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.