Our plan was to ride to Dauphin Island today, 120 miles, but we knew we could call it quits at Bayou Le Batre (BI-YO-LE-BAT-RE) at 100 miles, and that's what we did, for a couple of reasons I will get to shortly.
We knew the wind would come up out of the east again, and since we had a big day planned, we hit the road as soon as it was light--6:30. The first 70 or so miles were in Mississippi and generally wooded. With our early start, deserted roads, and trees blocking the early morning breezes, we had a great morning. Once again, so many azaleas--we've seen hundreds of big, beautiful, bright pink and red bushes every day for around ten days now.
At around 75 miles we crossed into Alabama, and our luck ran out. Not with dogs, with roads. Busy roads. Poorly paved roads. Heavily traveled roads with no shoulder at all--or with the entire skinny shoulder turned into rumble strips. And by then the wind was up too so the last 30 miles were no fun.
The last, 20 miles to Dauphin Island looked to be just as busy--and windier since we would be completely out in the open, so we decided that if we hit the road early again tomorrow, both traffic and wind should be much lighter.
Can't quite see or smell the ocean yet, but the bayou here is home for lots of fishing trawlers. Our motel--the only one in town--is a little ways out, so we had a nearly two mile walk to Pizza Hut, the first place we came to and hardly a first choice. But along the way we saw several Vietnamese businesses, which reminded me that I read somewhere many Vietnamese refugees settled on the Gulf and that many are fishermen.
We are really looking forward to tomorrow, and one look at the map shows why. First we ride down the southwest edge, of Mobile Bay, then we ride across an enormous bridge to Dauphin Island, then we take a ferry ride across Mobile Bay, then we ride, along the Gulf coast, for miles and miles, and cross into Florida.
Food consumption today: bowl of grits, bowl of raisen bran, bowl of grape nuts, bowl of Kashi cereal, two pieces of toast, two glasses Orange juice, one muffin, a banana, yogurt, half a big bag of chex,mix, 6 inch Subway sub, big Snickers bar, 2 quarts of powerade, small bag of peanuts, 5 pieces of pizza and 5 cinnamon/pizza dough sticks.
Hope to improve the diet tomorrow...
Doug
So glad to finally catch up with you two! I'm jealous of all that you are experiencing (including the mass quantity of food consumption). Hope you are remembering to do your shell stretches and keep your Transversus Abdominus engaged.
ReplyDelete