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.