Florida Ride - Day Four
Diane drove us from our motel to the Tammany Trace Trailhead in Covington, La, where I began my ride this morning.
In addition to a replica of the original rail station, there was a clock tower, a bandstand, restrooms, visitor center, exhibit hall and a small movie theater. On Wednesdays, the Covington Farmers Market offers fresh produce, light lunches, and live music.
The 31-mile Tammany Trace trail extends from Covington to Slidell, La. The old Illinois Central Railroad beds have been asphalted and the rail trestles have been remodeled into pedestrian bridges.
The high humidity (98%) and the threat of imminent rain were the only challenges along the trail.
As one of the highlights of my six-day ride, the trail connects the communities of Covington, Abita Springs, Mandeville, LaCombe, and Slidell as it makes its way through piney woods, dence deciduous growth, and wetlands with their lengthy bridges.
Some of the wetlands were perennial swamps dotted with knees from the Cypress trees.
Other areas of the wetlands were made up of major waterways, such as Bayou LaCombe, shown here.
I stopped for a short break at Bayou LaCombe. While there I struck up a conversation with a homeless gentleman. Before leaving I gave him one of my Clif bars to eat.
The bridge over Bayou LaCombe is a simple sectional-lift drawbridge.
The drawbridge stays in the up position between 5pm and 7am to avoid boating accidents at night. Therefore, this section of the trail is closed during those hours.
While exploring some of the communities the bike trail went through, Diane found this beautiful specimen of a Live Oak, laden with Spanish and Resurrection Moss. (She asked me to stand in front of it to provide a scale).
Surprise of all surprises! Diane also found this small remote cemetery. It had only five graves, but was freshly adorned with flowers.
After riding the better part of four days across Louisiana, I was ecstatic to finally cross into Mississippi.
(Keep in mind that Louisiana is shaped like a boot, and I crossed the lower section. Only the tongue of of the State of Mississippi extends to the toe of the Louisiana "boot".)
I didn't ride too far before Google Maps informed us that we had to turn off of the main road. The secondary road quickly turned into a seldom used gravel lane.
It had been freshly graded with minus 2" gravel.
After several miles, I wanted to yell "Uncle" to Diane, but I couldn't catch up to her, and we had NO cell service.
We eventually arrived back at the same road we had turned off of. :-(
Most of the homes in this part of Mississippi, whether small mobile homes or large mansions, were on stilts.
Alas, we reached the Gulf, with its clean white beaches. We were both energized by the change of scenery.
While Diane rode ahead to scout out where we were going to stay for the night, I stopped for a while to talk to a couple of fishermen on the "all-but-deserted" fishing pier.
Only one of them was having any luck, the other one was mostly interested in telling me his life story.
I continued to ride on the sidewalk adjacent to the beach the rest of the day - until we arrived at Bay St. Louis, where we stayed the night.
Takeaways:
The Tammany Trace trail was one of the highlights of my six-day ride. However, because it was straight, level, narrow, and without a horizon it offered few, if any, challenges or choices. Generally, it was also without milestones or anything that might have served as a progress marker. Even with the variety of foliage around me, after a while the trail started to become a bit monotonous. The adversities, trials, or just hard things in our lives bring not only variety and progress markers, they also help us determine what is really important to us and help us remain committed. While hard at the time, adversities play an important role in joy we get out of life.
The gravel road we encountered was in sharp contrast to the smooth paved Tammany Trace trail. It was very slow going, and after several miles for slogging through the loose gravel, and with no end of it within sight, I was ready to give up. Diane was intentionally staying far ahead of me to avoid kicking up dust in my face. I probably would have thrown in the towel if I'd been able to catch up with her. To make matters worse, we were in an area without cell coverage. The Google algorithms that put us on this isolated road don't consider road surface or other important personal services that cyclists need, but rather select what appeared to be the shortest route. Sometimes in real life we do the same thing to ourselves; we divert course onto undesirable paths because we don't take into consideration things that later on might become very important to us. The scriptures help us maintain a long-term prospective.
My visit with the homeless man at the Bayou LaCombe bridge was very interesting. Due to a couple of day-jobs he had taken, he had temporarily been away from his established place of residence along the bayou. Upon returning, he found that others have taken over his place, and had trashed and vantalized it. He was consumed by distress and fear. He was afraid that if he moved back they would return and hurt him. He felt that he had no choice but to find another place -- one that no one else wanted. He was troubled knowing that his friends wouldn't know where to find him, or even if he was alive. Once he found a new place that he could call home, he thought that he would try to let his friends know of his change of residence; but he worried how he might not be able to do that and still keep claim on his new spot. The poor man was paralyzed with worry, fear, and bewilderment. When we let our fears drive away our faith, then our peace, comfort, and security are also sacrificed. Without faith our troubles can paralyze us and destroy our future hopes.
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