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.