I dunno, maybe I'm getting to old for this.  I'm fat, nearing 60 , and I smoke.  This trip was pretty much unlike touring I've done before.

The highlights:  flew from Chicago to Atlanta, followed route 29 out of town and all the way to Alabama.  Headed  west to Montgomery, on to Selma (following the trail of the civil rights march, as somebody in rec.bicycle.rides suggested) then south to Mobile, over to Biloxi (where my sister lives) and on to New Orleans to fly home.  Sounds like a good plan, doesn't it?

Except it didn't turn out that way.  First, I never realized Alabama is much, much hillier than I expected.  Seventy or eighty miles a day in flatland Illinois turned into forty miles a day in this state.  Someplace north of Mobile I blew out the side wall in a tire and gave up and had my sister drive around 150 miles to come pick me up.

In rearranging the bags at the start of the trip, I pinched the wire on the odometer, so I really don't even have much of an idea of how many miles I went either.  I changed the battery, which blew the calibration and had to go to a bike shop to get them to set the time for me as well!

On Saturday, 7 May, I left the Atlanta airport about 1 PM, after circumnavigating the airport once because I couldn't find my way out.  However, it was relatively easy, once I found the right road, Camp Creek Parkway, which had posted signs to Route 29, a fairly big highway but not an expressway.  I headed directly south, trying to get out of the urban area well before sundown.  I made it through a couple of smaller cities and stayed in a motel in Newman, GA the first night.  That's when I discovered the problem with the speedometer.

I left around 5 AM on Sunday, after a big breakfast at a Waffle House, one of my favorite watering holes in the southern regions.  I made it all the way to Valley, AL on Sunday, which I think was still in the Eastern time zone, but I'm not sure because I was staying on Central Time so I wouldn't get confused.  Which didn't work, I got confused anyway.  Another cheap motel and breakfast at a Waffle house and back on the road at daybreak.

I took a lot of film with me, but there really wasn't very much to take pictures of!  And not a lot to see or be of distraction either.  By this time I'd fixed the wire on the odometer, but had no idea of how to calibrate it.  I clocked it against a couple of mile-posts, and found it was within 15% or so, which isn't too accurate.  Besides, the clock was not something like six-and-one-half hours off, which was really confusing me.  I made it to the Tuskegee National Forest, arranged for a campsite.  It was free, but the campsite was overgrown and it was late, so I camped in the wildlife observation area, where you weren't supposed to. Took a sponge bath in the swamp water, and was in the tent before it got dark.

Before I left, a young friend of mine finished reading "To Kill a Mockingbird" as a school assignment, and he really enjoyed it and recommended it.  I took it along.  Great book, and I really enjoyed the fact that I was riding through many small town in Alabama, where the book took place.

The good news is there was no rain on the whole trip, but the bad news was the really intense heat, higher than normal for the middle of May.  And the direct sunshine didn't help either.  This first night in the forest was the only real cool night, which produced a lot of dew on the tent in the morning.  But this was the only night it reached the dew point.  The rest of the mornings were warn.

I tried calling my sister - on my cell phone.  Nuts.  It didn't work too well from that location.  I don't think this technology has arrived yet.  So I waited until the next day, and found a land line.

By the time I left camp on Tuesday morning, I had the speedometer working, sort of.  The clock was still off, but I knew how much off by the clock in the cell phone.  (At least the cell phone was good for something.)

Tuesday was maybe the most interesting day of the trip.  I went through Tuskegee pretty fast (by this time I'd figured out my timetable was way out of whack) and headed on over to Montgomery.  Route 80 follows I-85, so there wasn't a lot of traffic, but the road wasn't very bike-friendly either.  No shoulder, and the traffic whizzed by pretty fast.  I took a side road that took me through the south end of Montgomery and rejoined Route 80 later.  Route 110, something like that.  Lots of traffic on that road, kind of a upscale area with walled-in neighborhoods.  Shopping centers and malls all over the place.  I rejoined 80, again with lots of traffic and headed west out of town.  Finally, I was on my way to following the trail (backwards) of the 1965 civil
rights marchers.

Right at the Montgomery airport, on the west side of town, the shoulder stopped dead.  A four lane divided highway, and no shoulder.  The posted speed limit was 65, and from the way the cars were driving, maybe they thought this was the lower limit.
About a mile of that, and I thought I'd find another route as soon as I could.

Encouragement for this came from the Alabama State Police, in the form of a trooper who pulled me over and read me the riot act.  I will give him the benefit of doubt and hope that he was concerned for my safety, but he wasn't the most friendly, nor correctly informed.

He told me I was breaking the law.  This was a federal highway and the minimum speed was 45 MPH, and bicycles weren't allowed on the road.  Period.

I politely tried to point out that this wasn't correct.  This got me threatened with arrest which would allow a judge to decide.  I didn't think this course would do anything to speed up my trip, so I acquiesced to his order.  He said I could either ride in the weeds or walk the bike to the next county road.  And he stayed behind me for about a mile to ensure I did as was told.  He then stayed by the county road long enough to ensure I would stay on it and not return to the highway where I was sure to be arrested if I did.

Now I suppose in the spirit of the trail I was following perhaps I should have remained more firm in my conviction that I had a right, if I wanted to take the risk, to be on the public roadway.  I'm quite sure Rev.  King would be critical of my failure.  But it was hot, I was going to exit anyway, and I was behind schedule.  So I gave up easily.

I took this county road north where it met something called "Old Selma Road" which I had hopped might lead me to Selma, eventually.  On my map (I bought a DeLorme Atlas, and made copies of the areas I was passing through) there was a campground indicated, at the end of a dead end road.

So I found the dead end road, followed it, and came across a chain link fence, marked "No Trespassing - US Government Property."  How bad can things get?  Well, I followed the fence a short distance to the river, where there was an opening big enough to get a bike through.   Now I thought I was trespassing, clearly breaking the law!

So I wheeled through the fence, up a steep hill, down the other side and found a clear, grassy area.  Neatly trimmed. This I thought was odd.  There was a parking lot, but nobody around, and it looked like it was little used.  There was a glassed in bulletin board, but it was empty.  Another oddity: it was freshly painted.  There was a drinking fountain, but it was turned off.  I was stymied trying to figure out what this was.  But it was nearing dark, it was a reasonable place to camp - and my imagination started to work overtime.  Most likely this was a former camp or park, now closed.  (But why cut the grass and paint the bulletin board?)  Or else it was a military establishment of some sort.  What if they left dogs loose at night to patrol? (But then the fence wouldn't have such a large opening, right?)

I went a short distance down the paved road, and saw a building!  This scared me back to my little dead end area.  I crawled through the weeds down to the river and sponged off in the river.  I walked back through the weeks to the tent completely naked to dry off.  Rearranged this to protect against rain, to make it easy to pack up in the morning and get the hell out.  I was in the sleeping bag with my eyes closed before it got dark.

While almost asleep, I heard the most unexpected sound: a couples voice commenting on my bicycle campsite!  I quickly
struggled into my shorts, jumped out of the tent, and asked "Where am I?"

Such a question must have been just as shocking to them.  If they didn't think I was crazy, I'm not sure what they must
have thought at first.

They told me I was in one of the nicest campgrounds they'd stayed in, Gunter Hill, operated by the Army Core of Engineers.  The building I saw had running water, hot showers, no charge, a laundry, camping areas with picnic tables and everything you would want in a campground.  They suggested I might want to move up to this area.  The campground was woefully undressed, there were only about four camper-trailers in the whole place.

What a dope I felt like; I missed the front entrance to the place somehow.

By this time, it was too late to moved, but I did fall asleep feeling much less apprehensive.  I woke up early, made my way to the shower, did the laundry.  The only thing I missed was coffee, but what the heck.  I read my book at a picnic table while the laundry cooked.  There was nobody around.

As I left, the lady at the gate laughed at my story, invited me to come back again (come in the front door next time) and
gave me a couple of maps outlining the various areas all along the Alabama River.  As I exited the camp, I saw where
I had missed a sign and the opening.

Riding on Wednesday, I could laugh about the experience on Tuesday.  I was pretty sure the trip couldn't get more
interesting than that.

I was right.

With all due respect to the sovereign state of Alabama, I cannot in good conscience recommend it for bicycle touring. The roads are narrow, there are few shoulders, there isn't a lot of traffic but what there is moves at a pretty good clip.  But there is nothing to see or do.  The biggest agricultural product seems to be pine trees, and a lot of trucks hauling these pine trees to the papers mills.  The roads are narrow, there are no shoulders – and what shoulders there are have these “Keep Awake” grooves carved into them.  The bane of cyclists, are these intended to keep sleepy drivers from veering off the road?

Besides the logging trucks, there seem to be lots of drivers who are allergic to driving in the left lane of a fourteen divided highway.  The come up behind you, slow down, swerve over to the left lane to pass, then immediately return to the right lane again.  Not all, of course, but a very large percentage of the cars seemed to behave this way: the “I'm not gonna drive in the left lane” syndrome.

Many cars, or course behaved as expected.  They would change lanes far behind me, then eventually return to the right lane far ahead of me.  Indeed, they would sometimes stay on the wrong side on a two-lane road longer than necessary.  Many highways had twists and turns, and Alabama is VERY HILLY, much more so than I expected.  Instead of 80 mile days, I was doing between 40 and 50 miles a day, which is what really through my schedule off.

On the good side, I notices that most drivers waited at intersections for me to pass.  Either when they pulled up from a side road to the road I was on, or if coming from the opposite direction to make a left turn across the lane I was traveling.  They stopped, they waited.  This courtesy was almost universal.  Very rarely did a driver impatiently dart in front of me.

The inhabited areas of Alabama are sparser than you might imagine.  Perhaps as much as forty miles apart in some cases, you found only a combination gas station-grocery store.  Several times I stopped and got water at small churches that had outdoor faucets.  Not all of them did.

Other than the hills and winding roads, there were few features of any notice.

For example:  I took along six rolls of film, intending the mail the film to Photoworks for processing along the way.  I planned to take the first roll as quickly as possible and mail it Priority Mail so I could retrieve it over the internet before the trip was over.

Five days passed before I found 24 pictures to take and mail that first roll.  By the time I arrived in Biloxi, I still had the second roll in the camera!  There simply wasn't anything to take pictures of!

Sorry, Alabama, but Illinois and Wisconsin are more picturesque.

Thursday night I camped in the woods someplace.  At least I wasn't spending much money on camping, but I was taking
water bottle showers.

During the day on Friday, I hitched a ride for about 30 miles or so from a meter-reader in a pickup truck.  At last I was making some headway.

Then disaster struck.  After getting directions to avoid many of the hills, I had a blowout of a side wall in the tires, about four miles from the nearest dot on the map.  I walked the bike the four miles on the flat tire to Purdue Hill, Alabama (several houses and one combination grocery store - hardware store - gas station and post office.

I gave up.

Called my sister from a pay phone, she drove about 160 miles one way from Biloxi to come and pick me up.  I spent about four days with my sister and her husband and got the wheel fixed at The Wheel House local bike shop in Biloxi and its stayed fixed for the rest of the trip.

Then I left on a Wednesday, taking two days to get to New Orleans, a trip I’d done a couple of times before – and a very nice ride I would recommend.  Essentially, you follow Rt. 90 along the Gulf coast.  It's right around 100 miles, and I suppose you could do it in one day, but why rush?  Especially if you're from someplace like Illinois and you don't see that kind of  environment too often.

There are two potential places to stay if you break it up into a two day trip.  Fort Pike, about 30 miles east of New Orleans, has a picnic area, and I camped there.  It’s not a campground, just a picnic area, but it has a covering in case of rain.  You can clean up in the ocean, right there.  An alternate is Slidell, which has regular campgrounds and motels, but it’s about a six mile ride out of your way.

But roughly half-way between Biloxi and New Orleans is the Buccaneer State Park.  It isn't right on Rt. 90, but along Beach Road, which is a nice bypass around part of Rt. 90 and adds very little to the distance.  Excellent campground, hot showers and a camp store.

Approaching from the east (as I was on this trip) the road is just on your left (south) as you cross over the Bay St. Louis bridge.  From the west, you're looking for County Road 101 (Lakeshore Road), and the small city of Lakeshore which takes you down to this Beach Road, which runs right along the Gulf.  This is about 8-10 miles west of Bay St. Louis.

Rt. 90 itself isn’t bad, there is a shoulder and a few places where there’s something similar to a frontage road.  It’s a two lane highway at some places, a four lane highway in other places.

I stayed in New Orleans one full day, two nights.  It’s a nice place to just ‘hang out’ in.  As on previous trips, I stayed at the La Petit Motel, a short ride out from the central district (and much, much more reasonable).  As someone in rec.bicycle.rides suggested, I took River Road out to the airport, instead of the direct route, Rt. 61.  A little longer perhaps, but a much better ride.

When I got home, (from 91 degrees in New Orleans to 55 in Chicago!) I reconsidered my initial planning.  I did something I should have done prior to leaving.  I took a compass and plotted a circle with Biloxi (my sisters house) as the center, and Atlanta on the circumference.  Within a reasonable distance  of the circle, two alternate destinations were obvious: Tallahassee, Florida (an eastbound trip) and Houston, Texas (a westbound trip).  Either one would have been a better choice.  Both coastal trips probably no hills and probably more scenic and interesting.  Even Nashville was near the circle, and that’s the northern end of the Natzhez Trace.  So there were alternatives; I just chose the worst.

The Daily Log (sans mileage!)

Saturday, 6 May: Rode to O’Hare Airport and got on a 9:45 American Airlines flight to Atlanta.  First shock of the trip: $75 excess baggage charge, and $20 plus tax for the box!

Found my way out of the Atlanta Airport, headed down Rt 29. Stayed in Newman, GA the first night in a motel.

Sunday: up at 5 AM, and awaited sunrise in a Waffle House, eating breakfast.  During the trip, I stopped at Long Cane Park, to a little dip and a short nap on a picnic table.  The road had somewhat of a shoulder, but not much.  I made it to Valley, AL which I was surprised to find was still in the Eastern time zone.  I fixed the pinched cable on the odometer, but lost the calibration and didn't know how to set the time.

Monday:  Up at 4:30 AM and once again awaited sunrise in another Waffle House.  Stayed on Rt. 29 until I got to Tuskegee National Forest.  Or at least near Rt. 29.  Stopped at a the ranger station, signed in for free, and she sent me to one of the southernmost campsites.  Washed up in the swamp, stayed in the tent.  Primitive camping, no facilities.

Tuesday: Got about about 5:30 to a tent covered with dew.  This was the only cool morning of the trip, and it was wet.  In Tuskegee, I changed to Rt. 80, which I’d hoped to follow, or parallel all the way to Selma.  At Tuskegee, it wasn't bad; no shoulder, but not a lot of traffic either.  No breakfast (skipped McDonalds as too pedestrian!) but found a Petry’s near Interstate 85.  Pretty soon Rt. 80 became undesirable, so I went off onto Pike Road and got on Rt. 110, which really wasn’t much of an improvement.

Got through Montgomery, and this was the day I got escorted off of Rt. 80 by Officer Friendly.  Took CR17 to CR54 (called “Old Selma Road,” which looked promising) and found the fence opening into Gunter Hill Campground.

Although the odometer still wasn’t calibrated, I got the strong feeling I was falling behind schedule and might need to find a direct, as opposed to scenic, route.

Wednesday: got up around 5 AM, but hung around the campground that I nearly missed.  Took a long, hot shower, and did some laundry because it was available.  Read for a while, and finally left the campground around 8 AM.  No coffee, no breakfast, the day was hot and there was a headwind as well.  Got lost and found my way back to Rt. 80 on the way to Selma.  I was passed up by two state police cars, and neither showed any interest in my riding on Rt 80, although it was just as bad: no shoulder.

Found my way into Selma, stopped at the Visitor’s Center, found a motel nearby and ate at a local steak joint.  Had a flat (50 cents for the gas station air pump, and it wouldn’t deliver anything over 50 pounds) and then my hand pump broke.  Fortunately, a local Walmart had a spare tube and a pretty good hand pump as well.  Selma’s phone book listed the nearest bike shop in Montgomery.

A couple of hills on the way to Selma, and some of them were walk-up hills.  The odometer (which was within 15% of correct, which I figured was close enough) said I had ridden only 55 miles that day.

I tried to save a couple of days by finding alternative transportation to Mobile, but no luck.  The only Selma rent-a-car place didn’t rent cars one way, Amtrak has no service in Selma, and at 8 AM the next morning I did find Greyhound, but they wanted to bike in a box (which they didn’t supply) for a bus that left at 9:30.  Try finding a bike-box in Selma, Alabama on a Thursday morning at 8 AM.

Thursday: Headed south out of Selma following route 41.  Hot, featureless, and hilly.  Any dots on the map were usually one-store towns.  I rode only 50 miles this day, and camped in the woods with a water-bottle shower.

Friday: Disaster Day!  Although I’d mooched a rode for about 20 miles or so down Rt. 41, I had the blowout and the long walk into Perdue Hill, Alabama.  At least there was a nice grassy area next to the store, where I took a nap, drank soft drinks, and read my book until my sister arrived.

Frankly, I could have avoided this disaster.  I never bothered to check the spokes on my new rear wheel.  Almost every spoke was loose.  Had I tightened all the spokes, even without carefully truing the wheel, I would have gotten away with it.  I’m sure the wheel collapsed, and the brake pad rubbed enough along the sidewall to eventually cause the blowout.  The gash was about 3 inches long, and unrepairable, even with a makeshift boot.

The following Wednesday:  I left my sisters house around 6 AM (she actually lives in Ocean Spring) and rode through Biloxi, Gulfport, Long Beach, and Port Christian.  This is a long urban area along the gulf, but not bad riding.

Just over the Pass Christian bridge I detoured onto Beach Road, stopped at the Buccaneer State Park for a shower, and eventually returned to Rt. 90.  Flat, no hills, and I made it to the Fort Pike picnic area well before dark.  I had a Po’ Boy sandwich someplace along the road.  There isn’t anyplace to get supplies within 10 miles of the Fort Pike area, but I knew that before I started since I’d been this way before.

Thursday: an uneventful trip into New Orleans.  A couple of scenic spots along the way, but soon you’re into a more urban area, with manufacturing, shipping, and commerce.  I arrived at the motel early in the afternoon, took a short nap, and went out to explore the town.

A final shock to the trip: the temperature was in the 90's when I left New Orleans, and 55 when I arrived in Chicago.

(left) The Bike Under a Magnolia tree -- (right) The Bike under a Marmosa Tree

(left) The shrimp stockyards, near Fort Pike (right) Campground at dusk

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