Long day. Tough day.
We departed Dalphin Island and returned to the mainland.
It wasn't long before we reached Mississippi. I spent about four weeks in Florida, and only one day in Alabama, funny.
We made great progress in the morning, and after 60 miles (and a quick flat tire stop) we stopped in the Isle of Capri Casino for a buffet lunch. Not great, but for $9 we were able to stuff ourselves silly.
Biloxi, Mississippi is a town still struggling to rebuild. There are blocks and blocks of gulf front which I can only imagine used to be vibrant, but is now nothing more than empty concrete slabs and piles which used to make up fishing docks. However, there are signs of life. New things are being built, including this Frank Gehry building.
The challenge with riding along the coast here was most certainly the road shoulder. It is non-existent. The road has two lanes going in each direction, no shoulder and lots of traffic. This results in a very slow, stressful riding environment. Each mile seems dreadfully long because it is a constant sensory overload. Checking for cars behind with both eyes and ears, watching for any bumps or holes in the road because swerving can quite possibly result in becoming a bumper scratch.
I needed to check in with work again to make sure the things from yesterday were understood correctly. No problems, we needed a break from the traffic and because the rack on Jake's bike broke. Mechanical challenge #2 for the day.
Luckily for Jake, he met a super cool Dutch guy who drove home, got some tools and helped Jake come up with a temporary fix. Yet again, this trip amazes me with the graciousness of complete strangers.
So, I got done with work stuff, Jake got his rack fixed, and we started riding again. It was about 20 miles to the campsite, and we were starting to run out of light.
And.... enter mechanical problem #3. We were riding along a very casual side street, off of the highway and we heard a 'ping'. Jake broke a spoke. Not really knowing how to fix this problem, Jake broke the spoke off, opened his brakes wide to fit his wobbly wheel, and off we went.
There was a campground directly on the route, but it was $25 to camp. That seemed outrageous, so we wanted to go somewhere else. We grabbed a quick, crummy dinner from Walgreens and headed 8 miles off route to a McLeod State Park. By this time, the sun was pretty much gone.
The 'highlight' of the day was seeing a high-speed chase going the other direction in our last few miles of riding. Zoom, zoom, zoom! A whole bunch of cop cars went driving past us. Further up the road, we saw a number of cop cars setting up spike strips, and one minute later, we saw a black pickup racing down the road with at least 10 cop cars in pursuit. Pretty sweet! On the run from Johnny Law, ain't no trip to Cleveland.
We set up camp and fell asleep quickly. It was our first 100+ mile day of the trip.
Day 31 - 104.64 Miles
Trip to Date - 1583.37 miles
Coast to Coast - 636.92 miles
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