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.