Delta Blues and King Cotton Tour

Hurricane Harvey.

We knew last year at this time that our bike trip this year would be to Texas; we finally gave up on waiting for the Eagles @ Dallas game to be early in the season, and said screw it, we're going anyway. We decided to Iron Butt it to Memphis, wander down the Mississippi to New Orleans, and head across the bayous and cotton fields over to San Antonio.  We'd hit a bunch of sites in Dallas and then go from there.

We weren't going to be doing this in the dead of summer, and really wanted to do it early.  But, all the work in getting Jesse a place to live in Erie (another adventure that should be on here, but isn't) prevented that.  So we were left with September, and the bonus of saving a PTO day over the holiday to boot.

Yes, we know it's peak hurricane season.  But how often to hurricanes actually strike the mainland US?  It's been years.  Name one since Katrina.  And if one were to strike the Atlantic coast, it's of little impact to us.  Then on top of it all, it's not like a July tornado in Kansas.  You have WEEKS of notice that this thing is on its way.  Our bikes go faster than that.  We're not changing our plans over this. 

Fast forward to 2 weeks before our trip.  Work sucks, and I have zero sightseeing figured out, and zero route planned other than the basic premise.  I manage a basic timeline, and we now have reservations in Memphis, New Orleans, Galveston, and San Antonio.  We have a date in place to have a beer at the home of a buddy who moved to Houston a couple years ago and we haven't seen since.

Fast forward 3 more days, and... some hurricane is threatening the Gulf Coast.

an amazingly accurate replica of our travel route

Fast forward to today, and Harvey has brought *bibilical* rainfall to... San Antonio, Galveston, New Orleans, and Memphis.  Houston is submerged.   I-10 is submerged.  Chemical plants are blowing up. As we leave today, our course takes us directly under Harvey it on its way to its death here in the Northeast.

Shit.

So whatever was Plan A is in grave question, if not entirely out the window.  We'll keep our reservations in Memphis, which is supposed to be gorgeous over the weekend, and I imagine we'll start wandering down the Missisippi on Monday.  From there, though, we'll have to assess what is passable and what isn't, and also where the hell we're going to find a place to sleep if we cancel the reservations in the places we're rerouting from.  

That's 4 days from now, so we'll figure it out in four days.  Right now, we're just going to turn our backs on work at 4:00:01, do our best at going around the rain, and get to doing what we do best.  Carpe Diem.