Loozyanna

From Natchez, we moved into Louisiana even more confident that we weren't a minute from being stranded in the middle of nowhere.  We went ahead and took the way-off-the-beaten-path route we'd planned, and swung by the Old River Control Structure and Morganza Spillway on our way to Baton Rouge.

Chair and umbrella are critical job equipment when directing "traffic" in the middle of nowhere in Louisiana.  I think he was happy to have someone to talk to for a few minutes

We here at LBB provide a service in addition to entertainment; over the years some legitimate education has taken place.  Don't act like you didn't know you would learn something.  At least there's no quiz, right?

Take a a look at the state boundaries along the Mighty Mississip.  If you stretched out that squiggly mess into a straight line, it would probably stretch around the Earth.  Now look more closely:  the actual state boundaries often disagree with the actual course of the river today.

That's because the mighty river changes course constantly.  The millions of gallons of water that flow through this channel every minute relentlessly reveal the easiest path to the sea. Towns that were riverfront as recently as the Civil war are now along a lake or marsh. Levees and control structures wage a never-ending battle as the water keeps coming and coming.

The Old River Control Structure is the biggest of them.  "Old" in this case refers to the river, not the structure.  Before Henry Shreve cut a path to remove a large C out of the river's path, nature had long before abandoned that same course in favor of the longer one of less resistance (the "old" river.)  In between, the Red River flows in, and the Atchafalaya River flows *out* (yes, it's a distributary.)  A short time thereafter, it was realized outflow diverted via the Atchafalaya had reached 30%, and would before long be 100%.  Baton Rouge, and the hugely important port of New Orleans would be high and dry.  Just like the abandoned little town with the empty church with the cannonball lodged in it.

So here before us is the Army Corps of Engineers' Old River Control Structure, dutifully enforcing the 70/30 flow of water down both rivers, as had been the case when the need for it was realized.

Just when we thought we were home free, we got stuck in Baton Rouge in freeway traffic snarled for miles by a disabled truck blocking 2 lanes during rush hour, then hit rain on the busy 70-mile ride across I-10 to New Orleans.  So even further behind our plan for early afternoon, but still committed to checking in before dark.

Recalculating...

Vicksburg, MS.

We'd planned to get here early yesterday afternoon, visit Catfish Row and maybe the old courthouse, Civil War battlefield, and maybe even the wreck of the Cairo before continuing downriver to Natchez.  Instead, we found a Best Western, thanked our lucky stars that we made it here at all, and pondered our next move.

Our immediate next move was to order a pizza and do a motel parking lot / garbage can bike wash, which got rid of the crud from the rain, and made us feel marginally better.  We do this all the time, to the point where it's a completely norma l routine for us.  When there's two garbage cans in the room, it's awesome.  We can be pretty close to done by the time the pizza guy comes.

For the hard question, we decided to detour to Jackson (there are only 4 H-D dealers in the state of Mississippi) and replace an ignition coil, just to say we'd done something.  This would put us, best case, in Natchez MS 4-6 hours after we'd planned to leave there.  As it turned out, the dealer did not have a coil on hand, but they did hook it up to the diagnostic tool and the service mgr seemed to agree with my assessment that the performance tuner add on that I'd taken out of the loop was in fact the likely culprit.  We'd gone well over 100 miles from the scene of the crime at that point, and through 2 heat cycles, and we were doing fine.  So we bought a poker chip and some T-shirts, loaded the bags back on, and headed out.  They didn't even charge a dime for the actual service.  Southern hospitality.

All we had time for in Natchez was lunch, where we ran into a group of 4 Brits who were touring the US on rental bikes.  We traded some road stories and best wishes, and left with a bunch of unfulfilled plans, but with optimism that our trouble were behind us and our asses would be in New Orleans that night as planned.

Down To The Crossroads

Gotta go!

Out of  the parking garage today by 8:30, but that's only because the staff at the fancy shmancy Holiday Inn Downtown was way short staffed (like they didn't know how many guests they had) and breakfast took like 45 mins.

Our plan for today was to head down Highway 61 into Mississippi and then the Great River Road, which never really does come within view of the river due to its winding course and penchant for overflowing.  Taking the older route put us at The Crossroads of song, in Clarksdale, and then of course we had to head down to Rosedale, with my rider by my side.  Everything in between was cotton fields.

It was just after pulling out of the gas station in Rosedale (there's one on either side of the 4-way stop sign) that Donna's bike had a brief seizure, which she thought was weird, but kind of shrugged off after a few miles.  40 mins later, in Greenville, MS, as I pulled into a drugstore to replenish some eye drops and Tylenol, the thing goes completely haywire on her and it barely makes it off the road under its own power.  I park and shut off my bike, and look over at her wondering why she's forgotten where the kill switch is.

"I got problems," she says, but everything appears fine to me.

One thing about my Donna is she's not a typical girl, and one place where that shows up is she's very in tune with machines.  She knows when things just ain't right, and her ability to describe and theorize issues has helped solved, and helped stem, many a problem.  So I listened, and went to take it for a ride to see for myself.

This took all of 2 feet to confirm: we had a problem, and it was serious.  We were in a town, which was better than in the middle of the hundred miles of cotton fields, but we were an hour from a H-D shop and it was Labor Day.  Out come the tools.

One nice thing about our situation is that we have the exact same bike 1 model year apart, so aside from a few rear suspension and brake parts, everything is the same, and we can swap parts across - which has happened more times than you'd like to think it would.  We got it to run again, but we were not able to prove that it was a result of anything I'd done. Random intermittent electrical problems are the worst.

We've now lost almost 2 hours, and are still not sure what's going to happen next.  We decide to stick to what passes for main highways and head to the next sizeable town (Vicksburg) and call it quits early enough that we won't end up sleeping in the grass alongside the road.

Memphis

Today was a beautiful, fun fun day. We put a total of about 40 miles on the bikes! If you're not new here, you already know that then when we're really getting out of town, we start off by *really* gittin'. Same thing on the way home. No sense farting around in some place we can thoroughly explore over a long weekend, right? So, we shot for Memphis by Sunday, & then figured well, why not try to wake up there?

As you read, it worked, and it turned out that  we ended up getting a second wind and having an amazing time carousing till 1 am.  Beale Street today is basically Bourbon Street 400 miles upriver. Fun!

Today, we got up late, walked down to the river to see a scale model of it that stretches for 5 blocks, and wound up late for our timed ticket at Graceland a short ride away.  Neither of us was a huge Elvis fan, but the King of Rock and Roll left quite a legacy and we spent hours being fascinated and amazed.

We got back at sundown and went out for a catfish dinner at the Flying Fish down the street, then caught some more live music. I also made my way into the Absinthe Room for a meeting with the green fairy.

All good things must come to an end, though, and we're back at the hotel packing up to get out on the road early tomorrow. We have a couple places to visit on our way out of town, then it's on to Mississippi on our way downriver. Someone (Hemingway?) once wrote that the Delta starts in the lobby of the Peabody Hotel in Memphis. We're right across the street, and ready to work our way through the rest of it.

And We Smiled

Well, we did freeze our asses off, but every time we stopped to check the radar, it appeared almost certain that we were going to get rained on.  Yet, we never did.

Somewhere between Louisville and Nashville, the sun began to break through. We stumbled upon an amazing BBQ joint, and rode comfortably into Memphis about an hour after sunset. We had done 1,050 miles since getting out of work Friday, most of it cold in rainsuits, and we were exhausted. But we're 2 blocks from Beale St. and it's Saturday night, so we thought it would be great if we could at least wash up and go get a drink. 

Which we did. And we smiled, too.

Ohio Wants Their Damn Money

No less than 20 cops running radar in 250 miles. And the first hundred, there were none because it was before anybody was out of bed.

And God Laughed

We didn't ride around a tropical cyclone tbe size of Texas in an evening after work! Forgive us for thinking that after sneaking between bands and seeing tbe moon abd stars come that we had. We left before sunrise and figured we'd put on our sunscreen a hundred fifty miles down the road at breakfast.

Then we got our gear outside and realized it had just stopped raining. Checked the radar, and... hahaha.

So we've been in rainsuits all morning so far, freezing, but the only actual rain we encountered popped up while we were under a gas station camopy.  Otherwuse, just spritzes and wet highway. We're having coffee 10 mins from tbe KY border and it looks like we'll hit rain before Louisville and then be in the clear. Or maybe we'll continue to get lucky, knowing that God had a good laugh at us patting ourselves on the back last night.