(December 26)

Day 1 - Running out of daylight

 Ridgeland MS to Port Gibson MS

 

 

Leaving my driveway!

 

Not my first mile, rather my first few feet captured in immortal glory :)

 

On the Natchez Trace headed south. This is before I started really feeling the effects of cycing for 7 straight hours towing a heavy load...as you can tell because of the bizarrely optimistic thumbs up and the smile.

 

Day 1 is done and dusted and I'm here to tell you that it wasn't easy. In fact, I was forced to alter my plans to camp out in Grand Gulf Military Park because by the time I rolled into Port Gibson it was already past 6pm and I still had 12 miles to go to get to my campsite. AND I was starving. AND I was really tired. So rather than rest a bit and keep going, I stopped at the only open restaurant I could see (McDonald's), devoured a Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese AND a Sausage and Egg Biscuit AND 2 Sausage Burritos. That was different than my plan, which was to cook dinner at my campsite. The second alteration was not to camp at all. Instead, about 100 yards away from McDonalds I found the Grand Gulf Inn and decided that, discretion being the better part of valor, that I needed to stop then and not over an hour from then once I'd ridden in the dark a dozen miles.

 

So, yeah, on the trip I swore I'd not buckle and stay in a hotel I stayed in a hotel on DAY ONE! Why? Simply because I ran out of daylight. And why did I run out of daylight? Because I didn't leave my house until 11am this morning. So, let's do the math. I averaged 10.9mph and my original route plan was to ride 72 miles today. So, counting the 10 minute breaks I was trying to do every hour, you can see why leaving at 11am was NOT going to get me to anything but a hotel room tonight.

Now, in fairness, the reason I couldn't leave until 11am was because I'd rushed this entire trip (see my first article). And rushing the trip meant rushing to get my bike put together. So, yesterday, on my trial voyage I learned that I really wanted just regular road bike handlebars vs. the "mustache" bars which had initially been put on it. So, this morning at 9am, Daniel Mahan at Indian Cycle was replacing my handlebars.

 

(SIDE NOTE: Daniel worked a miracle for me. He put together my bike in 8 days..starting with nothing on hand. He had to do all the research for what was needed, find some weird special parts, do some fabrication on certain parts, beg a distributor to find a part that wasn't even supposed to be in the US yet AND put it all together. Which he did on CHRISTMAS EVE!! His passion for cycling and his artistry...and I do mean artistry...is amazing)

 

So, had I not been driven by the "window," and thus had to rush everything, I'd have left a few days room to sort out the bike and left at something more like 7am on Day One vs. 11am. Those extra four hours would have been HUGE today!

 

So...word of wisdom to myself: get on the road early every day or else!