evolve the ability to bite and poison and kill us. Until then, they look so damn cool and weird.

10/25 & 26 days 7 and 8

Day 7 saw us riding through some pretty serious Tennessee back country. We stopped for lunch at a place whose sign read, "dorthys, open 7 days a week, all types of sandwiches." They actually only serve one thing a day nowadays, with business being slow and all. So we each got the plate, chicken strips, cole slaw, beans, cornbread, and peaches and cream. We were the only ones there until an old lady came in after church. We ate as dorthy talked of the old days with the lady, occasionally glancing at us when she hit on interesting points such as the fact that when her and Carl first got married, when she was still in high school, they would pick cotton after school and they would get three dollars per hundred pounds. She loved reminiscing and it was real nice to hear. We left full and feeling nostalgic. As we rode further and further into the country, the signs for the MRT became less and less frequent until they stopped altogether. Into a place called Pointers Gap or some such grit, and we got lost kind of. Daylight was coming to an end and we kept looking for some road called edith-nankipoo. Nankipoo! We pulled over to ask for directions to this road, because missed some turn or something. The woman we asked said to hold on while she got her husband who would know. Out comes this country ass super fat and dirty looking fella. He walked over to us, zipper unzipped, and had this sort of vacant look in his eyes, like he wasn't really looking at anything, and he was constantly chewing this white mass. I know it was white because as he spoke, his chewing rate seemed to increase and it was exposed with every syllable. This nondescript white mass. It looked like whatever that honky ass buggy driver in the beginning of dances with wolves was always chewing as he talked, bits of white shit flying out of his old mouther. Gross for sure. He told us sort of where nankipoo was, but he sort of seemed, well, not really sharp. so we aked someone who was walking around with a huge horse which got skiddish as we approached because, said the guy, it had never seen a bicycle before. he seemed to really know his way around and he told us where to go. He also used a phrase for which ben and I have established an operational definition. A big do: something that you have to do that's hard. i.e: you'll go round up there along the bluff, then turn on hobe webb road, and that is a big do up'ere. (We assumed he meant that we would have to climb a major hill, and we were subsequently proven right by not one but two big climbs. Or big do's.) Well we found our way soon enough, but it was getting dark fast so, and we were nowhere near any "legal" lodging so we started looking for a place to stealth it. We looked and looked and on one side of road the houses were just spaced too close together to hide between them. The other side was just a bunch of crappy fields of shitty old planties with little or no cover from the road. (Sidenote:I saw a cotton field at the beginning of the day which was awesomely beautiful *see picture once we get to a computer). So anyway, not being able to find anywhere good to sleep, we decided to say f*ck it, let's sleep behind this church here, no one will mind. We'll leave a note and it will be fine. Well something did mind. It was a goddamned dog from shitsville and it was relentless. As soon as we had our tents set up behind this church, it barked a shrill shit barky for over an hour! I hate dogs so much. It never gave up even once we crawled into our tents and made silent. Over an hour. We finally said f*ck it again, only this time we were all like let's get the damn out of here. Ben said, and I agree, he couldn't imagine a worse sleeping situation. So we packed up our shit, in the dark, headed back to rhe road, in the dark, and proceeded to shitty walk down the road with our bikes, in the dark. It was the lowest point of the trip. We were both tired from an extra long day, due to the getties losts, and we hadn't even eaten our dinner because of barks-a-lots. So we walked about a mile or so, trying to look on the bright side. We finally sound a spot right off a main road with sone thick brush against the road, but with an opening behind some trees. We ran our bike up the embankment and into the woods we were. We sat down, relaxed for a while, set up our tents, ate chili for dinner, and corn, and went to bed on a slight hill. All this happened before 9.30 pm. Crazed. After what turned out to be a really good night's sleep, we kept on trucking into the hills. When we had gotten the directions from horse man, he said we would have this Big Do. The big do was two enormous climbs, pretty Much out of nowhere, and that sucked to do right in the beginning of morning and with no breakfast and very little water. Once we got to the top, the view was excellent and it really was beautiful. Then I had a thought, horse man told us that one of the roads on our route had collapsed and it may not be fixed yet. He was right again. The road had completely collapsed into the hillside/bluff and ther was a ragtag construction crew there working on it. I asked if they knew a way around, and a guy asked "you're tryin to go over yonder?" as he pointed to the other side of the collapsed area. I told him yeah, and he told us to just walk along this path, mere inches from the huge hole in the road. We took his advice and much our shittiness, the path was six inches deep with mud. We slodged through it, while it kept trying to slurp our feet and wheels into its shitty bowels. We emerged with a new load of mud, so we sat down to clean up. My bike was covered in mud, and bens shoes were the worst of his muddy problems. We scraped and got at what we could and what we felt like. We still hadn't eaten and we were out of water at that point. We rode and rode and kept seeing street signs over and over but in different places and we sort of became desperate. We started getting a little flustered when we finally found a little grocery/cafe in the middle of nowhere. We burst in thirsty and hungered so bad. Ben ordered a cheeseburger (which was huge and looked really good) and I got what they call down here "the plate". This particular plate had all country goodness on it and it was tasty and filling and I had some crystal crisp iced tea that tasted just like I make at home. So good and refreshing. After we ate, we asked hesitantly about directions to the nearest town, ripley. Turned out we were just about two miles from it! Rejoice. We rode in, bought a map (which we wished we had the day before) and then went to walmart for provisions for the night and some snacks for later. We got that stuff, then went to the library so we could find out if we had a place to stay in memphis, and bam! We did. Literally a friend of a friend of a friend of bens is letting us stay with him when we get there. We rode out feeling great and knowing where we were going. We then stopped another time at walmart for some type of ipod charger, got it! Then we got really hungry, so we got some fasties at macdonalds and rode up outta'ere! We are now camping in the least intimidating war place, fort pillow state park and historic site, and all is good. I must say, for all the shitcan stuff that happened today and yesterdat, I feel amazing. I'm noticing myself becoming a better rider and I am really happy with my gear and how its holding up. And I am also happy to be out here with ben, which is cool. When we left beloit, neither of us saw ourselves doing anything like this with each other, but it is really working out well. We are laughing a lot together, and feeding off of each others energy and making this an unforgettable trip.
Sent from my fingers and brain.

Day 8 Oct 26 Ft Pillow, TN

We're in Fort Pillow Tn. Yuckin it up after a good day and I feel great.

The 1,642 acre Fort Pillow, located in Lauderdale County on the Chickasaw Bluffs overlooking the Mississippi River, is rich in both historic and archaeological significance. In 1861, the Confederate Army built extensive fortifications here and named the site for General Gideon J. Pillow of Maury County. The confederate soldiers abandoned the fort. Remains of the earthworks are well-preserved.

Stealthy church camping

We sort of got a little off track today, anyway. Right now, I am freakin out because we're behind a goddamn church "stealth" camping. What's the worst they can do? Ask us to leave? We're nice enough guys. When I say behind I mean in a fucking recess in the back wall, butted up against the wall. Literally behind.

10/23 days 4 and 5

We successfully waited out the rain in cape girardeah, thanks to our host who offered to let us stay an extra night. During our spectacular day off, we saw the great town so well known in missouri. Although we did not see the campus or any part of university life there, we did see lots of sights and took in what history we could, given craps weaths. First, we saw and ate at wendy's hamburger restaurant! I think ben agress that we probably both ate too much food. Then we went to the famed cape girardeah schnucks, where we bought some spices and a head of garlic. I asked myself inside, if I were an explorer and I could only bring two spices what would they be? Salt and pepper of course! So we got that ish and went back to our hostesses house for a much needed nappy. When we woke up, it was time for dinner so we helped to make some enchilada dinner, and I made a bastardized version of cheryl evans 7 layer dip. It had corn. We slept well in our fold out futony and coucher. Good thing too because the next morning we were leaving regardless of the weather. Luckily we struck out under full cloud cover, made it through the hilly fifteen or so miles out of town, and as it flattened out, the weather became nicer and nicer. By the time we were basically on totally flats, it was sunny and breezy and pleasant. We pulled into a gas station for lunch that had pulled pork bbq sandies and $2.75 cigs. We knew we were in the south for sure. The rest of the day we spent winding along unknown roads, taking our time, but at a brisk clip due to a slight tailwind, talking about women, friends, music, all sorts of shit. We got to our final destination that day, a small town in the bootheel of missouri, and finished off a spectacular day of riding with a banana split (that's right mom) and a sundae at dairy queen. After such an awesome day, we had no idea what lay in store for us regarding the private rv/campground we were to sleep at. What we found was that it was a shitty shitty place. First off, the place is called boomland rv/camping which should have been our first clue to shittiness. The windswept field of dead corn stalks ten feet from our rv site could have been the next clue. As we struggled against gale force winds to set up our tents, all flappy in the air like damned kites, we looked at each other with an exasperated air of comedic shittiness. After we got set up, we explored the truck stop/grocery store/novelties and souvenirs/pizzeria/cafeteria/fudge factory that lay not a hundred yards from our site. Not to mention that we later found out about the prison, one half mile down the road from the place. Though they did have hot showers. After a long night of sleep, wakes, sleep, waker, slee, ben got up first. He had almost all his gear packed when I opened my tent for the first time. He went to get coffee at the nearby superplex while I got all mine packed. I took the tent stakes out of the ground, stupidly, before I got the poles out. I turned to put away the stakes when the gale-force winds blew my tent several hundred feet onto the field next to the site. I went ruuning after it, shirtless, screaming obscenities all the while. That was highly frustrating. What was even more frustrating, at first anyway, was todays ride. Although the terrain was flat as boarded houses, the wind seemed to blowing in our faces, no matter which direction we traveled. I think we went in all the cardinal directies, and got nothing but a windy face kicker that felt like the constant parachute or some other dumb. We sort of switched off, one of us taking the lead and the other drafting right behind. It works surprisingly well (from someone who has never really tried before.) Though windys, today was by far the most interesting yet. We met three characters. 1: mike the farmer. As we neared the ferry which takes you from missouri to kentucky, we were greeted in the middle of a very rural intersection by a man in his mid fifties with a southern drawl somethin terrible. He was extremely excited to see us and introduced himself as mike smith. He invited us into his farmy office and offered us some iced tea (my fav) and sat and talked with us a while. Seems he is also into riding, and has been known to do a couple centuries here and there. As we talked I asked what type of animals head was on the wall (the huge one that wasn't obviously a deer head.) He told us it was an elk he shot in new mexico around taos and consequently, that was the very reason he began biking. He said it was to acclimate his body to the elevation. He started riding fifteen miles a day, then 30, then 60, then it just became enjoyable to him, and he started doing rides. He told us about all the people who had ridden through over the past ten years and it was sweet. Mike the farmer, with a very thick accent. 2: unnamed kid in the convenience store in hickman kentucky. We stopped for luch at this place, one of the couple we saw during our very brief stint in kentucky (one of three states traveled in today.) The bbq was so so, but the company was next to perfect. I put my food down at a table in the back of the store, and this kidan maybe in 9th grade came and sat down with us and just talked and spun these hilarious jokes. I asked him how the bbq was there and he said, "oh its real nasty. Its got cockeroaches crawling in it and stuff. Just kiddin'." He kept making gay jokes and told us that he got a "30 gig ipod from this canoe guy, do yall like ipods? Well, I got it from him, a 30 gig, for 10 bucks and the turnt around and sold it for 20 bucks." I told him he should have held out for more. He kept making jokes about stealing my shades too. What a wacky little kid. 3: unnamed girl in the parking lot of the convenience store. She was mabe 9, blonde hair, really short and a little dirty. We walked out of the store after eating and the first thing she said to another kid was "shut the fuck up, fag," as she picked him up and turned him upside down. Then a guy walked by her and her friend and handed them both a wad of cash and said, "there, that's three for the each of ya" and she said annoyed, "just three dollars?" And the man hurried away. Before we had a chance to think, she turned and said to me, "you know those are girls sunglasses right?" And I told her, "yeah, that's what all the guys wear in the big city." So that was our day. We now lay in realfoot lake state park campground in tennessee, after eating some beef stew and baked beans and a pack of burst for dessert. Exhausted and full and ready for tomorrow. We estimate we'll be in memphis, our next stopping point, in three days.
Sent from my fingers and brain.

After almost three weeks of cooling my heals in St. Louis, it feels really good to be back on the bike again. As we started riding out of St. Louis on Monday morning, I was a little apprehensive that days off the bike, combined with a heavy weekend of partying with old friends, might have left me in poor shape for a fifty mile day. I could definitely tell that I had spent some time off the bike, but it wasn't that bad; by yesterday (day 3), I was feeling pretty much back to 'normal.'

Our three days went by easily and pleasently enough. The sprawling St. Louis suburbs soon gave way to much more pleasant countryside, and by the time we reached Arnold, MO, we had escaped all remnants of suburbia. We paused in Arnold to eat some sardines before continuing on.

We rode as far as the wonderfully named town of Festus before deciding to call it a day. There wasn't any camping in town, so we made our first attempt at some under-the-radar, guerilla style camping. This is what a lot of bike touring folks refer to as 'stealth camping,' but I didn't feel particularly stealthy pushing my eighty pound bike through fields of high grass and weeds, all the while totally exposed to commercial and residential buildings. Still, things worked out well enough and we found a flat, secluded area to put up our tents. I didn't get any kind of adrenaline rush out of this type of camping, but its free, and for that reason alone I'm sure that it will play a part in my bike camping future.

Days two and three of our trip have already been covered well by Nate, which is good, since I don't really have anything to say about them. Day two was pleasant and easy, and yesterday was kind of tough. We had decent weather and pleasant rodes to ride on, but the seventy five miles that we covered was probably a bit more than we should have attempted this early in the trip. The day ended with that completely spent, exhausted feeling that comes after a really long day in the saddle. Fortunately, we had a warm, indoor place to sleep and a home cooked meal to look forward to.

We took today off and stuck around Cape Girardeau, which is great, since it has been raining all damn day. Tomorrow we'll take off, rain or shine, and cover the fifty miles between here and Charleston, MO, where we'll be staying at a private campground. Again, I'm really grateful to be back on the road, and I'm glad that Nate seems to be just as enthusiastic about the trip as I am.

Day 3 October 21

Okay. First thing I must do is give a disclaimer. We had an incredibly long day today both in distance and in time on the bike. For this reason, my brain is dead as damn. So no comments on bad grammar or repetitious writing. Spelling, well that is a given because I am mainlly writing this on a blackberry, so tiny buttons equals badie spells man.

So we started in ste genevieve missouri at maybe 10 (after another flat for ben-bum) and the way down from there was very smooth until about ten miles out of town when it became very shit hilly again. We powered through it though. Which reminds me that I realized what the pain in the back of my leg was due to...so this is essentially, save two rides around the block at home, the first time I've ever used clip-in pedals and special shoes. When you power up a hill with this type of pedal,and a fully loaded bike, you end up needing to use the entire rotation of the pedal. So you use a small tiny baby muscle in the back of your knee area to pull more on the backswing of the rotation. That is something I've never had to do before and I am now paying for it big time. But, because I realized what it was all due to I was able to correct my riding style so I didn't use those muscles as much.

We rode a grueling 75 miles or so today all the way to cape gerardueax or whatever. On the way, we saw lots of nice scenery and realized the colors on the trees are changing. Always a very pleasant sight. The weather was pretty good again, but not sunny. It actually was nice that way until 4 when it started getting pretty windy and chilly. I put on the leg warmers I bought and they really did work, but kept on slidies down the legs, so i had to stop about every half hour and pull them back up like some kind of pants that are too big and you got not even a rope-belt. We got more sandwiches at a gas station, as well as a pizza, a bag of chips, some peanuts, I think some crackers, some pomegranate and blueberry juice, and maybe even more. Very satisfying. We had our first full view of the river, on whose greatest trail we're on, and I took a successful action shot. Nice.

We got into cape g around 6, and it was a welcome sight. We had arranged to stay with a fellow couchsurfing.com member and get some indoors sleeping action. We knew it was supposed to rain, but we did not realize it would be a major thunderstorm, so we decided it wouldn't be terrible to stay for our first day off if it ended up really storming (which it has and continued to do so throughout the day.)

Our host made us some tasty pasta and pizza and we ate very well. Much appreciated. She even is letting us stay an extra day to wait out the rain. We will. Back on the path on friday.


Sent from my fingers and brain.

Day 2 (2)

So my dad brought the tent and sleeping pad and we were back out on a full days ride to ste genevieve or whatever. About halfway there we found a tiny little covenience store with deli sandies, so we pulled over and did the dew. They had a poster in the window that said "an american tradition...(Picture of eagle with red white and blue feathers on its wings)...leanin' tree". The ad gave no other clues as to what it was all about, so we said "f+ck it" and destroyed it right there in the p-lot. Just kidding. As we continued on, my fatigue became noticeable for the first time on the trip and ben's superiority bike-wise was evident. The hills quickly became more intense and frequent until we were basically just going up or down for a while. Cars were really whizzing past us at this point and I'll admit, it did get frustrating at times. It can be that way when you can see the top of the hill, or where you want to go, but can't make your body do it the way you want and it takes forever. But for up there is a down and there was pne point where we probably coasted downhill at about thirty mph for two miles or so. That was awesome and I stood up on my pedals and took my hands off the bars and just let the wind and the bugs enter my zone for a while. Not too long after that, it was more rolling hills (though I hate the term because it makes it seem like you just roll down one side and up another, and its never like that, so I'm going to call them shit hills from now on) and I started to notice a latent pain in the back of my left knee area. I chalked it up to pissy pants and just kept riding. We came to a "road closed" sign, and decided to see if we could make it across. Just as soon as we step foot on the wrong side of the sign, a man came out from (presumably) his yard and asked where we were headed. "New Orleans" we replied. He said,"oh! Well they took the bridge out three months ago and its been sittin there ever since. They'll have it done by thanksgiving though. But anyway, because the roads been closed so long, we got real good at giving folks these directions..." That was a bad story, which basically said that we had to take a slight detour, which he did not lie about having one enormous hill, which suckeduck. It wasn't untril we trudged through another tall grass field to find a suitable place to set up camp that I had the bads. A very sharp pinching pain! Shitty. In the same spot too. I had been silencing all previous pains, but this one was intense. I could barely even swing my left leg forward through the weeds and grass (is grass a weed when it is unintentional?) And I was pissed for real now. I can't stand pain like that, let alone on the second day of a superride. What a baby! So I just relaxed for a few, and the pain was easier going then. Now I am trying to ice it and stretch it a.m.a.p. Laying in the tent, on top of my comfy sleepypad, I am hoping this does the trick. *I must give a huge amount of thanks to the my dad who not only took time out from work at an important moment, but rescued me in the process. Dad, you are so completely the shit and I am so lucky to be your son. I can actually lie on my stomach now and fall asleep which I feel like doing now as I listen to cars on a distant i-55 and a babbling little stream next to our new and improved campsite.
Sent from my fingers and brain.

Day 2

Well the hennessy hammock, in which I had put lots of faith, is a total piece of shit. No no, let me be more clear. I sleep on my stomach and the hennessy hammock allows you to only sleep on your back or on your side. On my back my arms went off the sleeping pad which made them very cold. On my side, with the shape of the hammock, the pressure on my shoulder was incredible. I didn't sleep a wink all night but I did get some reading in. Lots of reading till dawn.

So, when I got out of the hammock, frustrated as hell, I called my dad immediately and he went to rei to pick me up a tent and pad that would allow me to sleep the way my body wants to. As I write, he is en route to meet us in fester (festus) missouri, about fifty miles out of st. Louis. I am rubbing the buckeye my mom gave me, hoping the tent and pad make my night life on this trip as enjoyable as possible. Oh, and with the added cost of a new tent and pad, I will certainly not be acquiring a gun on this trip. Unless I am presented with an insane offer...

Bob Evans is underrated and definitely better than denny's. Get the garden harvest omlett. Maybe not when you're on a bike tour though; its a bit much with two butter-loaded biscuits. Ah well, we have a nice little wait before dad gets here, so hopefully it all settles well.
Sent from my fingers and brain.

Day 1 Nate joins in

We started out today from Chris' pancakes and dining (thanks to the ole P & M.) Met everyone in the fam who was in town, had a hearty meal and struck out down Arsenal and south on Broadway. I noticed a distinctly different side of Broadway even though I used to live right on it (we passed by the South House, which I hadn't seen since I moved out.) I guess it sort of felt foreign and unknown and nicer than it generally feels to be in that part of town. That was likely due to the fact that this was the first time I've ridden on that road on my way out of town.

The ride out of st louis was nice and uneventful and we were very pleased with the weather.

Ben had the first flat a couple miles outside of pevely, missouri. We were getting shit for dinner at a market and pulled away after having some sardines, and bam! Fixed in short order with no problems.

In pevely, we stopped at a pawn shop because they sold guns, and I love looking at guns. I was taken with a .32 cal Jimenez auto, a small compact little guy. I convinced myself to wait, but I already regret that decision.

We are now eating dinner, stealth camping on the border of Festus. All set up for day two of fun in the bun!!
Sent from my fingers and brain.

First Post for Nate

I am Nate, the other guy doing this bike tour. I am on the edge of my seat waiting to get out of town, if not for the pure excitement then to beat this damn weather. It has been uber-crappy in St. Louis and getting worse it seems, so I am very ready to get on the road headed south to warmer climates.

I must admit, I am a fart and I purchased a brand new bike for this journey (hopefully many more like it.) The bike is a Masi Speciale CX. It came in rootbeer brown, which I hate...but it is a decent enough bike and will likely last me the rest of my life, unless I go through an incredible late-onset growth spurt. I also got a bunch of neato gear, which I will show you all in picture format soon as I get home today. I went with the waterproof panniers, racks that were sufficient enough to carry my drunk roommate down a large hill at night, a couple socks, pants, shoes, all the normal shit. I will not be specific with it all because I am not a damn commercial. In fact, I had to wrap black tape around all the logos on my new bike because I thought it felt like I was riding on a billboard which sucked big time. Now that is all better though I may still spray-paint out all the rest of the logos on the panniers, but that is not as important to me.

I guess more to come...

Recap of the past couple weeks : Winona to St. Louis

As you can probably tell, I've done a pretty poor job of keeping this thing current. Blame it on a lack of blog-facilitating luxuries, like computers and electricity. Here's a scattered and inconclusive summary of the last couple weeks of the trip:

First off, I am in St. Louis and Jason is not. We rode together until Dubuque, Iowa, at which point he decided to return home to focus on other projects. I'm a little bummed that we weren't able to swing a complete trip down the river, but I'm glad he was able to come out for the week that he did. Hopefully Nate and I will be able to convince him to join us for a few days of riding south of St. Louis. Here's a pretty accurate representation of how Jason spends his time now that he's not on the road having awesome adventures with his friends:



Our third day of the ride found us in Winona, where we ran into a guy named Chris doing a much more badass version of our ride on a Salsa Fargo:

This was my first time seeing one of these bikes in person, and it definitely rekindled my desire for one. Chris is taking his all the way down to Tierra del Fuego, and is blogging about the trip at http://thespicycamel.blogspot.com. Peep it.

Seeing his bike reminded me of the Salsa 24, an event after which I was convinced that I had lost my camera for two weeks and almost gave up on the idea of maintaining this site. After finally finding it two hours before leaving Northfield, I realized that I had only taken four photos with it the entire weekend and the only non-horrible one was this:



After Winona we crossed into La Crosse, Wisconsin. La Crosse Lager played a significant role in my adolescence, so it was awesome to finally pass through the city for which its named. What I didn't know was that the La Crosse brewery boasts the World's Largest Six Pack:



Wisconsin's Wyalusing State Park was my favorite spot that I've camped in thus far. After a grueling climb to the parks entrance we were met with some amazing views, especially after some guy we met in the park office handed us the tag to the best campsite in the park:


The post - Dubuque solo portion of this trip didn't yield many pictures, probably as a consequence of my putting in much longer days in the saddle and not wandering around so much. Highlights of this portion of the trip included Nauvoo, Illinois, a Mormon tourist destination with a gigantic temple and really creepy religious post cards.

I entered Missouri at Mark Twain's home town of Hannibal, and reached St. Louis after three consecutive 75 + mile days. St. Louis' Riverfront Trail provided a scenic way to enter the city, though at one point I did have to portage over a fence and through a giant construction site (the toothless guy in the pickup said it was cool):


The trail ends downtown, just a couple of blocks from the arch. Here's some weird industrial art at the end:



I arrived in St. Louis on September 28th, exactly two weeks after leaving Northfield. The past week has been filled with catching up with friends, exploring the city, and eating my weight in grilled food. Nate and I will be continuing on the MRT in about two weeks, and I hope to ride a portion of the Katy Trail for several days later this week.

An actual entry, take 1

Currently on day three of our trip, we're in Winona, MN and have a few hours to kill before continuing on, so I guess I actually have to write something.

We spent Tuesday morning waiting around Northfield until some freight showed up at the bike shop; I then promptly forgot to pack the stuff we needed (26" folding tire and a chain). The extra couple hours provided me with time to say goodbye to some friends and get hooked up with free sandwiches from our favorite Hoagie town employee. She even drew an eerily accurate picture of Jason on his bike, so that he wouldn't forget to eat it on the trip:

We rolled out of town around 1:30 in the afternoon and headed to Cannon Falls along 19. I always make a point to avoid 19 when riding in the Northfield area, but it really isn't that bad in the middle of the day.

Once in Cannon Falls we hopped on the Cannon Valley Trail for the twenty miles to Red Wing. I've heard Northfield cyclists rave about this trail for a couple years, and was curious to see if it lived up to the hype. Overall I found it to be flat and pretty boring, but about mid-way through we did get passed by a guy in a full kit riding a flat bar road bike, so that almost made up for it.

After the trail we made a brief stop in Red Wing for some dinner items, but the rapidly vanishing day light kept us from exploring the town. We pedaled another ten odd miles to Frontenac
State Park, and spent much of the ride chatting with a middle aged Redwingite who was riding a vintage Trek, decked out in New Balance running shoes, baggie shorts, and what appeared to be woodshop safety glasses. Once reaching the park we were rewarded with this:

Yesterday morning we were on the road by around 10:30. Even though we got an earlier start and rode less miles, the rolling hills of 61 made it feel like a lot more work. We got to John A Latsch State Park around 4:30 in the afternoon and called it good. We're taking today as a chance to rest up and explore an actual city, and will probably cross over into Wisconsin sometime tomorrow.

Defintely a Flamer.

We're pedaling out of town in about twenty four hours and still have a lot of loose ends to tie up. What with working, packing, and DJJD-inspired carousing, I haven't had much time for attending to my bike. Fortunately my friends have offered to help me out by putting the finishing touches on the ride that I'll be living off of for the next two months:



Yeah, we're in good hands.