Corn Maize (USA Day 154)

We’ve met some cyclists who just get the miles done, then stop to think about them. Sam and Erik, our TATter friends, would leave first thing in the morning, arrive at their destination for lunch and have the afternoon to do a spot of laundry, watch some Netflix and polish their shoes. We just can’t do that.

Can you spot the source of today’s puncture?

After twelve miles of Baton Rouge-like outskirts, we found a Walmart and proceeded to stock up against the next couple of days of camping. Then we were both hungry and low-calorie, so it was back inside for donuts, then a toilet break, and then Amy popped in to grab some Halloween items. (More on that soooOOOooon.) By the time all that was done, the clock had squeaked past half eleven.

We’d chosen a shortcut to Franklinton to save a good half day of riding, based on a few CrazyGuy blogs. Honestly, I wouldn’t recommend it. Louisiana highways are awful, boring, bumpy, joyless, loud, ridden with gravel and grass and today, as a special post-Olga bonus, riddled with tree branches. America, clean your shoulders. The dandruff is obscene.

We passed a corn maze (maize?), the kind of fun activity we’d climb off for every day of the week, and rolled up to the kiosk out of habit. It took an hour, she said. With fifty miles of dull grey road and precious few hours with which to ride them, it was all too much. Can you imaging trying to do a maze in a hurry? The dead ends would actually be annoying, rather than amusing. Luckily, instead of actually doing the maze, we met a tiny domesticated pony called Bambi, and a woman behind the counter gave us two huge bags of popcorn. Highlight of our day, by a mile.

Time ticked away while the miles didn’t. At 4pm, sitting in some dog-forsaken field eating popcorn by the handful watching smoke rise from a far-off bonfire, we still had 35 miles to go. By 6pm, as the sun set behind thick, greasy clouds, we still had a dozen.

It was pitch black ten minutes later. We lit up our bikes like Christmas trees, but even our strongest beams couldn’t warn us of the hidden branches all over the shoulder. Main lane, then, was our only option, but now I was measuring the approach of oncoming lights and calling for Amy do duck back into the treacherous shoulder to avoid cars. None of this was remotely fun, by the way. Just to be clear.

We did our eighty miles by quarter to seven, which would be fine in the summer but really no good in late October. Our destination was Franklinton Police Department, who let cyclists camp out back of their station and even invited us into their mess room to watch the World Series on their big screen with big polystyrene cups of Police Coffee. They have a guestbook which shows a trickle of tourers passing through, but none since the beginning of the summer, before it got too hot to breathe, or too hurricane-ish to see. Are we the first to ride (any of) the Southern Tier since the season began?