Day 66, Stage 44 - Vicksburg to Prentiss
102 miles in 7hrs 50
mins (incl. just muffins and juice stops once again)
Total distance - 3,815 miles
...all I was thinking was 'No it's not. Can I please get going?' I was being tag-teamed but more on that later.
Even when I set off at just after nine this morning the air already had a warm viscous feel to it. Not unpleasant but enough to mean that really pushing it was out the question.
Things weren't just physically draining but there was the mental drain of the logging trucks again, especially given the lack of any shoulder lane here which really wasn't fun. The bike was also worrying me as well as I wasn't entirely convinced the new rear wheel was the best built piece of kit. And after a pitiful 30 miles my fears were confirmed as it had already started to develop a slight wobble and by the time I stopped for muffins after 40 miles it was stuffed necessitating a lengthy rebuild. This time it wasn't Tourette's - for a very brief moment I was actually angry. I'm of the view that anger isn't a very useful emotion so I decided to channel it into aggression that I was going to take out on the pedals of the bike, driving them round and me down the the road. Which I did as I continued on repeatedly checking my mirror for what was on it's way down the road. But when I looked back ahead this time, while it was a straight road I was heading straight off it at 20 mph. My years of cycling have taught me that the best course of action is don't turn, don't panic and hit the brakes slowly. It was a heck of a rough ride but I came to a dusty and bumpy stop still on the bike which was surprisingly unscathed. I sheepishly got back on the tarmac which was a fantastically quick surface as it had recently been resurfaced. A few miles down the road I was held up at a one mile stretch that was down to one lane due to it being resurfaced. I was let through by the flagman at my end, but so was the traffic at the other end. Now I've unintentionally played chicken with a van many years ago. However, this time I could see it coming so I switched across into the tarred lane and cycled through the gloop which was slow-going but not half as slow-going as when the coating of tar on my tyres picked up a layer of stones, a lot of which are still there.
But it was the next one-lane section where the tragicomedy for the day unfolded. I was stopped by the flagman so was chatting to him when his colleague pulled up in a pickup.
"Have you seen a deer like this size before?" He asked waving a picture of him with a mounted stag's head.
A proud hunting man, I obviously reasoned. Fair enough. I'll be on my way soon enough once the flagman turns the sign.
"Tell me. Do you know Jesus?" He then asked. And, out of either amusement or Christian duty his friend wasn't turning that sign.
Don't get me wrong. He was a perfectly nice, well-meaning bloke but the, what felt like well over five minutes before the sign was finally turned was up there as one of the most mentally tortuous moments of the trip.
Bite, lip, resist, fish, barrel. Don't Fraser, just don't.
I didn't. Even despite the astonishingly misguided interpretation of the big bang theory that he gave. As I stood there I was half listening to him but also half listening to the tunes coming out of my unplugged earphones, desperately hoping that the next song it skipped to wasn't the Depeche Mode classic, 'Blasphemous Rumours'. As I finally rode on I was very nervously looking over my shoulder just on the slim chance he was going to try to prove his "are you ready to face god if you're run over on the rest of your cycle trip?" point.
On the topic of misguided messages. I spotted this one a couple of days ago outside one church. I was ending myself when I cycled past it.
I arrived in Monticello which I didn't much like the look of so decided to push on to clock up another century to the start of the Longleaf cycle track at Prentiss.
One small issue is that, with all the running around yesterday to get the new wheel, I didn't have time to do any laundry, and despite much searching I haven't been able to find one tonight. 'highly aromatic' is probably the best way to describe my room tonight.
Day 67, Stage 45 - Prentiss to Hattiesburg
