In my ignorance, when I saw today's finish town, I thought we were travelling to Poland. I didn't realize that this town (formerly called Red Bud Springs) was renamed for the Polish General who assisted the military efforts of the colonies during the Revolutionary war.
The town is also on the Natchez Trace Parkway. Oh and Oprah Winfrey was born here too.
OK, history and pop culture references over.
To say it rained today would be a slight understatement. If I had swum across the Tallahatchee river, I would probably have been drier than I was cycling. I could go on for hours about how wet it was but a few examples will probably suffice. At one point I was riding up a hill while a river of water was flowing towards me. I felt like a salmon swimming up stream to spawn. When Lori finished today, she cleaned the mud off of the bottom of her bike and cleared the drain hole in her frame. Water drained out of her frame for a couple of minutes.
The day started off not too bad. As the weather channel (my new favourite channel) predicted temperature in the mid 70's, I didn't take a raincoat with me. Big mistake. We rolled out of town on a quiet road. After about 10 miles, we had to get onto Hwy 49. This turned out to be a serious chicken run. The 'bike lane' was about 9 inches wide and to add insult to injury, there was a rumble strip right through it so we had to ride on the main part of the road. Looking up the road and you'd see the other cyclists disappear in the spray as a car or truck passed by. Fortunately we were only on this road for about 12 miles and then we got back to quieter, safer roads.
We also got to see the two sides of Mississippi today. Our lunch stop was in the town of Greenwood. You could easily tell which side of the tracks was the wrong side. Lunch was in amongst the mansions with the lovely manicured lawns. On the other side of town, we saw the wood shacks that a lot of the African American families have to live in. Definitely a land of the "haves" and "have nots".
I don't want to jinx myself but it seems like I was pretty lucky today. At dinner, everyone had their flat tire horror stories. Most people got one, my roommate Greg got 3 and poor Jonathon got 7. Yuck.
Most drivers have been pretty nice to us recently. This morning I was riding along on this quiet road while the rain was bouncing off of me and the road. A car drew up next to me and the passenger window rolled down. I was expecting to get some abuse but 2 young African American girls just wanted to know what I was doing, where I was going and why I was riding in the heavy rain.
We had a couple more injuries today. My roomie Greg can hardly walk. When his feet got wet they started to hurt him. It now looks like he's walking round barefoot on broken glass. Melissa crashed in the rain too. She landed badly on her hip and went to hospital. The x-rays proved inconclusive but she can't walk, has crutches and is on the Disabled List now. That's 3 hip injuries now. Hopefully we are done with them as it hurts to see good friends not be able to ride any more.
With all the rain today, it seemed like tonight was the night to bring out the Highland Park malt whisky. As each of the riders came in, I started handing out shots of Scotch. Mark, thank you for the bottle. Everyone in Pac Tour thanks you too.
Pictures are here
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