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.