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!

Leaving Florida

After a great week with my sister, Judi, and her wonderful family, I'm starting the ride tomorrow. We had all kinds of fun: baton recital, soccer, ROTC drill team, beach sand castles, dolphin spotting in the new family boat, crawfish and shrimp eating, ... whew! I'll leave Panama City in the morning and, hopefully, make Colorado May 10 for the train ride to Phoenix. It might be hard for me to update this blog on the ride, so look for Facebook status updates - or track my exact location on Google Latitude, OK?