Ride Day 43

I started early from DeRidder this morning. My night camping at an RV park there was nice and quiet so I got a good night of rest since I did not have any major pain problems. The morning was so foggy that a light mist was dripping out of the air. My tent was soaking wet when I took it down. I started my ride off slowly because there is no shoulder on the road near DeRidder. I was being very careful of how I rode and there was a lot of traffic for 5:30 in the morning including those big fast logging trucks. I safely navigated my way out onto quieter roads within an hour. I enjoyed riding in the misty fog even though it had me sweating profusely. I used my lights to help make me more visible to cars and especially the big logging trucks. I had no close calls though because all the drivers were very good about giving me enough room. The shoulder widened out for a while and the surface was smooth so I was making good time. I had fifty miles in before ten in the morning even though I was not pushing the pace. I stopped for drinks a lot and talked to the locals each time. Today's big topic seemed to be the child labor dispute over kids working on farms. Since this is farming country everybody is opposed to new regulations concerning their kids working on their farms. I pointed out that China started this dispute after the U.S. attacked them over children working in factories in China. China pointed out that just as many children work on farms in the U.S. so what is the difference. Good point China. These new regulations were basically just an attempt to save face with China. Now the U.S. can't bitch about kids working in factories in China because kids are working on farms here. I enjoyed watching them harvest the crawfish out of the rice fields and ponds today. The workers are very fast at emptying out the full trap and replacing the baited empty trap in the water. They were getting a lot of crawfish. This is a holiday weekend so sales will be up they told me. There were lots of road kills along the road. Plenty of snakes, armadillos, coons, frogs, turtles, deer, possum, skunks and more. I checked out some of the freshly killed snakes just to see what kind they were. Most of them were harmless snakes but there were a few rattlers. I did not see any copperheads or cottonmouths or any of the other dangerous snakes even though they are fairly common in these parts. I checked into a hotel after about 75 miles of riding. There are very few camping places around here. When I asked about why the answer was quick, too many snakes around so nobody wants to camp. I can't afford all these hotels in my cheap ass budget so I need to get out of these parts quickly. I am going to skip Baton Rouge and New Orleans because I have been before and I just can't afford them this time around. I could ride into Mississippi tomorrow as it is in range now but we shall see tomorrow. It is a holiday weekend so there might be heavy traffic on the roads. If so I will stop and wait it out. More later...