Day 3 - Clarksdale, MS

This is the coolest town in the universe.






"You women have heard of jalopies,
You heard the noise they make.
Let me introduce my new Rocket 88.
Yes it's straight, just one way.
Everybody likes my new Rocket 88."

This might not sound like much but lots of people claim it's the first rock and roll song. Ike Turner wrote it in 1947 or thereabouts. In the basement of our hotel.



We spent the afternoon sitting out front drinking beer in cans listening to stories told by the proprietor, "Rat", whose mother opened the place as a boarding house in 1944.




It seems Ike Turner and Sonny Boy Williamson both lived here and John Lee Hooker was in and out. In the 1920s and 1930s it was a black hospital. (segregation days) Bessie Smith died here after a car accident. The room where she died is now a shrine.



The Jim and Drew room was formerly occupies by the Staple Singers and "the Siamese twins."



This place is basically unchanged from when it was a segregated hotel/boarding house in the 1940s. The bathrooms are down the hall. There are room keys. Checking IDs for Homeland Security is from some other universe.






Note the old Schlitz sign.

It's not physically possible to bring our bikes into our room. Rat told us to chain them to his riding lawn mower out front.






Rat says the lawn mower has been there for three years and nobody has messed with it because everybody in the neighborhood knows he's sleeping on the other side of that window. With a gun.

-- Post From My iPhone

Day 2 - West Helena, AR

I am at the Mexican restaurant drinking a Dos Equis, the beer of two gringo horses. The don't have a liquor license, so there will me no electrolyte replenisment therapy (Margaritas). I find it hard to believe they turn down anyone for liquor licenses in Helena, which is not exactly a shining beacon of prosperity.

I'd have to say, now that we've nearly ridden all the way across Arkansas, that this is one of the most dilapidated, beat-down states ever. But all the people are super friendly. Unintellegible, for sure, but the nicest people. Both races are equally unintellegible.


We are both wiped out. This is because we are out of shape. We did 76 flat miles in 7:34. The roads were not smooth, it was cold, and there were headwinds, but still.

We've done well on food today. Breakfast was at a dive next to the grain elevators in Stuttgart, the Rice and Duck Capital of the World. (Somewhere on the Eastern Shore there are probably a bunch of town thinking "Darn, if we only had some rice.")




In De Witt, we ate lunch at a nice cafe on the square with the gloomy and draery courthouse.




The cafe was very nice and cheery. I was dragging badly after lunch, but after about an hour the food kicked in, and I finished the last 30 miles strong.

Dinner has arrived.



-- Post From My iPhone

Another tidbit from today - dogs

About five miles outside England, this stupid little dog ran out and chased me. I thought it would be great if that dog got hit by a car.

Jim was a ways behind me. When the dog ran out and chased Jim, it was run over by a truck.

-- Post From My iPhone

Day 1 Stuttgart, AR

This is the last time it wasn't raining today. We did 55 miles in 5 hours, temperature as 40, wit a headwind for the last half. It was a tough day.

We have no desire whatsoever to go put in the rain to find food. We are staying right here in our toasty warm room.




The gal working the desk gave us the pizza delivery number, and the gas station across the street has bad beer.




Jim decided it would me fun to mail postcards from England, so I took a picture of the old caboose next door.



-- Post From My iPhone

Lunch, England, Arkansas

We are halfway done for today, in England.




The happy pig cooker made it easy to decide where to eat.



It's about 40 degrees out, and you get cold fast when you stop pedaling. No rain yet, we are feeling lucky.

Here's a better picture of the state Capitol.



It's completely flat, and the scenery is dilapidated agricultural. This region is no boomtown. We're making about 12 mph, with a moderate crosswind. I feel great, no more cold, and I'm feeling strong.

Lunch is here.



Jerry Spinger is on the TV, with fighting hookers.

-- Post From My iPhone

Good Morning Arkansas

It's 35 degrees out. The rain isn't going to really start until 3:00.

-- Post From My iPhone

Day 0 - Little Rock

We rode 7 miles to the Legacy Hotel, which is a real hotel. Our bikes are stashed in the back of the ballroom.



We can see the state Capitol right down the street.



Some rent-a-cop came out and demanded to inspect my picture, and to make sure my iPhone was not a measuring device that could determine the distance between a hypothetical truck bomb and the federal building where he was working.

We are right across the street from a giant courthouse.



Jim thinks they had to build this courthouse to handle the business from the Clinton years.

There are hyacinths growin along the chain link fence surrounding the parking lot next door.




We are only 5 miles from the airport, nut we rode 7 miles because Jim forgot his laptop charger, and we had to go to Best Buy. Here is what the Googly maps thinks is a Best Buy.



-- Post From My iPhone

Planning Discussion

Drew: They changed the forecast from rain.
Jim: Do you think we can get some miles in today?
Drew: They changed it to sleet.

-- Post From My iPhone

We're Off

We always get to wait in the long line at the airport.



-- Post From My iPhone

Ready for Adventure

The spring bike ride is Little Rock to New Orleans this year.



The forecast for Little Rock tonight and tomorrow is sleet.

-- Post From My iPhone

More crocuses

-- Post From My iPhone

Tomatoes are planted

Here is the list of varieties for this year:

White tomesol
Green Moldovan
Aunt Ruby's
Green zebra
Orange flesh purple smudge
Anana's noir
Djena Lee's golden
Yellow brandywine
Big rainbow
Hillbilly
Kellog's breakfast
Amana orange
Hank
Oxheart
Mortgage lifter
Granny Cantrell's German red/pink
Brandywine (Suddith's)
Cherokee purple
Purple Calabash
Black Krim
Carbon
Black seaman
Amish Paste

I realize 23 kinds is totally excessive, but I had all these seeds from last year in the drawer so I thought I'd plant them and see if they come up. I have 144 little peat starter pots of tomatos, 6 pots of each kind, except for the Amish paste tomatos, where I planted 12. I'll probably plant 30 plants of regular tomatoes, and 6 paste.

I also planted 24 pots each of broccoli, cauliflower and celery.

The First Crocus

Spring is coming.


It was 6 degrees night before last.

-- Post From My iPhone

The Rules

Max and his mama are playing Candy Land. Mama asks Max if he remembers the rules.



Max, annoyed, replies
"NO HITTING, NO PULLING HAIR, and NO BITING!"


-- Post From My iPhone

Max does Mardi Gras

The girls were giving away mardi gras beads and free samples of some vile drink involving Red Bull.

Max has been asking "Where's 'em goirls?" all day long.


-- Post From My iPhone

Z-Bone Report

So today I took the Z-Bone out for the first time. I've got it all set up how I want. I did my standard 20 mile ride around BWI. It was 32 degrees out and calm. The roads were all dry, there was no ice to be seen.

I need to get in shape for a mini-tour I'm doing in a month, so Friday, I did the same loop on the Trice (1:55), and on Saturday on the T-Bone (1:30, with a 20 mph wind). Today the Z-Bone took 1:20, which was mighty impressive. I am not in a state of fitness at all, although I felt a lot stronger than I did the last couple days.

Here's the MotionBased page for the Z-Bone loop.

Here are some pictures of the Z-Bone as I have it set up. I hear on the BROL message board that George only made 25 Z-Bones.

Side view. Note the Q-Rings on a new Ultegra crank, new lightweight mirrors, new 10 speed Wipperman 10 speed chain, and an 11/34 10 speed cassette. This gives me 23 to 127 gear inches. Ilchester will be barely doable when I am in shape. The shifters are now Dura-Ace bar ends on Paul's Thumbies.



Here you can see I've got double-Ti Eggbeaters for pedals.



Rear view showing the Fastback water carrier. You can barely see the seat mount.



Here is the cockpit. The GPS works great on the main tube behind the stem. I'm a little dubious of that stem. The steering feels a little flexy. The handlebars are good, and they could go a couple inches lower and a bit forward if necessary.



Closeup of the drive train.



Here are all four of my bikes. Front to back, Cobrabike Royale, Reynolds Weld Lab T-Bone, Reynolds Weld Lab Z-Bone.



And here's another with the Inspired Cycle Engineering Trice S.



The trike is for touring, the Royale is for randonneuring (it's set up with very wide gearing so I can climb anything with ease, even at the end of a brevet). The T-Bone and the Z-Bone are for going fast, and not so much for very steep hills.

Google Maps Mania: The Short Flight of 1549 on Google Maps

Check it out - I am famous:

Google Maps Mania: The Short Flight of 1549 on Google Maps

New Goofy Bike!

It's been quite a while since I've been riding bikes. Max takes a big bite out of the day.

But last week, I saw a Reynolds Weld Lab Dual 700 Z-Bone on E-Bay, and I decided a new bike would be just the thing to get me back on the road. Especially a bike from the Reynolds Weld Lab, which is basically the garage of George Reynolds, mad genius of Derry, NH.. George is no longer making bikes. Recumbent bike riders are a sort of cult, and the few of us who have Reynolds bikes are a very special sub-cult, where zip-ties, hose clamps, and electrical tape are important bike components, and it's all about going really fast.

These bikes are really rare. I've only seen four other ones on the road in my life. One on the Seagull, and 3 on RAGBRAI. I saw a guy with a dual 20 Z-Bone at RAGBRAI and rode alongside him chatting for awhile. He said he has a dozen Reynolds bikes. He collects them. They guy I bought my Z-Bone from had 3. I'm glad I got this one and beat all the hoarders.

I already have Dual 26 T-Bone, which is all titanium and is quite the bomb. I rode it across the country, and am well over 20,000 miles on it total. But after the T-Bone, George started making the Z-Bone, which was half titanium and half aluminum, front wheel drive, and has a rear suspension. Then George stopped making bikes altogether. I have coveted one of these for a long time.

And now I have one:


Here's a close up of the front wheel drive setup.



If you look close you can see about 10 zip-ties, and you'll note there are hose clamps holding down the water bottle cages.

The guy I bought this from lives in Delaware by the beach where it is very flat. Hence the short cranks, dual compact chainrings, and 11/23 corncob cassette. That's not going to cut it around here. It was back to E-Bay and elsewhere for me. I have a Dura-Ace triple crankset coming, triple Q-Rings (52/40/30), and an 11/34 10 speed cassette which I got for the T-Bone so I could haul Max in the trailer at RAGBRAI. The shifters will be bar-ends mounted on Paul's Thumbies.

Here's the rear suspension setup.



And here's the cockpit.



I think those bottle cages are getting replaced with a fastback and a camelback bladder, and the Cateye trip computer is getting replaced with a mount for my Edge 705 GPS.

Here's a picture of the T-Bone in front of the Z-Bone for comparison.



This is really interesting, since it shows how the Z-Bone is a much more refined design.
* The wheelbase is a couple inches shorter on the Z-Bone.
* The seat is a couple inches lower, despite the bigger wheels.
* The bottom bracket is slightly higher.
* The seat is much closer to the front wheel.

Here's the front view of the two bikes side by side.



I have Eggbeaters coming to replace the platform pedals too.

I can't wait to get on the road with the Z-Bone. It should be ready to go by next weekend.

RAGBRAI Day -3: Winnetka, IL to La Moile, MN

Today's adventure was to go to Minnesota to inspect the 3/4 acre of land my Aunt Peggy gave me. But first I had to get past my niece and nephew to leave. They were opposed to the idea.



On the way I stopped off in LaCrosse, Wisconsin to visit the World's Largest Six Pack.





This is at an old Heileman plant, which is now making microbrews. The World's Largest Six Pack used to be Old Style. I'm glad they are keeping it up. I visited it in the mid-90's on a trip to Minnesota with my aunt who gave me the land. On that trip she gave me some furniture that belonged to my great-grandfather. His house was standing until about 10 years ago, when it got hit by lightning and burned to the ground. The land Peggy gave me was once part of my great-grandparent's land, and it's next to the site of the house.




In 2001 I rode my bike across the country, and camped on the site of the old house, then the next day, went to LaCrosse to watch the Ravens game on TV. This is the bar where I watched the Ravens. It's a blues bar frequented by Bears fans, who were the Ravens' opponents that day. It's three blocks from the World's Largest Six Pack.



Soon afterwards, I got to La Moile, where my 3/4 acre of land is. It's to the right of the house nearest the center. The drawings I have says that the access is at the end of the lane between the two houses.



But the end of the lane is fenced off, and behind it is a deep ravine, so there would be no practical way to get to this lot from the lane.



I became concerned that the land was actually all ravine, and therefore quite useless. I drove into Winona and visited the county offices. The nice lady there printed me out a detailed areal map with the property boundary outlined. It seems the property line approximately follows the bottom of the ravine.

It seems it does not have access from the end of the lane, but it does have about 300' of frontage on the section of old highway 61, which leads to the drive up to the site of my great-grandparents' house.



I hiked up the embankment, and found what appears to be a marker for the corner of the lot, and behind that a field of naturalized lilies.



Just behind that is a clearing with the overgrown foundation of my great-grandparents' house.



It's being overgrown by blackberries.



At the end of the lane was what was once the community's church.



It's now a gift shop.




I hiked up to the cemetery, which was on top of the bluff. Somebody is mowing the access path and maintaining the cemetery, but I did not see my great-grandparent's gravestones. Maybe they are buried in Winona. I'll have to ask my aunt.

I drove back to Winona to get some lunch on the other side of the river. Here is the view of the land from Trempeleau, Wisconsin. It's right behind that tree in the foreground.



Here's another view looking back from farther upstream. The church is the rightmost white dot on the left.



Now I'm eating dinner at a coffee shop with free wi-fi in Winona.



I was thinking about camping on the land, but it's supposed to pour tonight, and I don't think there is any parking on the access road, so I'm going to set out for Omaha. Tomorrow afternoon, I meet Jim, Suzanne, and Laura, at the Omaha airport, and we set out for RAGBRAI.