Ride Day 47

I left my hotel in Bogalusa Louisiana early hoping to get a good long ride in today to try to get out ahead of the coming storms. Five minutes on the road and I had a major blowout. I hit a broken beer bottle that I could not swerve to avoid because a big logging truck was passing by me. I thought my kevlar tires would save me but no the glass went right through the kevlar. I took the tire off and cleaned out all the glass and put a new tube in. I was worried about riding on the tire because it had a long slash in it from the glass. I pumped it up and it held air so I took off riding but I was very careful not to hit any bumps or run over any rocks with my rear tire. It held up all day through 106 miles of riding in rolling hills on back country roads of Mississippi. There were very few people in sight all day long and almost no traffic which is a good thing because there was no shoulder on the roads. I had fun messing with the farm dogs again. There were a lot of them today. I think the dogs enjoy the encounters as much as I do. Too bad that it scares the crap out of a lot of bike riders. I heard a lot of horror stories from other bikers that rode through Louisiana and Mississippi. I always asked if they got bit and none of them did so I think they just do not understand dogs and especially farm dogs. Most of the dogs that chased me today were also wagging there tails as they did it. They were just having some fun. The country was mostly forested swamps and plain old dry forests with a lot of pines. Most of the roads were pretty new looking and were very smooth but they did not have shoulders so I had to be careful with all the drinking and driving that goes on. I had no real problems like that today. The last 10 miles of the ride were a bit harder because by then I was getting a sore butt and the road had expansion bumps every 8-10 feet. I just stood up and did a lot of pedal then glide to save myself from sitting on the seat any more. When I got to 75 miles earlier in the day I passed a state park with a campground and I almost stopped. For that last 10 miles I was thinking how stupid I was for not stopping. But now that I am in camp at Vancleave I am glad that I kept going. Now I am in range to get to Florida in only one more day if the weather holds out on me. Thundershowers are in the forecast for Friday night through early next week. I might need to hole up somewhere and wait them out. When I got to the campground in Vancleave I sat down to talk to the family running the camp and while we were talking they found a water moccasin in camp. They immediately went on a search and destroy mission. I got a couple pics of the snake before they got to it. I don't like killing snakes but they have campers to worry about and water moccasins obviously are not endangered. I am seeing water moccasins or cottonmouths as they are also called almost everyday now.   I am sitting waiting for a bike shop to deliver me a new tire and tubes for my bike. After I change it, I am going to take a shower, eat some dinner and go to bed. More later...

Rain Delay

Today I am taking the day off from riding. The weather is wet and is forecast for more thundershowers through tonight. I don't want to ride in thundershowers and I can use the time to heal up a bit before I head into Mississippi next. The strange thing for me is that when I get up early and hit the road I feel fine but when I take a day off I get sore and stiff all over. Today my back hurts along with my butt and my legs. If I flex my lower legs they cramp right away. They don't do that when I ride every day. Maybe I need a longer rest to rebuild my body back up. When I get to St Augustine Florida I am taking a month off. I would like to hang out on the beach and just read and relax. I have not read a book since I started my ride and I am a readaholic. I miss my reading time. I also have another little health issue that is starting to get worse for me. My skin cancer is returning in a couple of places. Both places it is showing up are exposed to the sun on a daily basis. I lather myself in sunscreen several times a day but that is obviously not enough. There is a chance it would be returning even if I lived in a dark cave 24/7 but I think the sun is getting this going again. On my nose I have had it removed several times and it is back in the same place. When I get to Florida I am going to be forced into going to a dermatologist. I hate going to doctors now. I keep swearing that I will never go to another doctor in my life and then things like this pop up. At least my high chronic pain has been lower for the last couple of weeks. If I had high pain along with this returning cancer then I would likely sink back into a dangerously deep depression. The heavy dose of bike riding has almost eliminated any depression for me. My spirit is strong right now and I am sure the riding is the reason. It is not just the physical work out of riding that helps me but it is also all the time I have to think while I pedal away. I have been examining my life choices while I ride. I feel good about everything I have done in my life and I would not change any of it if given the chance to do so. I often wonder though what my life would be like today if I had made different choices along the way. I never had trouble making money in my lifetime until I got disabled that is. Any time I wanted to I was always able to make good money. The problem is I am just not interested in money. Big paychecks are not something I have ever aimed for. Money really means very little to me. I am happy to just get by. I guess I lack the drive for "success" in the standard American model of what success is all about. I have been happier than most people I know that are focused on getting ahead by making lots of money. I could use more than my social security check provides me. Living on under a thousand bucks a month is very hard to do but I survive on it. If I had lots of cash I could just go to a doctor for my skin problems right now. But for me to see a doctor I would either have to return to California or establish residency in another place and reapply for medicare and medicaid. That takes about a year to do. It is not easy to move around and be on medicare. I will most likely just ignore these skin cancer eruptions for now. They look like basal cell carcinomas not like melanomas so that is a good thing. If they are melanomas again I would need more surgery but the basal cells are just burned off or cut out in an office visit. I could also fly to Costa Rica and combine a vacation with a doctor visit. I had my last surgery down there and they did a very good job for very little money. That might be my best option. I will decide when I get to St Augustine. For now I just want to continue enjoying life as it rolls by and for today that means resting up in a cheap hotel for the day. more later...

Ride Day 46

I survived another night of thundershowers last night. I stayed at a campground in Easleyville Louisiana that had a carport that I was able to set my tent up under. That at least kept me dry. The wind blowing and all the thunder and lightning still made sleep difficult. I got a bit of sleep but not enough. Tonight I checked into a motel because there are even more heavier showers forecast for tonight and tomorrow. I left Easleyville early as usual and cruised easily for a few hours. The roads were not too busy with traffic but there were more and bigger hills as the day went on. I had no problem with that so I must be getting fitter as I ride. I rode 75 miles today through rolling hills all day and was not even tired when I stopped for the night at the Louisiana/Mississippi state line. I did have a lot of dogs on this section of the ride. I like farm dogs. Their job is to defend the farm and they do a good job of it for the most part. They bark at and then they chase bicyclists. That is their job. They very rarely would bite but they can be very intimidating to a lot of people. I grew up with farm dogs so they don't give me much problem. I play with them when they charge at me looking like they are going to tear me limb from limb. I laugh at them and talk friendly to them. I tell them they are good dogs. They usually look a bit confused when I do that. I am not afraid of them and they know that by my actions. That intimidates them. If they come into the road I tell them to get off the road and they almost always do just that. Then I slow down and encourage them to chase me while laughing and obviously playing with them. They seem to know right away that it has changed to a game and they play along. Sometimes I even stop my bike and get off and play with the dogs. On rare occasions one does not get it and they do really seem to want to attack and bite me. Bad idea on their part. When I was a young boy I was walking out in the woods at night and a werewolf attacked and bit me. A very old woman dressed all in black killed the werewolf and nursed me back to health in her cabin in the woods. She gave me potions that she said would keep me from turning into a werewolf unless I was threatened by another werewolf again. So the only time I turn into the junk yard dog from hell is if I think I might get bitten. Then I transform and scream my bike brakes to a skidding stop and jump off my bike and with a primordial loud roar and run right at the vicious dog that threatened to bite me. They take one look at the mad wolfman coming at them and they always turn tail and run away. Then I laugh and walk back to my bike and talk sweetly to the dog again if they come back into earshot of my voice. It works for me. The part about the werewolf biting me might have just been a nightmare I had but I am not sure about that anymore. My 75 mile ride to the state line went smoothly all day even with all the hills and dogs. Worse than the dogs were the bugs today. In Texas when I was done riding I always stopped and ate like a double cheeseburger with fries and a milkshake or something because I was so hungry after riding hard all day long. Here in Louisiana I am not hungry at all after my rides because I eat so many bugs while I ride. They bombard me all day long going into my mouth, eyes, ears and down my shirt. Today I had to stop at a car wash when I finished my ride to pressure wash the bugs out of my teeth and off of my clothes and my glasses. I felt like a radiator on a big Mack truck after a cross country haul. I am sitting here writing this with my mouth open so that the bugs that I inhaled today can fly back out of my lungs. Their buzzing around and bumping into the sides of my lungs bothers me just a tad. I will be happy when I get out of the buggy swamps. Bogalusa Louisiana is a great name for a town that has billions of bugs. Tomorrow I enter Mississippi. It is small state and I won't be riding in it for very long before I hit Alabama and then Florida finally. More later...

Ride Day 45

It rained pretty hard last night and kept me awake for most of the night. My tent started to float and there was a lot of real close lightning so I ended up going into the laundry room at the RV park to get out of the weather. I was kind of tired when I started my ride around 7 in the morning. I meandered down the road after packing my dripping wet tent. The weather was good, partly cloudy and not too hot yet. There was a nice big shoulder on the road so I was rolling up the miles easily. I went into the town of New Roads Louisiana to see what was there and I just rode through without stopping except when I saw the boat launch ramp on the Mississippi River. I stopped to watch the early morning show. Sure enough there was a rig that they could not pull out of the water because they did not have 4x4 drive and their tires just spun on the slippery ramp. They tried all different ways of going up the ramp but they slipped back down into the water every time. I suggested they try to put a line on the truck and tow it up the ramp as they pull it out and they talked that over before trying it. Their first attempt failed when the webbed strap they used came apart. They doubled it up and the next time they spun their tires again. I suggested that the truck with the boat on it just put a gentle touch on the pedal instead of flooring it. They tried that and sure enough they slowly pulled their rig up and out. I love the launching ramp shows, they very rarely fail to entertain. I hit the road again and headed for the new Audubon Bridge across the Mississippi River. It has been open about a year now. It was a good looking bridge but nothing spectacular. The river looked good from the crest of the bridge. I took a few pics and kept riding. The road was good so I was making good time. There were more and more hills as I went along today. At one point I was thinking Texas roller coaster but it was never that bad and it was cooler here than it was in Texas. I saw a beautiful large black snake on the road today. It was at least 6 feet long and fat. It was on the road so I tried to spin around on my bike and get my camera out but the snake was too quick for me. He almost jumped in the sky when he took off for the forest and he disappeared in a flash. I was disappointed that I was too slow to get a pic of this snake. I am not sure what type of snake it was. When I get internet again I will look up large black snake in Louisiana and see if I can find out what it was. I did look up the snake and I think it was a black pine snake.   I kept going until I hit 80 miles of riding then I stopped and put my tent up at Hyde Park in Easleyville Louisiana, not much around these parts. The road was hilly toward the end of my ride so I was happy to stop. About five minutes after I stopped the skies opened up and dumped for about 15 minutes. I timed that about right today. There is a covered area to put up my tent tonight so I should be alright even if it continues to rain. I have earplugs for the rain but the big boomers would still wake me up. I already stopped at a store and bought some food to cook for dinner so I am set for the night. More later…

Day of rest

I am staying in Morganza today and not riding. My body wanted some time off so I am sitting around at the RV park in Morganza Louisiana. There are no cafes or restaurants or hotels in town. Not much to do at all. I have been talking with the locals over at the corner store and here in the park. Last night I was invited over for dinner by a Father and Son team that is here fishing for a couple of days. The son cooked up a bunch of the catfish they caught and threw in some onion rings, deviled eggs, beans, potato salad and green salad for us to eat. It was a great meal and I enjoyed their company. They were soft spoken and polite as are most of the people around here. They were also generous and interested in my ride and adventures. We talked as we ate and then I had to go to sleep after my hundred mile ride yesterday. Thundershowers were moving in as I went to bed in my tent but other than some thunder and lightning there was not much to the storm except a few drops of rain. Some of my feedback has been that I am moving too fast and not doing enough tourist type things as I travel. Like how could I just go so close to Baton Rouge or New Orleans and not go into town for a visit. Well I am not very interested in tourist things and I have already visited most of the tourist things already in previous visits plus it costs a lot of money to do things in big cities. I prefer to hang out in the tiny burgs like here in Morganza. The people are real people. They tend to be friendly and helpful. They are curious about me and why I would want to hang out in the town that they find so boring but to me it is about meeting the people not seeing the things like bridges or famous buildings. I have seen plenty of famous things in my life and they no longer impress me much. We talked about Obama and politics, the local economy, what they do on a daily basis and things like that. There is no confrontational arguing about the politics whether I agree or not I still want to know their opinion and why they hold that position. I do not find it boring. I like people. All kinds of people as long as they are basically good people. I find most people are in that class. I have met very few jerks or bad people on this trip. That renews my faith in this country. The people I meet are all basically very good generous helpful people. There seems to be a gap between that image and what the government thinks and does. I don't really understand why the government is so different from the people I meet on the street. I guess it might be because the government does not really represent the people on the street but rather some type of "upper" class of people. But such is life... I have caught up on all my computer stuff, done my laundry and straightened up my belongings. I also tried to wash off the smell of piss that is on my tent from a dog pissing on it back in La Grange TX. It hasn't been too smelly until last night when it was pretty strong smelling. I think the heat and humidity here are contributing to the increased smell. I again washed the tent off with soap and rinsed it well and am letting it bake in the hot sun today to see if it smells better tonight. If it gets any more pissy smelling I might have to get a different tent. I hope not because I don't have the cash for a new tent. Tomorrow I am riding across the Mississippi River and over to the border of Mississippi State. I am not sure if I will sleep in Louisiana or Mississippi tomorrow. Depends on how I feel once I hit the road. I am riding right on past Baton Rouge and New Orleans though for some more small villages along my way. Enjoy life while you still are able.

Ride Day 44

I left my hotel in Ville Platte with the same misty fog hanging in the air as I had yesterday. I enjoy the misty look it gives Louisiana. It seems to fit the image I have in my head for swampy southern Louisiana. I saw some great old oak trees today on my ride but I could not get any good pics of them because the traffic was too heavy and I did not want to sit around and wait for a break in traffic to take a pic. I rode hard today on the flat roads that only have a few small hills on them, riding about 15-18mph. I enjoyed the first 20 miles which was through the area near Chicot State Park.   The park is a mixed wet and dry forested swampy area with a couple of lakes. There was almost no traffic on the roads. I saw lots of wildlife on my ride today, deer, fox, opossum, turkeys, squirrels, birds and livestock. I like seeing all the beautiful horses grazing in the misty fields. I have tried to get a pic of the cattle with cattle egrets sitting on them but the damn birds are too flighty to get close enough for a good pic. Such is life. There were fields of corn and beans instead of rice and crawfish ponds. I still saw some crawfish traps in the swamps and ponds though. I took a wrong turn today while I was spacing out enjoying the world roll by as I rode. I did not mind the error as I enjoyed the extra miles. I stopped to ask a local farmer where I was and how do I get back to my route. He pointed right to where I thought I was on my map and then offered to drive me back to my route. I accepted his offer and we had a nice chat while he drove me the 8 miles or so back to the main route. He raises cattle and farms feed for them and also to sell. He was a very nice friendly guy and I enjoyed his company, He seemed pleased to meet me and hear a bit about my ride also. I gave him my web name and he said he would look me up and read more. After I was back on the route I ate a half pound burger and fries before riding on. I have a hard time eating sufficient calories to keep up with my daily caloric burn. I am also really trying to eat healthy but I need to eat the high calorie foods too. I drink a lot of fluids including water, juices, V8, and I eat apples and oranges almost every single day. I also munch carrots while I ride. Sometimes I share them with the horses which the horses go nuts over. The only negative for me today was I had to ride through smoke because they were burning off the fields before they plow them and the smoke started to give me some asthma problems. I was able to shake it off without needing to use an inhaler but I did not like the sudden breathing problems. I am camping in an RV park tonight and might not ride tomorrow. Sunday almost everything around here closes so I don't have as many options to buy cold drinks and food as I ride plus my tired old body could use the rest I think. I have tried to take days off before but I just get too bored and get on my bike and go. So I may or may not ride tomorrow. Next week has some thundershowers in the forecast but as long as it does not say tornadoes I will ride. The rain might feel good as long as there is not too much lightning striking close to me.

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...