Florida into Mississippi

FLASK Daily Trip Notes:
April 18
69 miles to Fort Walton. Flat, flat, flat. Awoke with dry sinuses & aches. Sad goodbye with Judi & Michelle. I met very enthusiastic Will & his gal, Soul, at Win Dixie - super nice. Got water socks & pots at Bass Pro Shop (boo! - though some of the staff wanted the blog address!), then got cold medicine & Tasty Bites at Publix. Sore ass but wrist & legs are OK . Nice view with herons playing & feeding at Liza city park - nice folks out running, walking, & one mom holding up an unstable kid on a bike. Beautiful , fat, yellow moon on the horizon above the simmering water at 830. Missing Rae & wondering why I don't pay for camping - free is nice but the worry about getting rolled or rousted is not conducive to sleeping. Plus there's not much to do til bedtime when you're trying to keep a low profile. Dalton (homeless) showed up in a wheelchair around midnight - talking, snuffling, coughing, & peeing - & I gave him $4 in the morning.
April 19:
83 miles to Loxley, AL. Warm, humid, & mostly cloudy. Very tired at mid-day again, despite good tailwind most of the day. My ass is sore, wrists are fine, legs are tired (I took a video - that I don't yet know how to post from my smartphone - of end-of-day calf spasms), & heart is heavy as I'm really missing Rae. AL is hillier than FL but pretty in the rural areas, & the people are friendly. Too many gnats at the Loxley Municipal Park but it's very nice. Typical 2nd day blues so now very glad I didn't push the extra 14 miles to ($30 camping!) Meaher State Park. I'm starting a state roadkill list since AL has armidillos & turtles, & FL didn't. Saw a Rastafarian Texan touring back from Crestview,FL, on a crappy bike loaded with garbage sacks of stuff mostly on his handlebars. He was walking when I first saw him but he made it to the gas station I was resting at just before the wreck.
April 20:
83 miles to Benndale. I was rousted by Loxley police at 11:30 last night so moved behind a nearby Antique store in a grassy clearing. i got a little off track on Hwy 98 Truck Route & went through Prichard - very run down but everyone was friendly. Tight shoulder with a curb was annoying for quite awhile. Some toothless hicks in Lucedale grocery parking lot had great beta on Fairley Bridge Rec Area & Pascuagula the river but river road was muddy & FBRA was too far, so got stuck in Benndale. I found a nice park, though the mosquitos were horrid so I put up the tent. I idled on a bridge above a very scenic bayou & saw a snake swimming & a snapping turtle feeding! Palms are sore - need to rotate bars down to see if that helps. Ass is better & wrist is fine (I had the brace off all day, too!). Better attitude, though quite tired (palms, mostly) in late afternoon. Fig Newtons make me fart like mad.
April 20:
79 miles to Columbia,MS. 8-6.
What a day! I made it to Wiggins by 10 for a fast food breakfast with free wifi but the food & coffee were not so good. Sccenic ride on some very backcountry highways (49 & 13). Just before Lumberton Scott was waiting by the side of the road (I need to remember to take pictures of folks I meet!) to see where I was heading & tell me he'd backed over his mountain bike recently. He offered me a place to stay, too - nice. Then at the Lumberton grocery store a whole passel of folks came out as I was loading the panniers because the clerk got on the store intercom to tell everyone in there what I was doing. One girl asked if I was nervous sleeping out at night & suggested I should be! It was sprinkling & thundering as I pulled into Barkerville (?) & I sat under the local store awning with a bunch of friendly hicks killing an hour while it rained. When I got into Columbia a fellow directed me to a city park off the highways & I decided to roll into the nearby fire station to see if I could finagle permission to sleep in the park to avoid the late night rousting scenario. Wow! Great choice! Cpt. Jeff, Jonathon, & Neil of Columbia Fire Station #2 Shift C were awesome! Cpt. called the night shift police captain then they offered me a shower, which I gladly took. Still waiting for the police captain to come by, we chatted for two hours, they got on the blog, we friended each other on Facebook, & they fed me fish, french fries, fried pickles, & sweet tea! Cpt. Pearly showed up & was skeptical about letting me stay in the park until Shift C told her I was legit - "See, look here, he's got a blog about it & come look at his bike!" Whew - approved! As I'm packing up to go Neil insisted I take a fireman shirt & $20. Mike, a B Shift fireman who'd just rolled in on his motorbike then gave me his fire station cap & another $20 "representin' Shift B for 'Bad.'" Wow! Did I say these guys were awesome! So the Columbia MS Station #2 Fire Dept is now an official sponsor of Team F-Bomb & $10 will go to St. Jude's Hospital. For good measure & to check up on me, Neil & Jonathon came by the park before they closed the station gates & to swap some more stories. Awesome ... I love Mississippi!