Ride Statistics Distance 108 miles- A personal best for me Century time 7 hours 58 minutes Travel time 11 hours Average speed 13.7 which against a headwind of 20+ mph is a respectable speed
Ride time 8 hours 18 minutes
crop duster plane showing off for us
The Yazoo River
Lake George in the middle of the corn fields
Have I mentioned how little I like or appreciate hills recently? Have I mentioned how much I dislike headwinds? Well today’s ride had them both. The hills actually were not as bad as riding into Vicksburg, but rather long inclines with short down slopes but still difficult to face mentally at 6:00 AM in the morning. The hilly part of the ride was complicated by the fact that the two lane highway was frequented by lumber trucks whizzing by and blowing huge gusts of air in our faces as we granny geared up the slopes. Just before the ride flattened out we stopped to take picture of a crop duster, whose pilot, after noticing our cameras, obligingly made several slow low passes without releasing any spray so that we could take photos. After 16 miles, the hills disappeared and the headwinds arrived as we passed over onto the delta. Most of the morning was spent crossing over back and forth across the Yazoo River and riding through tall lush green corn. Around the halfway point we pulled into Café Lake George, an obviously local site which specialized in fried frogs legs. A couple of local men, waiting for their orders, struck up a conversation with us and corrected all of our attempts to speak southern and tell them where we had come from- Vicksburg via Sartartia (pronounced Sataysha) and where we were headed- Indianola via Belzoni (Indioler via Belzona.) They even offered us a taste of the frog’s legs, which had arrived in the meantime, hot and oozing grease. I declined, using my bottle of Gatorade as an excuse, but one of the other ladies tried one and opined that it “tasted like chicken.”
The ride was primarily through fields of corn and something just starting to sprout and large pools of water which I think were crayfish or catfish farms. We passed several catfish processing plants as well as a cotton gin, several feed mills and many many silos.
Except for the constant energy sapping headwinds, the ride was really beautiful. The humidity was low and the temperature was a very comfortable mid 70’s. At about 80 miles we stopped in a KFC for something sweet, carbonated and caffeine containing. The pepsi made us absolutely silly with giggles and snorts, much to the amusement of staff and all three customers. What can I say, it was 4:00 in the afternoon, we had been riding constantly except for 3 10 minutes sag stops and a half hour lunch break, since 6:00 AM, and it was either get silly or give up. After a long laugh fest and some rather really uncoordinated efforts to remount our bikes outside, we sobered up enough to mount up and do the last 27 miles. We rolled past the billboard declaring Indianola to be the birth place of B B King as we hit the 100 mile mark at 7 hours 58 minutes, high fived each other on the bike, and rode the last 8 miles on an endorphine high.
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