Day 11: Into the Wilderness

So, for the past two days we've been biking on big, (mostly) four-lane highways. I hate it. It's really hot and having semi's zoom past me at 70 mph isn't much fun. (Although, when they do zoom past me sometimes they make this gust of air that pushes me along, and that's kinda nice.)



See, it's big and I'm dubious. However, today we're supposed to be moving back to the smaller roads I love. We're also heading out of civilization and into the boonies. I mean the mega-boonies. There are no motels or campsites for the next 60 miles. Yup, we're gonna be on the side of the road tonight. But, that's okay. Maybe we'll luck out and find some amazing spot.

The night before last we were staying in a motel in Kirbyville, TX. The family running the motel had this big garden in the narrow space behind the motel. It was so neat. They had tomatoes, okra, chili's, eggplants, and more. It made me so happy to see.



There's one of the baby eggplants they were growing. So far, the people in Texas have been really nice to us. The lady running the RV Park we were staying at last night gave us brochures for Austin and even made a few calls for us this morning, trying to find a campground for us to stay in. Yea for nice people!



This is our alcohol stove. I had never used an alcohol stove before this trip, but I am completely converted. This stove is amazing. As you can see from the picture, it's already boiling. It's so fast! Maybe it's just because it's already so hot out, but this stove boils in no time.

David is the official cook of this trip. I'm the navigator. So, if we end up lost in Oklahoma or something, that's my bad.

we made it to Texas

Today we officially made it into Texas. I took a picture of the Welcome to Texas sign, but this library won't let me post pictures. We're staying at a motel tonight. Hooray! It was so hot while we were biking today. It's always warm, but it usually gets better when I'm biking. I create my own personal breeze. So anyways, I think some air conditioning is going to do me good.

We spent yesterday and the night before at the Merryville Historical Museum. They offer free camping on their property, as well as bathrooms and showers. The people there were so friendly. We had three people come by and offer us cold drinks and show us around the museum and this log cabin from the 1800s that's on the property. Seeing it, I kept thinking about the Little House on the Prairie books. I read them all when I was a kid. In a way, I feel a little bit like a pioneer. Is that corny? There's just something about heading west with all our possessions on our bikes. I feel like I'm riding a horse sometimes. Especially when my saddle creaks and I'm moving at a steady pace.

Tomorrow we're heading to Silsbee, TX. I'm eager to see the change in the landscape as we move farther into Texas. Already we've been seeing pine forests and larger trees. Through most of Louisiana we were surrounded by fields and smaller vegetation. I'm looking forward to a change.

checking in, Texas bound

So we're in Merryville, LA, on rt 190, a few scant miles away from texas, and the people here are as nice as can be. When I talk to people in cities about decentralizing communities, I always feel a little bit like a liar, in that I want to believe we could manage ourselves in smaller communities, but, secretly, I don't. This sort of town makes the prospect seem a little more possible.
Anyways, today we only have a breif post for you, because I'm not entirelysure the computer here will work long enough to puiblish it. So anyways, now if we go missing, you know where to start looking, not that that will actually happen.
Does composite board count as wood? I hope so, cause it's all I had to knock on just then.
Okeedoke, until the next time,
David.

it's finally happening

Whoa, we're on the bike trip.



We started on Tuesday, August 19th in New Roads, Louisiana. It was an eventful first day. We huddled in a ditch by the side of the road trying to wait out a rain storm. It never stopped raining, though, so we biked on to a town that offers free camping in one of their public parks. It was at this campsite that I first encountered fire ants. I had heard of them before, but I guess I just thought all red ants were fire ants and they weren't that big of a deal. But no, fire ants attacked one of my feet and it hurt. Not a whole bunch, but more than an ant bite should. The real surprise came the next day, though, when these red pimple-looking bumps showed up all over my foot. Dave told me they act like poison ivy, in that the poison spreads when the bumps are opened.

It's been pretty, though. We followed the levies down the Mississippi for most of the first day. We've seen alot of fields and some forested areas.

I'm still a little shell shocked. Every day (more like a couple times a day) I suddenly realize that I'm actually on the bike trip. It's happening. This is it. Which is kind of a mixed bag of emotions. I'm really excited that it's happening. No more saving up, working a job I knew wasn't right for me, putting off grad school and the GREs and all that. Whenever I got really stressed out with all that stuff I would tell myself I was doing it for the bike trip, it was only temporary. But now I'm on the bike trip, so when things get hard (and wet), I just have to deal with it. I don't have any magic phrase to repeat to myself. Also, I expected the bike trip to be this incredible journey, and I think it will be. But it takes awhile to get out of the normal daily routine mindset. I've spent the last three days pedalling and eating and walking through tiny grocery stores looking for the bathroom. That's it. I like it, but it's going to take some getting used to.

dogs and things

So, everybody, I'm fine. I'd write personally to you guys about it, but I can't access my e-mail account on this library's computer. Okay, point of order, I'm covering the events of the past three days out of order. Today, we must have been chased by dogs for a total of, mmmm, about 3000 miles. Seriously, Louisiana, I love you guys, but build a fence or something. Jeeze. All in all, our tactics for dealing with this frightening annoyance have been early detection and avoidance.
I think my smell is affecting the 10 year old on the next compuer's attention. I smell like bleach, but I'm really dirty, how odd.
Anyway, back to brass tacks. We've made three repairs since leaving new rhodes, two of which were somewhat suprising, although not unanticipated, and one of which neither, but did turn out to be a pain in the ass. If I didn't like fixing bikes, this trip would be miserable.
Repair A: lost bolt on front rack
We pulled off the road to discuss a missed turn(not an important one) and ended up stuck in a ditch waiting for a thunderstorm to pass. These circumstances, though I'd like to never find myself in them again, however unlikely that is, would in some ways fortunate. Mainly because it was after I'd turned my bike over to get the bags on it into the shelter of an oak tree/crazy thick brush that I noticed my front rack was loose. At the time, I was pissed. A little bit later, riding to our campsite in Semmesport, I realized that if we hadn't been held up, the rack could have fallen off mid-ride and brought with it a MAJOR bummer, such as injury, to myself or the bike. Thanks rain.
Repair b: flat tire
nothing out of the ordinary here. just a flat.
Repair c: Broken spoke
Not mine. It was julia's. Here'a nothing moment of good fortune. had the mechanic we went to see with uncle marty not been so unscrupulous as to sell me the "incorrect" freewheel tool, I wouldn't have been able to fix this spoke. Also, if Uncle Marty hadn't pointed out how stubborn I was being about using a piece of bike chain to hold the freewheel in place to remove the locknut on my old wheel and brought me to his mechanic friend who used a strap wrench to serve that purpose, Julia and I might not have fgured out that we could use one of my luggage straps as a strap-wrench. Thanks bike guy, thanks uncle marty.
That's it for now. Thanks for tuning in.
Next week: Dome Sweet Dome, a post about our new home life, in a tent.

NOLA

I'm never leaving. Not really. Not in the long run, not in a year or two when I'm here again, maybe for a longer time and maybe for a shorter. Asheville has a vortex, it actively prevents you from leaving. Pursues you, arrests you, sedates you into staying longer than you ever thought you would. Asheville is the town that I've always just left, thinking I'll never come back. New Orleans and I part on good terms, like accomplices in a robbery, or international penpals who only see each other once a decade.
We've staying at my friend Ariel's house. It's an apartment in a house her dad built when he was a young man. Her dad is a genius, and the apartment is incredible. It's like living inside of an armoire. She has a big back yard and a garden and banana trees growing along the property line. And every inch of space outside and in is used wisely and makes me feels as if some great healing force is lifting me up from the soles of my feet. That said, Julia and I are really grateful for Ariel and Simon's hospitality the past few days. They get the awesome postcards, I'll tell you that much.
The first thing we did was go to the Tree, which is this massive, seven-hundred or so year old live oak that grows in Audubon park by the zoo. I walked up one of the branches and made an offering to the Tree in the bowl that props out of the trunk at its top. Usually, you can find remains of sage and glitter and tiny pieces of mirror around this bowl, but this time, it was totally clean, except for a few leaves. While the recent thunderstorm could explain this absense, some other phenomena, most notably a large spiked wire that hung from the top of the tree across one of the places one has to climb through to get from the outer branches to the inner, made me think that maybe someone is trying to discourage people from climbing up it. Better luck next time, spikey wire thingy.
The next day we did the all the good tourist stuff, and a little extra. Notably, I stopped in to Esoterika, and gawked and the variety and quality of books they had that I wanted. Oh well, whenever I finally build my library... We probably could use another week or two here to do the city any justice, but getting on with the tour right now seems like the best thing to do.
I guess in the end, I won't say goodbye to New Orleans, because I don't want to REALLY mean it, so much as I want to say Hello to it forever. Oh well, until that time...

New Orleans

As we were leaving the hostel in Asheville, I found this beautiful flower that I'd totally missed all the other times we'd walked up the driveway.  Thanks Asheville!  Two days later, while staying at Dave's friend Ariel's house in New Orleans, I was flipping through a plant book she has and found out that it's called Passion Vine.

We're still in New Orleans, at Ariel's house.  This will be our last night, though.  Tomorrow Dave's Mom will drive us up to Baton Rouge, and a few days later we'll start biking.  New Orleans has been fun.  We went to the Tree, walked downtown, got overpriced beer on Bourbon Street, got coffee au lait and beignets at Cafe du Monde, rode a streetcar, and ate boiled crawfish.  You know, the essentials.

         

I'm getting anxious to get on the road, though.  We've been talking about it and getting ready for so long.  The longer I wait to get going, the less real it feels.  Also, New Orleans is ridiculously hot and makes my stomach hurt.  But I'm still glad we got to come here.

pre-trip: Stasheville and the drawbacks of KY

So we'd been in Kentucky for about two days, and I'd put the finishing touches on my home-made(ish) pannier bags(pics to come) when I broke my F***ing bike.
It all started a few weeks ago. I told Julia, "I have this new chain, but my old one is working so well that I kind of don't want to switch them out, you know, don't mess with a good thing" I guess I should have followed my intuition there, because, on the first twenty foot ride con los nuevo chain, it slipped off the flywheel, running into and slicing through the outside spokes and getting wedged in the rear hub. It's not completely catastrophic. Given the right time and tools, I can fix it in an hour or two for under twenty dollars. but I'll probably let the LBS here in Asheville deal with it, that's if they think they can get it done in a single day. if they can't, I'm walking from the hostel down to the recyclery to do it myself.
Anyways, things are good. I'm catching up with some people here in Asheville and hopefully getting some of my stuff back from my old landlord who, and this is not to say anything against him, because he's a great guy, hasn't returned my call.
We'll be leaving for LA early tomorrow morning and probably arriving in Baton Rouge late in the evening tommorrow or the afternoon of the next day, depending on whether we need to stop and camp on the way down.
We started an audiobook by Amy Tan called saving fish from drowning. it's really good and should get us through alot of the driving.
Well I'm starting to ramble, but to all of my Asheville people, it's been great to see you guys again. It's also been too short a visit and it didn't come soon enough after the last one.
Adios.