Entry 10 - We Freaking Did It

We finished our ride today, and this will probably finish my week of entries.  There we are just below, at the Loveless Cafe right off of the northern terminus.

Today I've got a short writeup of the ride, a cool (I think, anyway) video I made along the way, and my best attempt to tie this week up in a neat little bow.

First, the writeup, which I will keep short because each day basically says "it was pretty and it was hard."  Today was pretty and it was hard.  We started at mile 391, just on the other side of a short construction detour.  We had heard from just about everyone we encountered this week that "it gets pretty hilly" as you approach Nashville, but I still wasn't quite ready for what we got.  We climbed over 2600 feet today, starting with a 7%+ grade climb that lasted nearly a mile.  It was a heck of a way to warm up.  And the hills kept up all day.  I've never worked so hard on a bike:

Shortly into our morning, we hit mile 400:

As we approached the end, Mike met up with a riding friend named Bill who lives here in Nashville.  Bill rode with us for the last 15 miles or so, and it was a real treat to add him to the group.  He was a solid dude, an excellent help on the hills, and a good companion as we rolled up and down in that last big push.

After 50 miles of riding we hit the famous double-arched bridge that marks the beginning of the end of the ride, and stopped for a picture (which Bill suggested and kindly took for us):

Just a few miles later, it was all over.  I will admit that I got a little emotional as we rolled to a stop and it hit me that we were finished.  We had Loveless for lunch, and their biscuits went down nice and easy:

So there was the ride.  Like I said, it was pretty and it was hard.

Next is the video.  Brigid and I started a project this year where we use an app called 1 Second Everyday (1SE).  You take a video each day and then trim it to one second.  By the end of the month (or season, or year, or whatever), you have a nice snapshot of who you were and what you did and where you've been.  It has been a fun exercise, and both Brigid and I have kept it up every day in 2016.  

1SE has a cool mode called "freestyle," where you can string together as many videos as you want from as many days as you want to make a little video diary.  So all along the way, I have been taking short little videos of our experience with my phone.  I asked Matt and Brandon to do the same (Mike has enough trouble with sending a text, so I exempted him from this art project), and when I was on van duty I edited them all together.  After finishing the ride, I added today's videos and uploaded the whole thing to YouTube.  Here is the video (click these words to see it, mom); it's rough and stream-of-consciousness and not at all a complete picture of the week, but it gets at the heart of what we did.  I like it a lot.  

And finally, here's my probably-a-bit-ham-handed attempt to tie all of this up in a pretty bow.  If it's of any value to your appreciation of it, it's all true.

Early in today's ride, after the miserable hill that we started with, we got a nice series of downhills (including one where I got up over 40 mph for the first time ever, which was freaking awesome).  At one point, I looked at the trees changing color, and the carved limestone that dotted the sides of the road, and I thought "man this is great."  And right at that moment, my English major nerdiness kicked in and I thought of a great quote by Kurt Vonnegut: "I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point: 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.'"  I really love that quote, and man there was never a better moment for it than today.  After that, as we rolled along toward the end of our ride, I made a point to think about - and especially to be grateful for - all the great stuff in my life that got me to that point in the road and that make life so beautiful. 


I am grateful for my bike, which (except for three dropped chains that were easily enough picked up) rolled up, and down, and along the Trace from mile 0 to mile 444.  I love that bike.


I am grateful for my health, and that foot and leg and hand and arm and knee and ankle and shoulder and butt aches are exceptional rather than chronic.  I know how lucky that is when I think about it, but I don't ever really think about it.  So today I did.


I am grateful for all of this week's sunshine, and the trees that provided us shade, and the breeze that made riding in 90 degree heat bearable.
I am grateful for the hospitality that we enjoyed all along the way, from the innkeeper in a dry county who most certainly did not leave an iced-down six-pack on the stairs for us to find, to restaurant servers who exclusively called us "y'all" and "hun," to Mr. Hendrix who told us stories of his great-great-grandmother's journeys, to all of the fellow travelers that we encountered on the way and connected with.


I am grateful for the carrying-all-of-their-gear-on-their-bikes recumbent cyclists from Spokane that we met, who taught me about "trail magic" when we shared a Coke and a Gatorade and some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches from our ample supply at the top of a hill.


I am grateful for music, which gets way down deep and feels so good.  When I was riding, I had an internal soundtrack that kept me pedaling.  On van duty, Spotify helped me settle my brain and not freak out too much about what was ahead of us.  (I made a sweet Muscle Shoals playlist that hit just the right notes.)

I am grateful for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and for fried green tomatoes, and for McDonald's cheeseburgers, and for hash brown casseroles, and for little packages of frosted donuts from the gas station, and for sushi, and for Portillo's, and for our CSA vegetable box, and for thai food, and for all of the other delicious ways that you can make food.  What a privilege to have access to so much variety and so much bounty.  

I am grateful for the pure dumb luck to have born in a town and a country and to a family where I am almost always safe, and where clean water and food and shelter and infrastructure is taken for granted.   As we covered the 1000 miles to Natchez, and the 444 back up to Nashville, I never doubted that I was okay.

I am grateful for my town, which is home to great families, and which is a terrific place to raise our kids, and which has a trail system that make me realize how much I like to ride bikes (maybe not on days 2-4 of a long trip, but still).

I am grateful for my hippie church, which is filled with wonderful goofballs and free spirits and deep thinkers who have become good friends.

I am grateful for my riding companions: we meshed so well, and supported each other through the ride, and contributed our strengths to the group, and were willing to overlook or compensate for our weaknesses (e.g. my inability to climb a hill and Mike's inability to ever connect to Wi-Fi).  And I am grateful for their families, who were willing to disrupt their own schedules so that our group could do this nonsense for a week.

I am grateful for the Steering Committee that meets each month, with whom I mostly make stupid jokes but who I also know are there for me if I need them.  (They will give me crap for this post, I am sure.)

I am grateful for my parents, have shown me unconditional love for my whole life and made so many sacrifices for my sister and me along the way.  I am so much better for it.  

I am grateful for all of the foster kids (especially sweet Rita) that we've had, for a weekend or for several months, who have let us love them and who have (sometimes in their own way) shown us love in return.

I am grateful for my house, which keeps me warm in the winter and cool in the summer and dry in the rain.  And I am grateful for the things in it that make life comfortable and colorful.

And I am supremely grateful for my family, who I sincerely missed just from just about the moment I left them.  I looked so forward each night to calling them and telling them about our day and hearing about theirs.  I can't wait to see them tomorrow.  It's maybe an obvious thing that people love their family, but it's good to remember how special they are and how happy they make me feel.  I just love them so much.  What a gift that is.

That list is long but it is still way incomplete.  I realize just looking around the room that I am grateful for ibuprofen, and for modern day cooler technology, and for the miracle of having the whole of human knowledge - instantly accessible at all times - in your pocket, and for cheap beer, and for expensive beer, and for butt cream, and for playoff baseball.  It just takes a little bit of effort to notice, and you notice and notice and notice.  

Each night this week, our resident political junkie Mike tuned in to cable news and followed the ridiculousness of this election season, and the present debates about policing, and the incessant commentary and hot air about the national anthem protests.  And along the way, we went through small towns that seem to have been left behind, with busted down or non-existent Main Streets, and Wal-Mart parking lots full of giant trucks flying confederate flags, and what seems to still be a clear segregation between black and white residents.  It's easy to focus on that stuff, and think about all of the ways in which things are screwed up or need to change, and to worry about how we can ever get there. 

But at least for today, focusing on the beauty around me, and realizing all of the good fortune and support that helped me experience it, was the perfect gift.  I'm grateful that the Trace gave it to me.  (And it only took 444 freaking hard miles.)

Entry 9 - Goodbye Mississippi, Hello Tennessee; the End is in Sight

Today we rode 83 hilly miles across three states, and had one of our best days of the trip.  (We were supposed to go only 52 miles today and 90 for our final day, but that seemed like a tall order in the Tennessee hills.  So we added mileage today so we can subtract it tomorrow.)

We were on the road before 8:00 this morning, riding northeast into the rising sun.  It was quiet and cool, and less than 10 miles in to the ride we were out of Mississippi and into Alabama.  I welcomed us into the state with a loud, half-remembered version of "Sweet Home Alabama," urging Mike and Brandon to join in the chorus.  (They reluctantly did so.)

(In the meantime, Matt was on wagon duty and was still back at the starting line; with all of the rummaging through the van and packing and unpacking, our battery had died.  He had to call for a jump and caught up with us well into the morning.  Oops.)

Alabama was pretty, and hilly, and kept us busy changing gears as the hills rolled along.  30 miles into the ride, we hit mile 333, which in keeping with tradition required a selfie stop:

Five miles up the road near Florence, Alabama, we stopped at the Wichahpi Commemorative Wall. The wall was hand-built by Tom Hendrix as a tribute to his great-great-grandmother Te-lah-ney, a Native American in the Yuchi tribe who was forced from her land at 17 years old and marched down the Trail of Tears to Oklahoma.  She journeyed back home over five years.  Hendrix grew up hearing stories of Te-lah-ney from his grandmother, and was compelled to honor her and other Native American women.  His creation is the largest unmortared wall in the United States, and contains (by his estimation) over 8,000,000 pounds of stone.

When we arrived, Mr. Hendrix was sitting in his driveway welcoming visitors, and before giving us the chance to walk the wall he told us the story of his great-great-grandmother and of his monument.  He is 82 years old, and has been doing this for nearly 30 years, but his enthusiasm and his pride and his penchant for storytelling came through loud and clear.  (True Music Fact Thursday: I learned from Mr. Hendrix that the Grammy-winning Roseanne Cash song "A Feather's Not A Bird" was inspired by the wall; Cash sings "I'm going down to Florence, now I got my pretty dress, I'm gonna let the magic wall put the voices in my head."  Googling teaches that Mrs. Cash has been to the wall at least twice over the years.)  The shot below doesn't do the wall justice, but you get a sense of it.  You can walk the trail for at least half of a mile.  I'm not one who is much into mystic stuff, but there was something special about it.  And the masonry - just thousands and thousands and thousands of stones, hand fit together without mortar - is really amazing.

Here's one more shot that does not do it justice; it's a collection of "faces" that are meant to evoke Mr. Hendrix's great-great-grandmother and other Native American ancestors.  It was really cool in real life.

We anticipated a short stop at the wall, but ended up spending the better part of the hour there.  But I am glad that we did.  Getting back on the bike, within just a few miles we are out of Alabama and into Tennessee.  It felt weird that after 4 complete days and over 300 miles in Mississippi, in just one morning we rode in three different states.

My day was over after the morning ride, and I spent the afternoon riding to rest stops and then watching the other three guys whiz by without stopping.  They went pretty much all 42 of the afternoon in one long ride, and rolled in near mile 386 early in the afternoon.

On the way to our place for the night, Mike remarked that it was not until that moment that he realized just how close we were to the end of our trip.  I had come to the same realization just a couple of hours before as I waited for these guys to show up.  We still need to ride 50+ miles, and they will be the hilliest of the trip (we'll have 3600 feet of elevation gain), but by tomorrow night at this time it will all be done.  Probably by 3 or 4 o'clock tomorrow, it will all be done.

For as hard as it has been, and as frustrated and broken down as I felt after three riding days, I am already feeling sad that it is over.  Barring anything catastrophic tomorrrow, this will have been a remarkable week.  We had sunny weather every day, we were treated to warm hospitality pretty much everywhere we went, we met and bonded with a whole bunch of fellow cyclists and travelers along the way, our group meshed beautifully and laughed together every day, and (hopefully) I will have proved to myself that I could do this.  I almost never would have believed it, and it took a heck of a lot of preparation, but I am one short riding day from the goal.  See you tomorrow.

Entry 8 - The Cycling Gods Smile On Us

Good evening from Belmont, Mississippi, where we have arrived after 71 miles of riding.  I was on the bike for all 71, and after last night's Debbie Downer-ish entry I was hoping for a good day.  We got one.  The first 35 miles, especially, were a little gift from the Cycling Gods.  There were gradual, easy climbs that turned into great downhill rides.  Several times before lunch, we were whizzing down a hill at 30+ mph, shaded by trees, alone on the road.  That's what I imagined so many times when I was anticipating the trip.

After lunch, we faced some tough hills - the last one was at 9% grade, which had me hoping in vain for lower gears - but they were nicely in context after the joy of the morning.  Just before the day ended, we hit mile 300.  That was worth a short photo op, which we kept truly short because the afternoon temperature was approaching 90 degrees and we were ready to be done:

Three miles after that landmark, we were off the bikes for the day.  I made it to the End-of-the-Day First Bump and my body feels better than it did earlier this week.  That's the best I could hope for.

At the hotel tonight, all of the other guests are fellow cyclists.  There is a couple from California who are doing the whole Trace on a tandem bike (they are headed south so we won't see them after tonight) and a foursome from Chicago who we have briefly encountered several times throughout the week.  We all sat on the front porch of the hotel before dinner, drinking beers and swapping stories.  That has been a fun feature of the trip: the camaraderie and common experience among cyclists who are on this goofy adventure.

We have 80+ miles tomorrow morning (I have only the first half, which is fine with me), and so we are hoping to be on the road by 8.  So that's enough for tonight's entry.  See you tomorrow.

Entry 7 - Whoa-oh, We're Halfway There

Hello from Houston, Mississippi.  Today, we passed the halfway mark in our 444 mile death march...uh...I mean bicycle trip.  Here's the obligatory selfie at mile marker 222, complete with my tiny-brimmed bike cap:

Though I only had a half day today (the afternoon was support van duty), I spent last night worrying that I wouldn't have enough gas to get through my 35 miles.  But after a good night's sleep and another Southern Breakfast I felt ready to go.  And I did it.  We made only one tourist stop this morning: French Camp, an old trading post from the early 1800s.  There is a nice little cafe there (that we didn't eat at) and a cute little gift shop (that was filled with stuff that your 80-year-old Great Aunt would love, so we didn't buy anything at).  But it was nice to see some cool old buildings, and it allowed for this artsy shot of bicycles on an old fence:

After French Camp, my day was over just a ways down the road at mile 195.  But it didn't come easily.  One thing I should note, because it has been on my brain most of the week, is that when you are riding the Trace you become acutely aware of each mile marker.  Like, you are almost obsessed with it.  That's for two reasons.  First, we have been taking turns riding in the front of the group, with mile markers noting the order change.  So when you are up front, you are looking as far down the road as you can for that little brown marker because it means you get to hang out in back for some recovery time once you get there.  Sometimes, you see it, and it turns out to be a stick or something.  Not cool, stick.  Second, this road is 444 freaking miles, and most of the scenery - while pretty and bucolic and peaceful and all that stuff - is pretty repetitive.  There are fields, and trees, and fields and trees, and trees and fields.  And that reservoir from yesterday for like 10 miles.  When you get on the bike each morning, whether you have the whole day or just a half, you know your distance.  So to mark your progress, and to know what you've got left, you count those markers.  And each one is a welcome sight.

All of that was a long introduction to the "didn't come easily" part.  We were clicking along pretty nicely through the first 25 miles, and then we hit a pretty steep (but short) hill.  We got up it, and the ride down it was fun, and by mile 30 I was feeling pretty comfortable and thinking about my peanut butter and jelly sandwich.  But then, seemingly from nowhere, we got hit with what has been our steepest hill yet.  It was short again, but I was down to 7 mph and I was huffing and puffing and cursing myself for ever thinking about doing this ride.  It was the only time today that our rider group got separated; I couldn't keep up with Mike and Brandon and lagged a couple hundred feet back.  My Garmin data shows the hill pretty dramatically:

On a good stretch of road, and especially in the morning, the mile markers go by on a regular schedule.  You can feel the day progressing along and you imagine yourself finishing the ride.  But when you get to one of those butt-kicking hills, it's almost like in a movie or something: you imagine the mile marker slipping farther away from you.  It seems like you just aren't. going. to. ever. get. there.  And you start to feel your crampy legs, and your numb hands, and your squeezed in feet, and your strained back, and you think "I gotta stop.  This is over."

But of course you can't stop, and you don't stop.  You keep the pedals spinning, and you know that your buddies up ahead are there to help if you need it, and eventually you get to the top.  Then you get to ride down the other side.  We did that, and we went 38 mph, and it was great.  And then pretty much immediately it was time for lunch and I drank a cold Coca-Cola and ate some Fig Newtons and got the keys to the air conditioned van and felt better.  Here are Mike and Brandon in the shade they could find:

(We haven't been reading the signs closely but I'm pretty sure "Jeff Busby" was a Native American term for bison.  They have like 200 different words for bison.)

My afternoon of driving was uneventful.  It allowed me to be a cameraperson, and like the GIF of the group coming to mile 61, I got a nice one of them going from mile 222:

And I got a nice shot of what has become the traditional End-of-Day Fist Bumps when the ride is through:

Tomorrow we've got 70 miles to Belmont, Mississippi.  We'll go through Tupelo on the way.  It's my day for all 70.  I will do it.  I will get to the End-of-Day Fist Bumps.

We have seen a whole bunch of cyclists out here, and at least three other groups who are riding the whole length of the Trace.  And the guestbooks in these B&Bs are filled with dozens of groups that have been here before us.  It's a thing that people do.  As I count each marker along the way, I am thinking about why.**  In the meantime, it's time for some Aleve and bed.

**Note that this seems like foreshadowing and that I am gonna get deep and philosophical on you at the end.  But honestly, I don't know.  We are having fun, and I am grateful for the time with this riding group, but every day is hard as hell.  It's constantly hot, and the road is tedious, and the cycling is exhausting, and at the end of each day we all smell terrible and then have to lug our stuff into the next hotel.  There are easier ways to have fun with your friends, right?  Are we just proving that we can do it?  Is that the point?  Do people (not me, I have learned) really love riding bikes so much that they want to do it for 325 miles in a week?  I am hoping we'll see.

Entry 6 - Everything Hurts

Our second riding day is in the books, and after 89 miles of riding we have arrived safely in Kosciusko, Mississippi.  Today will be our longest of the trip; I had the luck (I'm still not sure whether good or bad) to have all day on the bike.

Breakfast this morning was terrific; it was a true Southern Breakfast that featured fruit and cinnamon rolls and biscuits and sausage and an egg pie thingee.  We ate with two other riders who were staying at the house; as it turns out one of the fellows is from Elmhurst (just a few miles down the road from Brandon, Mike, and me.)  Chances are, we have ridden by him on the Prairie Path as each of us trained for this ride.  That was fun to discover.

We hit the road shortly after breakfast and the first 30 miles or so felt good.  25 miles in, we hit mile 100, which was a selfie-worthy moment:

Everything we read said that traffic would pick up in Jackson, and it did.  But we were happy to be in a good-sized city because last night we discovered a bent chain on Matt's bike and we needed to get some mechanical help.  Google suggested The Bike Crossing in Ridgeland; they were 3 blocks off the Trace and were the absolute best.  They took the bike straightaway, replaced the chain and made some derailleur adjustments, and had it ready to go in about 15 minutes.  Matt got some much needed peace of mind and a better bike to ride, and it the price was totally fair.  They are an excellent shop and we were grateful for the help.

Just outside of Jackson, you ride parallel with a giant reservoir for about 5-10 miles.  It is pretty.  Here's Matt looking good with his bike in front of it:

Side note: on the way down here, I cooked up a plan with Mike and Brandon (who ride bikes a lot) that we would pepper Matt (who does not) with a whole bunch of fake "bike lingo."  The challenge would be that whichever of us gave the fake term, another of us would have to explain it to Matt.  The plan worked beautifully yesterday; Brandon remarked on the "hors d'oeuvres" early in the ride, I lamented that we hit a pretty bad "raccoon tail," and Mike had constant complaints of "ocelots."  Matt dutifully asked what each of them meant, and we had an answer each time.  Today, after celebrating a "hot dog cart" that was coming up and complaining about a "mouse trap," we let Matt know that it was all made up.  "All of it?" he said.  Apparently we had him going.  That's a testament, I suppose, to Matt's trusting nature, to our ability to make up stupid things, and to the inherent ridiculousness of bike slang.

Lunch came at Mile 45 and Matt and I (today's two all-day riders) were feeling it by then.  They don't tell you this, but Southern Mississippi is really hot and humid.  Temperatures ranged from 70 to 90 degrees, but the sun was a constant.  It took its toll, but we were determined to make all 89, and we did.  As we took turns pulling (rotations of two miles each all day), I remarked that the last 40 miles felt like it was a constant uphill ride.  That is impossible, of course, but then I looked at the elevation map of the ride and holy crap the last forty miles was a constant uphill ride:  

The incline was sufficiently gradual that we could maintain a decent pace - we were at just over 16 for the full 89 mile ride - but it was demoralizing to fight the whole time and never get to do the coast down the other side.  (Maybe that will come tomorrow?)

When we got to the hotel, I felt totally wrecked.  My feet hurt.  My legs hurt.  My butt hurts.  My arms hurt.  My hands hurt.  And most of all my back hurts.  It is KILLING me.  I am walking like a cowboy from an old western movie.  Because I am an idiot and failed to bring along medicine, before we went to dinner tonight the Kosciusko Mississippi Wal-Mart supplied the appetizers:

Dinner was at the El Rodeo Family Mexican Restaurant, which has the dubious honor of being TripAdvisor's top pick for restaurants in the Greater Kosciusko area.  Maybe anything would have been good, but we all cleaned our plates and everyone enjoyed it.  We arrived during happy hour, which we good advantage of with comically-sized margaritas:

Two riding days in, we are more than 1/3 of the way there and have our longest day behind us. It has been a lot of fun, and our group of riders (which except for me is just this week getting to know one another) is about as well-matched as we could have hoped for.   But struggling during the last twenty or so miles this afternoon, and then feeling each part of my body tonight, I am still trying to figure out whether a day like today was the reason for doing a ride like this or whether it proves that this was the dumbest idea that I have ever had.  The next few days will hopefully make that more clear.

Entry 5 - The Ride Begins

Hello from Raymond, Mississippi, at mile 76 of the Trace.  Today was the first day of the ride, and that's just what we did.

After a breakfast where we once again justified gluttony as critical fuel, we got to Mile 0 of the Trace at around 8:30.  In a funny bit of karmic playfulness, it rained from a bright sunny sky for precisely 30 seconds as we pulled in to the parking lot.  If you believe in this sort of thing, it was a nod to our trip down here and a promise that today would be better.

Our bikes had ridden 1000+ miles on the back of the van from Chicago, so getting them unlocked and de-rackified and pumped up and ready to ride took longer than we wanted.  We actually started moving just after 9.  But first things were first: we got a selfie with the entrance sign:

Here was our route, from Natchez to Raymond:

Once we got going, it was pretty great.  It was a little bit hot but otherwise perfect for the ride: sunny and between 70 and 85 degrees most of the day.  And the road itself is just beautiful; it's solid and smooth and mostly quiet.  We averaged maybe 10 cars an hour, which we hope/expect will be among the busier of days.  

At around mile 10, we made the first of only two tourist stops for the day: Emerald Mound, which is the "second largest ceremonial mound in the United States."  As second-place ceremonial mounds go, it seemed pretty okay.  The first level of the mound was a big giant field of grass, and then there was a little mound-on-a-mound where the real excitement happened.  We climbed to the top:

I had hoped that maybe I'd have some epiphany up there or something, but the main thing I thought about was how the Native Americans kept the grass mowed.  They didn't have machines or anything, and goats or sheep or whatever seem like they couldn't reliably cover that ground.  So what did they do?  Just walk through super thick grass all the time?  That seems impractical.

Back on our bikes after the mound, we rode pretty much straight to our second tourist stop and our lunch spot: the Sunken Trace at mile 41.  We drew lots yesterday to figure out who would drive the van and when, and my first shift was the second half of today.  The morning riding group was Brandon and Mike and me, and we were feeling pretty good taking turns in front each mile.  I think we were sort of trying to impress each other, or at least not be the one to cry uncle, so we were moving pretty well the whole 30 miles.  We averaged around 18 mph for that stretch, which was up and down little hills.  At our fastest, we were just over 30.  I should have cried uncle; we will pay for that later in the week.      

The Sunken Trace is a short span of the Old Trace that is in a little trench, where you can look and see how people used to travel it in the olden days.  It was beaten down, and narrow, and crowded with vegetation, and did not offer any protection from bad guys or wild animals looking for trouble.  One could imagine that the journey was not fun at all, and that people from the suburbs of Chicago did not really come down just to experience the trip.  

You don't get a picture of the Sunken Trace, but here was my lunch, which tasted pretty great after 41 miles of hard riding:

I paired the sandwich with a Doc360, a sort of Dr. Pepper/cola hybrid made by Pepsi that is for some reason ubiquitous in Natchez and that I got from a vending machine at the hotel.  I am a total sucker for stuff like weird pop varieties, so if nothing else this trip is a success for those 20 ounces of discovery.  

At lunch, my watch told me that my half-day ride was good enough for a new personal record for calories burned.  I suspect that our 82 mile ride tomorrow (where I will not get the afternoon off) will beat it.

After lunch, with my riding duties done for the day, I spent the rest of my time trying to document our progress.  That resulted in this stylish GIF at mile marker 61:

As an aside, I pronounce "GIF" with a G like graphics or green or Gabby Douglas, but my friends pronounce it with a G like giraffe or gymnast (but not Gabby Douglas gymnast).  I feel like when our kids are our age, the debate will be well-settled and half of us will feel like idiots for getting it wrong.  

At that same mile 61, I found this map that showed our progress and I felt pretty good:

But then I considered the rest of the map and the wind came right out of the old sails:

Shortly after that map, I made my way to our home for the night: Mamie's Cottage:

The cottage is a spacious, comfortable house on the grounds of the Dupree House, a mansion that was built on a plantation of 1100 acres in 1877.  Brenda and Charles Davis are the proprietors, and they are the two nicest people on Earth.  They have been terrific through the whole reservation and planning process.  Here's a good example: we arrived here on a Sunday, and in this part of the world lots of places are closed on Sundays (and especially for dinner).  Last week, Brenda pointed that out, and I discovered that the Pig & Pint - a barbecue joint in Jackson that I had been daydreaming about literally for months - was one of those places.  Sensing my disappointment, and although we had a vehicle and lots of alternative choices, Brenda offered that she could (a) order meals for us on Saturday, (b) drive 30 minutes to and from Jackson to get them, (c) keep them in their fridge until we arrived, and then (d) heat it up and serve it to us for dinner.  To take her up on that kind of generosity would have been crazy, of course, but she actually meant it.  That is the kind of hospitality we have enjoyed so far.  

I started planning this ride in November of last year, and with my present circumstances (i.e. being unemployed at the moment), I have thought about it a lot.  Maybe too much, even.  So today was a big day for sure.  And I am really happy that, as I am ready to go to bed, I can report that it went just like I imagined it would.  Here's hoping the rest of the week does too.   

BONUS CONTENT:  Here's a super-artsy photo that I took of our bikes' shadows as we rode.

Entry 4 - Natchez, Finally

Tonight's entry comes to you from Natchez, Mississippi, where the bicycle part of our trip will begin in earnest tomorrow morning.  Today was dedicated to getting to Natchez, with a short bit of tourism in Memphis.

Topics covered during today's drive included "that's a big plane up there; what kind of plane is that" (it was a 777, we think), the bet-hedging politicians in Missouri who are careful to sometimes call it Miss-ou-ree and sometimes Miss-ou-rah, whether the rapper Young MC was an ivy-leaguer (no, but he graduated from USC), the kinda-mean-and-kinda-sad-but-also-kinda-funny expression "Thank God for Mississippi," and the source of the popular misconception that the food additive MSG is bad for you (a letter to a medical journal in 1968.)

The Natchez Trace Parkway runs in a straight line between Nashville and Natchez, but it is pretty well superfluous as a point-A-to-point-B transportation option.  The route we took instead was 65 miles longer between the two cities, but it saved us two hours.   That's the beauty of it: you have to really want to waste your time if you choose the Trace.  So from what we have read it is used mostly by pokey nature lovers and hippies in Subarus and Priuses (Priis?).  Those groups tend to be pretty bike-friendly.  

Our trip today took us through Memphis, so we took the opportunity to stop at the Lorraine Motel, where Dr. King was murdered in 1968:

The Motel is now the site of the National Civil Rights museum, but they have maintained the facade as it was back then.  It is a really moving place to visit.

After our visit to the Motel, we stopped for lunch at Rendezvous, a "dry rub" barbecue spot in Memphis that has been around since the late 1940s.  We had beer (not for the driver, of course), and sausage, and ribs, and cole slaw, and beans, and rolls.  We really had no choice: we need fuel for the coming days.

After a quick stop across the street to see the ducks at the Peabody Hotel, we headed south into Mississippi.  Making good time as we approached Natchez, we decided to take a short detour to Windsor Ruins, a used-to-be antebellum mansion.  The dude that built it (unsurprisingly) made his fortune as the owner of a cotton plantation, and spent the equivalent of $4 million building it in 1861.  It was three stories tall, with indoor bathrooms that flushed using rainwater that they collected in giant tanks in the attic.  Pretty cool stuff.

The mansion was captured during the Battle of Vicksburg, and had the good fortune of surviving the war fully intact because it was used by the Union as a hospital and lookout point.  It was not until 25 years later that the mansion met its fate.  To paraphrase T.S. Eliot, the end came not with a bang but a whimper: during a party, a guest dropped a still-lit cigarette onto some construction materials and the resulting fire burned the whole place to the ground.  Oops.  The only things left are the giant brick-and-concrete columns that draw the outline of the place; as you look at them you can sort of rebuild the giant mansion in your head and imagine what it must have been like when a house filled the space between.  It was a neat place to visit.

We made it to Natchez by early evening, and headed into town for dinner at King's Tavern.  The restaurant is in the oldest structure in Natchez, and was built with wood from flatboats that came down the Mississippi River in the mid-1700s.   It was impractical for the boatmen to bring them back upriver, so they would chop them up and sell off the wood for construction in town.  The food was excellent and the place was very relaxed.  It was just what we needed to work out the details of the next six riding days.

On the way home from dinner, we hit 1000 driving miles since we began.

Tomorrow, we'll begin the 444 riding miles, which is why we are here to begin with.  We hope to be on the Trace by 8:00 or so, after a good southern breakfast and a healthy dose of coffee.  See you tomorrow night.