Mr. Clemens Himself

Riding Dy 29 – 87.04 miles

The team awoke to clear skies after an interesting night of noises while camping in front of the Oberlin Fire Department. Around midnight, a pack of dogs was going ballistic just down the road. There might have been some wild animal nearby flaunting its freedom, while the dogs could only pull their chains taut, or throw themselves against the sides of their cages in utter frustration. This went on for 20-minutes or so before they finally fell silent. And what had seemed like a quiet nondescript street in a small town by day, became a major thoroughfare by night. We all climbed out of our sleeping bags this morning feeling groggy, but a little camp coffee and instant oatmeal soon gave us the inspiration and energy to get the show on the road, and we ended up riding away just before 8am, our earliest start in several weeks.

It was a beautiful morning, and our route carried us through fields flooded to grow rice, which were surrounded by huge man-made ponds with multiple buoys floating in them, and I thought that perhaps these were crawfish farms as we were squarely in the heart of crawfish country. The road was smooth, and we covered the first 15 miles in under an hour. My bum was feeling much better, and I figured we’d have another high-milage day under our belts by day’s end.

We had decided to forge our own path to Baton Rouge to shorten the overall distance to New Orleans, the site of our next planned day off, not only because we were excited to see the city, but more so because of my need to soon have a day where I didn’t have to sit on a bicycle seat and pedal all day. The plan was to follow Highway 190 and eventually rejoin the prescribed route just west of Baton Rouge, which looked like a genius idea on Google Maps.

As we turned onto Highway 190, the shoulders were wide and smooth all the way to the horizon. There was a bit of a headwind, stronger than forecast even, but we were still maintaining a descent pace, and if we kept our breaks reasonable, it would be a big day barring anything unforeseen. On our second break, The Bob said that he’d been talking to our friend Kyle (Hi Kyle!), and that she’d informed him that alligators could run at 15mph for a short distance. This would be a problem if we encountered one off the bike, I thought, because I haven’t been able to run anywhere near that speed for years. I could tell Odie to save himself and run like hell, but who knows where he’d end up! So, I decided that we wouldn’t stop unless the OREM was nearby, but for the rest of the day I was constantly glancing into the swamps/bogs/bayous that were literally everywhere, looking for some ominous shape or the glint of a soulless eye from amongst the tall grass. I saw lots of turtles and white egrets, I saw a few snakes slithering quickly out of sight, and I think I might have seen an armadillo at one point, though I can’t be certain. But I didn’t see an alligator.

When we took a break in Kortz Springs, LA we had logged just over 70-miles, and it was only 2pm. Doing the math, I figured that another 100 mile or more day was within our grasp. But as we’ve been shown many, many times since we left San Diego, expectations aren’t reality until they are.

A mile or so beyond Kortz Springs, the wide and wonderfully smooth shoulder narrowed and became more like driving on the moon. Wide, deep ruts became the norm, often with thick mounds of grass flourishing within their trenches, mounds that could buck you off the seat if you went too fast. Loose gravel and debris were everywhere, and we were forced to slow to a crawl. And then we hit a nearly 5-mile stretch of busy road with no shoulders. The drivers all gave us space, but it was still unsettling to feel so exposed and helpless. When we finally knocked it off for the day, I was hugely relieved to be done.

Tonight, we’re camping in a KOA campground in Baton Rouge. We took hot showers, did laundry, had a fine meal of rice, vegetable soup and canned tuna, and spent an hour or so sitting around talking and laughing about the day’s quandaries, as well as plotting our attack for tomorrow. We’ll be back on the prescribed route all day, a good portion of which snakes its way toward New Orleans alongside the Mississippi, North America’s version of the Nile or Amazon. I’m looking forward to having a “Huckleberry Finn” kind of day, albeit from the vantage point of a bicycle. I remember reading Mr. Clemen’s classics as a young boy growing up in the heartland, and how they made me long to have my own adventures out in the world, just like Tom and Huck and all those other characters. And it occurs to me tonight, as I sit outside by myself while the rest of the campground appears to have already called it a night, that’s exactly what The Bob, Odie and I have been doing for the last 5 weeks…we’ve been having an adventure, one that perhaps Mr. Clemens himself would have appreciated.