Missy and Shane's All Around US Tour.

The days are sunny and the riding is great these days. We had another wonderful chance encounter yesterday. On Saturday night we stayed at the Fort Clark Springs campground and while we were in camp a couple on a tandem rolled in and then later that night we met a guy riding solo. Both were heading East. Gilbert and Trevor were heading from California to Georgia, where they were from and they gave us a lot of tips for what to see as we head West. We exchanged notes with them and shared a few stories of the road. The next morning they all started off and we got our usual late start, though this day was even later since I discovered that my cassette was loose, a spoke was broken, and my frame was cracked again (same spot that I had welded back in Georgia). I got it all fixed within a half hour though (the broken frame is being held together with zip-ties and a c-clamp) and we were about ready to roll out when another cyclist rolled into camp. Cheney introduced himself and said he had heard we were there from the cyclists that he had passed just that morning. He also had heard about us from Greg & Marguerite who we met cycling in the other direction a couple weeks ago (the word of mouth of the road is a wonderous thing). He was headed West and we decided to ride together.
Our plan was to roll into Del Rio and head to the hospital. Missy's allergies have been acting up again and she has had some restless nights of congestion, sneezing, itchy eyes and general suffering so we were going to go and try and get a prescription for her. As we rolled into town and stopped at the hospital we sat down for lunch and talked more with Chaney. Magic was in the air and by the end of the day it became clear why we had all met up. Chaney worked his magic with a prescription from a family doctor being called into Del Rio for Missy's allergies, I worked on his bike to give him a few more gears, and we found him a place to get a new cell phone to replace his broken one.
It's great to be riding with another cyclist for a bit and I think that though he has a faster pace than us we'll probably all stick together for a few days to enjoy one anothers company and see what other magic we can work together.... just now he pulled out some zip-ties that I had just run out of.

 The terrain is so different now. Having left the hill country, things have flattened out and the views are a little bit more open flat land with less trees and more brush. We're heading for a gradual climb into the Davis mountains and into a pretty desolate area. Probably not a lot of coverage coming up so this might be the last update for awhile. We're excited about the McDonald Observatory coming up in about 5 days. We should be up there for one of the Star Parties. We'll let you know how that goes.

I wrote this back when Missy and I were fighting off colds and Missy was getting hit by allergies but I never published it so I thought I would put it up now. The weather has turned and it is sunny and warm again... yahoo! It got into the 80's yesterday!! Plus it was a beautiful area we rode through, Texas Hill Country. Made for a great day (besides the sore butts from the 60 miles in the hills).
I always like it when Missy writes a little something too so I snagged this from an email she sent her sister:
we are currently in kerrvile, tx at the state park- although it looks more like a city park to me. kerrville is a little town between austin and del rio. we are headed to del rio and then will make our way up and over to el paso. we are in the texas hill country and will cycle out of that and into the mountains today. in 2 days we should be cycling our first mountain pass since the northern tier. the terrain and fauna have changed dramatically in the last week of cycling- reminds me of the sierra nevada foothills. right now i have to go to the bathroom really bad but the woman's bathroom is being cleaned. if i had a nickel for every time this has happened to me over the trip, i'd have like a quarter by now- maybe more.

Oh, and heres that nose blowing entry, enjoy:

Some funny things cross my mind as we're pedaling around this country. Sometimes it's the thought that hundreds of years from now what we consider a Redneck Yard might one day be discovered by an archeologist and considered a Rich & Powerful Persons Yard. If you think about cars as status symbols and with the growing number of homes with four car garages (what is that all about?!) then you consider an archeologist digging around in rural America and he comes across a home with 20 cars. We'll this guy must have been some hot shot! Or sometimes it's the thought that my butt feels funny, or that there's a little tweak in my wrist, or I'm hungry (again). Often I think about politics, history (mostly my own), the future (again my/our own), and food. Just the other day I was thinking about blowing my nose on the road. I was thinking how really different it is than when I'm at home. On the road there are two options for a blow. One is the classic farmers blow. I push a knuckle into one nostril, turn my head to the opposite side, and blow out of the open nostril. If all goes well it comes out smooth and I do the other side. Sometimes there has to be some grabbing and flinging and if things go really bad there has to be some wiping of the face or clothing. I try to avoid the last bit by trying to gauge when I need to use the second option, the handkerchief. This second option is reserved for 1) serious nose blowing conditions, such as colds or allergies 2)when we are stopped in a town and a farmers blow would be uncool or 3) when Missy is right behind me and I can't swing out into the lane to get a clear shot (though she will attest sometimes I don't make that swing wide enough). I remember before we started this trip how Missy wouldn't do the farmers blow. She always used option two. But by about the second day on the road she was plugging up one of those nostrils and letting it fly. I mean, it's so handy how could you not?! It's just one of those things that's different on the road that makes me think a little (maybe a little too much).

PS the weather has turned and we are now cycling in 80 degree weather!! Yahoo!

Not a whole lot to report. Our days off in Austin have been filled with a lot of relaxing (besides the part where we finished our taxes) and just chilling out. Did some 'big city' errands including a run to REI that resulted in a new handlebar bag for me. The one I had for years and years broke awhile back and I was hoping for a new piece to fix it but they didn't have the piece so they just gave me a new one, gotta love that.

We had a really great gathering here at Cousin Rhena's the other night. She had a few cousins-once-removed (and one twice removed) over for Fajitas. Always fun to meet new family. It has been really great having a 'home' for a few days to just 'do nothing' in. Now its back on the road... heading west again. Tonights stop is Blanco, have some State Park stays for three nights, headed towards Texas hill country (home to Lance Armstrong and George W.), and should be in Del Rio in about five days.

We made it into Austin yesterday. Another chilly day of riding and a little crazy with the urban traffic and lack of infrastructure for cyclists but we made it to cousin Rhena's just before dark and are planning a couple days of rest and relaxation (as well as taxes, paperwork, maintenance, and organization).

We've put up some photos for the first half of February. You can check them out HERE.

It is freezing cold. Literally. Right now it is 32 degrees outside and it's supposed to get down to 28 tonight and to 25 tomorrow! Today the highest temperature we saw was 38, and that doesn't include the wind that was blowing at about 15-20mph today. Yeah, brrrrr.
Yesterday was pretty chilly but our spirits were warmed by meeting a couple cycling by in the other direction. Greg & Marguerite are on a big bike adventure around the country too and we stopped to talk to them for about 15-20 minutes, would have been nice to have shared a meal or something but they were headed East so it will have to be another time. We wish them well on their grand adventure.

Last night was chilly too and the wind was blowing really hard when we pulled into camp in Navasota. We set up our great Kelty Tarp as a wind barrier to the picnic table and huddled behind it as the wind screamed all around us. We crawled into bed early and listened to This American Life as we cuddled up in our sleeping bag and tried to hear it above the wind outside. This morning it was still blowing and had dropped several degrees. We bundled up and hit the road. Half way through our day we were pretty tired of fighting the wind and cold. We pulled into the small town of Burton at 2:03 pm. The local cafe closed at 2:00 pm. So much for a warm spot for lunch. It turned out there was an ice cream parlor (Elizabeth & Company) in town that did serve sandwiches & soup. We planted ourselves there and the got us a hot chocolate right off. I think our red noses and rosy cheeks were clear signs we needed it. We enjoyed a nice lunch but still had 28 miles to a cheap hotel in Bastrop and only 2.5 hours of light left, it was going to be tough. If we didn't make it that far it was going to be another cold night of camping. As we got ready to go we were talking with the ladies of the shop and another woman came in and asked about our trip. Right away she said she had a little B&B about 7 miles outside of town that she would be happy to offer us for the night to get out of the weather. She said we could throw our bikes in the back and she'd take us out there. How could we say no?!
Carol has been a Valentines day saint. Right now we're sitting in front of a wood stove warming ourselves with hot apple cider the ladies from Elizabeth & Co. gave us to help warm us up. As we unloaded, showered and got the fire going Carol ran to her neighbors to get us some farm fresh eggs and even brought us some soup she had just made. We'll heat it up on her great antique stove and then later tonight go visit with her at her house just down the road. What a wonderous treat.
Though the riding has been cold and windy it has at least been very beautiful. This part of the country really is pretty. The rolling hills, great small towns, big ranches with Texas Longhorns, gorgeous oak trees, old stone buildings, and big open vistas have been great. I'm sure in sunshine and about 30 more degrees they would be really great. If you ever do find yourself in this part of the country (March and April seem to be the big festival times around here) be sure to stay at The Front Porch B&B, a magical little spot.

One of the classic "hazards of the road" for cyclists is the dog chase. Pretty much every cyclist, and certainly any cycle tourer has a story or two about an encounter they had with a dog. We've had our fair share from the beginning of this journey. In our first state of the Northern Tier we had a pretty serious chase and the next day a couple strangers just happened to give us some pepper spray that they said they used on their bike rides. We've had that pepper spray with us this whole trip. We've been chased several times since then and I've actually used mine once somewhere on the Atlantic coast route. But in the last 10 days of riding in Louisiana we have been chased by more dogs than in ALL the states we've been through combined. We've had packs of 5 dogs, tiny little rat dogs, and big bruiser bowser types. Mostly they see us and by the time they catch us we've passed them and they attack from behind. Since I'm always behind Missy they are most often on my tail and I've used my pepper spray a couple times on particularly menacing types but find that mostly they give up after chasing us only as far as one or two houses. One especially scary attack was when they did see us coming and they came from the front. Missy pulled out her spray as usual but this time she actually had to use it. We screamed at them and kept riding and they eventually gave up. A little bit later Missy was feeling a burning sensation on her nose, then her lips, her arm, and finally on her leg. When we stopped at a grocery store she saw spots on her leg and all over her bike. Between moving forward and the wind blowing it back and the fact that it was the first time she had used her spray so it was clogged up she had managed to get it all over herself but most likely not on the dogs at all. It was tough to get off and she felt it in her eyes and around her face for hours. At least we know the stuff works.

The really sad part came just yesterday when a couple dogs came chasing us from across the street and one of them got hit. Amazingly he ran away, seemingly unharmed. But between the stupid owners who don't tie up their dogs and the driver who clearly saw the dogs (he slowed down) but didn't bother to stop even once he hit the dog it was hard to not be very angry. We went to find the owners of the dog but they weren't home. That was tough to see and now every time dogs chase us I scream at them even before they catch us hoping they will stop chasing before they get to the road. I was going to title this blog entry "Leashless Louisiana" but now that we are in Texas it looks like it's going to be more of the same. In the 40 miles we've been in Texas we've already been chased twice by dogs off their leashes and their gates wide open.

But on a happier note. We're in Texas! The Lone Star State. Home of our loathsome leader George W. Bush. The second biggest state of the Union, and one-third of our Southern Tier. The weather is chilly again but the forecast is for warmer temps soon (we'll believe it when we feel it).
We've had a couple nice nights of free camping, one very rustic and one with all the amenities (shower, water, electricity, picnic table, and shelter). This morning, after sleeping at that great free spot (the Merryville Museum and Burkes Log Cabin Historical Site) we were invited into breakfast by the caretakers and the group who was having a breakfast meeting there. We enjoyed a biscuits & gravy breakfast with the Sons of Confederate Veterans. After an early start (that's 9:30 for us) we had a great tailwind all day and made it 55 miles in just under 3 1/2 hours.

It's finally warmed up and the last few days have been really great riding. The forecast is for rain in a couple days so we are soaking up the rays, I even put on shorts for the first time since we've been on this Southern Tier.
The good weather has been tempered with a bit of bad shoulders and our first flats in long time. Riding into New Orleans I got one and leaving there Missy actually got two, one on the front and one on the rear tire. The second one we pulled a nail out about 3 inches long! There is a lot of debris on the roads here, but there must be something else too, since these are our first flats since Maine!

Since we left New Orleans we've had even more Louisiana hospitality and it has come from some wonderful people from the Warm Shower list. The second night out of New Orleans we stayed with Christian & Ryan in Baton Rouge. They are students at LSU and are from a little town NE of New Orleans, Slidell. Christian rode the Pacific Route this past summer so we talked a lot about touring, the effects of Katrina on their families, and a bit about Louisiana culture. They took us out to The Chimes, a locals favorite with several beers on tap and a lot of imports & micro-brews. We split some Abita Ale, blackened alligator, and some Boudin Balls and then we each had different main courses that were all very good. It was really great grub and awesome ale.. Christian gave up his bed for us (way above and beyond the call of duty) and we both slept very well.

The next day we got a little bit of a late start since we stopped by the Coffee Call for some more beignets, coffee, & sausage biscuits. On our way in a woman stopped us to ask about our trip and after talking for a bit she said that she lived in an area that a lot of cyclists pass through and that a friend of hers even puts cyclists up. She said he lived in Simmesport, which just so happened to be the town that we were headed to that day to stay with a Warm Showers person. We asked if her friends name happened to be Henry and she said that it was! Small world, small world. We didn't leave until 11am and it was a 75 mile day, but luckily the wind was with us a lot of the day and we made it to Henry & Geralyn's before 5:00 p.m.. They invited us in and proceeded to shower us with hospitality. Not only did Geralyn cook us the best Gumbo we've ever had but they had their daughter Jenny bring us back some crawfish from a crawfish boil she went to. Henry showed us how to eat them and we fumbled along getting a pretty good taste and a tiny bit of skill by the end. They also had a King Cake that Geralyn's sister had made. Needless to say between our full stomachs, the 75 mile ride, and the cozy bed we slept really well.

Today we were back onto some farm roads and were glad to be off the main roads again. We're staying with our last Warm Shower until Austin (when we'll be staying with family, not really an official 'Warm Shower'). Of course now that the rain is supposed to start up again we'll be camping.... c'est la vie. It's funny, today while we were waiting for Sarah, our host here in Opelousas, we had a couple people come up to talk to us and it turns out that they know her and she's actually at their place for dinner tonight. Again, small world

Tomorrow is another 60+ mile day. We've been putting the miles under us recently, we'll see how long that lasts. Keep the emails & comments coming, we love to hear what's going on in your lives too.

PS For those Bay Area readers I just found out that KQED is going to have a special show about New Orleans on Feb. 12. Check out the American Experience website for more information. If anyone happens to watch it we'd love to see it sometime if you can record it. For those outside of the Bay Area it can be watched online after the 12th.

Just left New Orleans this morning. We had a really great time and are glad we spent the extra day. We had talked about volunteering with Habitat for Humanity but between the logistics, everything we wanted to see, and the limited time we decided to just explore the town and contribute to the recovery effort by spending our tourist dollars in town.
We went out a couple nights to some good dinners, enjoying the local Cajun and Louisiana cuisine including gumbo, seafood etouffée, jambalaya, Andouille sausage, dirty rice, and a great local brew (Abita Beer). One morning we hit the famous Cafe du Monde for some good Beignets & Cafe au laits (though we both liked the beignets at Cafe Beignet a little more).
Besides enjoying a bit of the culinary culture of the area we also walked around the French Quarter, saw some of the devastation in the 9th Ward and East New Orleans, saw the Imax movie about hurricane Katrina, walked along the Mississippi and did a little bit more exploring and shopping.
The Imax movie Hurricane on the Bayou was a really great movie about the destruction of Katrina. It touched a little bit on the issue of the levees and the controversy of the Corp of Engineers but mostly talked about how the decrease in wetlands had a major environmental influence on the destruction caused. The destruction we saw while touring around town was pretty depressing, you can see some of the photos in our latest photo post but it won't do any justice to how bad it really is. I read while we were there that at least 1/3 of the homes in one area will be totally torn down. Right now there were whole neighborhoods that are still 95% empty with only a couple trailers in front of homes with some work being done on the them. There is still A LOT of work that needs to be done.
Walking along the Mississippi was amazing as we thought about the headwaters that we walked across 6 months ago on our Northern Tier (see the photos from mid-July). As we toured around the French Quarter we talked to an artist who had met someone who kayaked the Mississippi all the way down, it's something Missy and I talked about being another great adventure sometime. We actually liked that artists prints enough to buy a piece of his work. In walking around the French Quarter I was reminded a lot of my time in Spain and it turns out that after some major fires in the late 1700's the quarter was rebuilt by the then ruling Spanish. There is an interesting mix of architecture throughout the area. We learned that the term "shotgun house" was developed in New Orleans.
Then finally, last night we got a little taste of Carnival. Even though we'll miss Mardi Gras by a couple weeks we were able to watch the first parade of the season and one of the only ones to pass through the FrenchQuarter, the Krewe Du Vieux. It was a fun parade, packed with people and a little chilly, but fun.
Have some photos up of our time in NOLA, check them out HERE.

We've decided to spend another night here in New Orleans. Tonight is the very first parade of the Mardi Gras season. It's the Krewe Du Vieux and is said to be the "true nature of Mardi Gras" and is the only one carrying on old Carnival traditions, one of which is hand or mule-drawn floats. A non-motorized parade.... right up our alley.
We've toured around different parts of the city, including the French Quarter, the warehouse district (where we are staying), the 9th ward, the Garden District, and Eastern New Orleans. We'll write a little bit more about New Orleans and our experiences here in the next post along with photos. For now I wanted to put up a quick post with a link to some new photos. These shots are from the start of the Southern Tier to our arrival in New Orleans. Click HERE to check them out.

We've made it to New Orleans! I can't believe that the last blog update was on the edge of Florida. Since then we've pedaled through Alabama, Mississippi, and into Louisiana.
We had a string of very cold nights and pretty cold days with all of them camping out. Some days it never got above 50 and it dipped down to the low 30's most nights. Now that we are in New Orleans we're in a hotel for a couple nights which is a nice treat since it's still cold and now pretty rainy.
The ride to get here was interesting. We got off of our Adventure Cycling maps and found our own way here using a mix of MapQuest and our own maps. We jumped between highway 90 and back roads once we left the route in Grand Bay, Alabama. As soon as we hit Mississippi we started to see more of the major storm damage from Katrina (check out the link for some great info on the hurricane that devastated this are). Even out on the Alabama islands that we rode through we saw some destroyed buildings, fallen trees, and major damage. But it was nothing like what we saw as soon as we entered Louisiana. The amount of boats on the roadside, cars in swamps, crushed homes, fallen trees, piles of tires, and general roadside wreckage was astounding. What seems most amazing is that it has been over a year and there are some areas that look like the storm just hit here a couple weeks ago. There was a large stretch of the ride where there would be one or two houses every mile or so that had rebuilt but all around them were piles of concrete, wood, and debris. Included in the unique roadside debris to this region, for the last 3 days we've been cycling past Mardi Gras beads. We've been collecting different colors and decorating our bikes to show our New Orleans spirit. At any rate, we are happy to be here and interested in knowing more of it's history.
We're not sure what the next couple days will hold as we try and figure out what to see and do in New Orleans. Maybe volunteer with Habitat for Humanity or maybe just see the city and then roll on (staying in hotels is a lot more expensive than the camping we've been doing). Off to explore the city...