Sunshine State to the Golden State 2018

Nice wide shoulders on Hwy 190 today. With a full width rumble strip every 20 feet. Actually the rumble strip wasn't bad.  It vibrated the eyeballs a little but I didn't lose any teeth. Most of the route was on 190 today except for about 10 miles of detours on relatively quiet country roads. I got stopped for about 20 minutes by this train. The country roads had no shoulder but they were almost completely deserted too. Rural Louisiana I must be in Hawaii!  The senility is getting bad.  I don't even remember the ocean bit. Once back on the 190 I came to a shoulderless causeway over the Atchafalaya basin.  I didn't know what it was spanning at the time, but I did know I had no other choice  but to cross it.  So I waited until there was no traffic approaching and started riding. It became apparent very quickly that this was no short bridge.  I couldn't see an end to it.  So adrenalin kicked in, and the...

The radar this morning showed a large mass of rain headed northeast toward Baton Rouge, so I was sure it was going to be another wet ride today.  But Mother Nature took pity on me for some reason, and once again it held off until my ride was over. But my luck did run out where flat tires are concerned.  Just 3 miles after getting started, I hit the mother of all nails.  That might be a slight exaggeration, but just a slight one. Darned cheap tires.  I bet they wouldn't stop a bullet either. There wasn't  much to look at in terms of scenery today.  The Amite River was as good as it got.  Beyond that, there was the usual rural scenery and, once I got to Baton Rouge, nothing but industrial areas and bad neighborhoods. The Amite River, just east of Baton Rouge. I had to zig-zag through town until I got close to the northernmost bridge that crosses the Mississippi, and there I got lunch at a Subway and called a taxi to get to my motel...

Riding through towns in the south can be quite a challenge due to the lack of any biking infrastructure, as I've mentioned earlier.  So I was very happy to learn about the Tammany Trace trail, which is a beautiful, paved trail that runs from Slidell to Covington, Louisiana, a distance of about 30 miles. The Tammany Trace Trail marker The east end of the Tammany Trace Trail Anybody hear banjos? The Bridge over Bayou Lacombe Bayou Lacombe At Bayou Lacombe I met Dan, a 72 year old retired school superintendent.  We rode together for 10 miles or so, talking about our lives and experiences.  Dan has had two knee replacements and, more recently, rotator cuff surgery.  He is doing quite well because he is one of those people who actually does what his Physical Therapist tells him to do.   At the same time, I met Catherine, who was also out for a day ride on the Trace, as they call it.  She told me a bit about the Natchez...

After yesterday's frustration I was looking forward to getting out of Gulfport this morning.  The weather was cooperating as a lovely morning unfolded. Wally enjoying the beach life. A beautiful morning on the Gulf Coast. But there were still several miles of the unfriendly biking infrastructure to tolerate before things would improve. More nonsense on Hwy 90 west of Gulfport. And when you try to ride on the sidewalk you get something like this every couple of hundred yards. But when I got near Bay St. Louis, about 17 miles from Gulfport, those nice shoulders returned on Hwy 90. A view of St. Louis Bay  But, you can't have everything, or so I've been told.  Several miles after the road situation improved, the fickle weather decided to have some fun with me. The skies turned threatening again. Yikes. I donned my spiffy new rain jacket and boldly proclaimed, "Bring it, Mother Nature!  Let's see whatcha got!...

It was kind of a rough day today.  On the positive side, besides a few sprinkles, the rain didn't start until I was in my room again.  But on the negative side, Biloxi and Gulfport are two of the worst communities I've ever seen in terms of cycling and pedestrian infrastructure. A rumble strip right in the middle of the bike lane on Hwy 188 just out of Bayou La Batre.  It was an omen of things to come. As soon as Hwy 90 enters Mississippi it deteriorates badly.  Then when it nears Biloxi it improves dramatically, until it enters Biloxi, where the shoulders disappear completely. There were sidewalks I could ride on in Biloxi, but after awhile even those vanished.  The traffic was fairly heavy so I decided to implement my backup plan, which was to follow Google Maps bicycle directions to the motel.  That wasn't much better.  It put me on a maze of side streets, only one which had bike lanes.  A few of these streets were multi-lane t...

I must have needed some rest because I slept for 10 hours last night.  It was 8 am before I woke up, and the weather made up my mind on whether or not to ride.  There was a storm raging outside with heavy rain and frequent lightning strikes. I had some trouble with my front derailleur yesterday so took a look at that this morning.  It would not shift into the lowest gear, and it turned out that the combination of rain and road grime was causing it to bind.  I cleaned it up and sprayed some WD-40 on the pivot points, which seems to have loosened it up nicely. I also topped off my tire pressure, as I hadn't done that in a week.  I hate to even mention this for fear of jinxing it, but I've had no flat tires yet.  I did start the trip with a very slow leak in my rear tire, but replaced that tube while talking a day off in Tallahassee last week.  One reason for the good luck is the road has been very clean so far.  Glass and debris has been very ra...

I had a 20-ish mile ride this morning to catch the Mobile Bay Ferry at Fort Morgan, the furthest point west on Alabama's south coast peninsula.  The ferry would take me to Dauphin Island, which is connected to the mainland by a 3-mile bridge.  Going this way allows travelers to avoid driving through the busy town of Mobile. The first bridge I crossed was over Portage Creek in Gulf Shores, Al The road to the Mobile Bay Ferry Houses on stilts on the narrow peninsula that has the ferry at its west end. The ferry arrives. Wally on board. An oil rig in the Gulf. The ferry's bridge Passengers enjoy the ride as the skies once again turn ominous. Once I arrived on Dauphin Island a squall struck and I ended up sitting in a covered seating area waiting for mother nature to chill out.  That took about 20 minutes. When the ferry docked on Dauphin Island, mother nature let loose. Back on the road, I pedaled toward the m...