Author Archives: The Chronicler

A Trilogy: Bust Bike, Part 3

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We’re resolved to getting it right this time.  It’s time to correct the original mistake. It’s time to get the correct specifications direct from the manufacturer.  It’s time to make time.  Resolved to sitting still and waiting for the correct kit to find its way to us from wherever it takes to come from.

Pre-dawdle day: What one might suppose to be a nice simple process; check the spec, place the order, pay the tab; however, this takes a frustrating twenty-four hours.

Dawdle Day One.  Now we wait out the three working day excessively expensive delivery schedule.

One of the many miners’ icons in the underground museum.

Dawdle Day Two: go culture vulture-ing and disappear under the city, down a tunnel dedicated to mining; meanwhile the bust bike bits have moved east from San Francisco to Memphis TN.  I had to check the map just to confirm what I already knew; our package wasn’t coming by the direct geographical route, would appear that it’s grown a dog’s leg of several hundred miles already.

Dawdle-day Three: hunt out a cemetery that’s been designated a museum.  Where the master mason’s professional title has been mis-translated in one brochure as: ‘pickpocket’.
Meanwhile the bust bike bits have progressed as far as Monterrey in northern Mexico. Thence to get stuck in customs.

Dawdle-day Four: Time to go off and do the unexpected. Theme parks are not our normal habitat.  That oxymoronic idea, ‘a fun-ride’ – being asked to stand in a long hot queue only to be hurled around a roller-coaster, my burrito lunch threatening to make a second coming, just doesn’t appeal. Which is why we’re sitting on a bus going out of town to a ‘film-set’.  Actually the film set used for so many ‘Westerns’: ‘ The Magnificent Seven’, ‘The Good The Bad and The Ugly’, ‘Comanche’, and a swath more of Hollywood’s gun slinging stereotypical celluloids.  Only theme-park it is not, no helter-skelters, no roundabouts, no shooting-shies; what we do have is a performance spoof, a synopsis of the ‘ Wild West’, cowboy/Indian film.  A tick list straight out of central casting.  The black leather clad sheriff, the tight hair-bunn’d ‘madam’ and her bevy of ‘girls’, the bookish store keeper, the degenerate gold prospector, Butch and the Kid as the bank robbers.  With the Apaches who get the best lines and the best dance routines. All are present.
As for the bike-bits, they’re still in Monterrey.

Dawdle Day Five: it’s Christmas Eve, a Mexican holiday and there’s a late evening meal planned for the hostal, for which we’ve volunteered to do the ‘postres’.  Latinos like their puddings, actually they have a penchant for anything sweet, which makes for an easy solution.  We could just go out and buy a gateau… a sticky confection of sweet goo topped with crystallised candies.  But that isn’t ethnically Scottish.  Actually, it is, but it’s not the image we’d like convey.  Deep fried Snickers might work, but there’s no need to perpetuate that urban myth, so the Navigator opts for ‘Cranachan’.

All we will need is a high fat cream, fresh raspberries, pin-head oats and a bottle of Scotch. The grains and the alcohol are easy, the latter being ridiculously cheap, it’s the rest that causes issues. The fruit has already acquired a surfeit of air-miles and the best bit, the cow juice is a chemical laboratory of thickening additives.  One turn of a whisk and it will turn liquid.  The Navigator perseveres, the end result however, is an average imitation of ‘cranachan’.
Meanwhile our ‘bust-bike-bits’ have been on the move, now there in Mexico City! ….. 280km further away than they were yesterday.

Dawdle Day Six: Christmas Day, a day to sit in the parks and watch for all the new toys that have materialised overnight, to join the ‘paseo’ of extended families wandering the traffic-less streets and just relax. I’ve progressed onto my fourth book, which is more than can be claimed by the ‘b-b-bs’ which are still in El Capital.

Dawdle Day Seven. Promissory Day.  Sitting waiting… anticipating…. suddenly package tracking has our ‘b-b-bs’ in town… somewhere.  They’ve gone a staggering 4812km through several distribution centres.. had they come direct it would have been a mere 2277km.  More or less.  It makes for an interesting dissertation on the connectivity of a globalised world.  It also leaves me with another sum: to calculate the number of cycle miles that will be required to assuage all those air-miles – and that’s only on the delivery; the original construction eco-costs will even greater.

Dawdle-Day has suddenly morphed into freneticism day; the FedEx van has delivered a box and collected the tax.  The contents have met with approval and the comparisons with what has been removed only confirms the inferiority of the original build.  So much for Miami’s top wheel builders.  The first wheel has been dismantled and I have retreated to a safe place; my rôle is simply to feed coffee and quesadillas.  The Navigator has argued successfully in favour of doing the lace work and the initial tension on the wheel herself.  It’s a measure of how pissed-off she’s become with bike shops and their mansplaining condescension.

I am in awe.

My retreat is in part due to the Navigator’s assessment of my workshop skills, ones that she describes as ‘agricultural’…. if the first hammer blow doesn’t work, hit it again, only harder!

Dawdle-Day Eight: two wheels partially built, initial spoke tensions done, walk to cycle shop, negotiate the job-spec, “tensionar la rueda SOLO”, drink a coffee and panic that the mechanic will de-construct the five hours of Navigator’s construction, as ‘he’…it’s always a ‘he’, knows best.

Visit yet another museum, this time one dedicated to Pancho Villa, Mexican revolutionary and supposed ‘Hollywood’ actor who probably has more films to his name than any comic ‘superhero’.  Return to collect that evening to find one wheel in the ‘rig’, work underway. Looks like we’ll be visiting another museum tomorrow.

A Trilogy: Bust Bike, Part Two

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We walk back through the town with our re-built wheels, that frankly look much like they had when we deposited them three days earlier. However we were handed a clutch of what was presumably the replaced spokes, assured that the new ones were stainless-steel.  Happy to have our bikes back to a serviceable order.

Still there was a nagging doubt about their shape, a technicality that just wasn’t right. I just didn’t know what the solution was, that and euphoric optimism can out-trump rational thought. Of course everything will be alright once we start riding again.

Three days later, eight thousand feet of ascent and riding what will become a classic Mexican tour-cycle route in the future.  A road that carries traffic numbers measurable in single digits per hour, that continuously meanders around the mountains, that goes nowhere fast.  I hear a faint ping.

This is a first.  A first in over 150,000km.  Yet I instinctively know what’s happened.  We’ll use three of our replacement spokes over the next fifty kilometres.  Spokes that have so long been cable-tied to the frame that it’s a wonder that they are the correct size, such are number of new rims we’ve replaced over the last fifteen years.

That night we camped in a stunning location, Mexiquillo’s , ‘jardin de piedras’, a rock garden.  One that at first sight had me wondering if it was man made.  It’s not, but it has that remarkable feeling that this is the work of a highly talented landscape artist; creating the perfect ‘man-nature’ installation. A symmetry of rock placement, silent green water and knurled, contorted pine trees.  Extract and import to the Chelsea Flower Show and it would carry off the gold award.  And yet with the best of intentions I just couldn’t settle to appreciating it, with a mind that just wants to churn over the many permutation and scenarios of potential disasters.  Eventually into a broken doze, I manage to wake myself; a faint ping… oh bugger, the spokes are snapping of their own accord now… it was probably just a pine needle.

Then out of adversity steps providence.

Another ping… perform another repair. At this rate, I conclude we now only have enough spokes to cover the next two hours. Time to retreat back to the last pueblo that we passed; to find that a collectivo is anticipated soon, the only collectivo of the day. A mini bus rolls up, one with a roof rack and space for our bikes.  It looks like it would be rated for around a dozen passengers, yet I well know that it won’t leave until it’s exceeded that by a sizeable margin.  I’m not wrong.

At each subsequent stop yet more passengers are wedged in and we are squashed further into the back. It’s probably as well that my immediate horizon and long view is of the child’s shoe swinging in front of me; that way I can’t watch the barrier-less road verge falling vertiginously down the next canyon wall.

A second bus ride and we arrive in the desert city of Durango. A city with colonial culture, cycle workshops and fast wi-fi. I hope it’s all that we need.

A Trilogy: Bust Bike, Part One

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Update for those in the know: we’re in La Paz, Mexico.  Ferry port city at the bottom of The Baja…. that long thin appendage that dangles from the bottom of the western USA.

We’re cloistered in a converted convent, whilst a vital cycle component requires hospitalisation. A potential for angst, yet we’re in a happy place.

The nuns’ old cells are cloistered around an enclosed courtyard and down a narrow alleyway, with today’s colour scheme best described as ‘Irreligious Virulent Ikea’, the walls hung with renditions of impending purgatory and black cowled monks. The bedbase, the headboard, the bedside table, the cloak closet are all rendered in rebar and concrete, the window isn’t, but that’s because there isn’t one. And we’re happy.

It’s different, yet very familiar. It’s an hostel not a motel, you can tell the difference by the lack of anonymous numbered doors looking vacantly onto an auto cluttered parking lot, but by the sink full of dirty dishes left for the wash-fairy. We’ve found these places before, there’s little pretence to what is assumed to be the requirements of Western visitors, frequented by families, northern snow-birds, students, bikers and parsimonious cyclists. There’s even street food right outside serving all day. What’s not to be happy about?

Well the rear wheels of both our bikes.

Long story short….they were build some time ago, the work can at best be described as ‘inadequate’. But it wasn’t ‘broke’ so we didn’t ‘fix-it’. Our fault. Whilst not ‘bleeders’ in the A+E department, they have started to complain and have gone to see the GP, who’s agreed with our diagnosis, now they’re in ‘out-patients’, being attended to by a sympathetic repair shop. Which has enforced a lay over in what looks already like an interesting city. Any place that has street art, a whale museum, indigenous coffee, craft cerveza and cinnamon buns is worthy of investigation.

Pacific Black Brant Geese

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Out on the salt marshes of Guerrero Negro, Baja California Sur, we encountered a large flock of these small, gregarious geese.

This is but a short post to share this recording; technology is once again putting up a spirited fight and I haven’t been able to figure out a way to share it on FB otherwise.

Mexico – First Impressions

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Hi there!  Lesley here.  Crashing in on The Chronicler’s domain with some thoughts for you.

Since we arrived in Mexico on Sunday morning, I’ve been pedalling along trying to pin down what it is that makes me feel so generally happy and content to be here.  What in particular changed at the border?  Believe me, there were many things – I don’t think I have ever crossed a land border where the changes have been quite so immediate and so profound.

We arrived from the USA; a country whose culture and lifestyle is also very different from that of Scotland.

So, with no judgement as to what is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, here are my impressions so far.

Folk out and about on foot; people in plazas and on pavements, waiting for buses or hailing taxis.  Children playing in the streets.  In the parts of the US where we were travelling, folk don’t walk, and there are few, if any, buses.  Suddenly, there are people around that you can talk to and ask questions of, and share a smile.  Much harder when everyone is in a car.

The chaotic traffic and the lip-service paid to the rules of the road.  Strange as it may seem, this actually makes cycling a little easier.  Because everyone drives the same way, erratic behaviour is tolerated in a way that it is not in more law-abiding societies.  For example, if these two strange vehicles, these loaded touring bikes, discover they need to be three lanes over in order to effect a left turn, there is a pretty good chance of folk holding back while we get there.  In Scotland or the US, it is often a case of dismounting and using the pedestrian phases of the lights – something that can be incredibly protracted.  Crazy, stressful, yes.  But a different sort of crazy…

Real food.  For the first time in weeks, we had food that was made for us from the base ingredients, and not something that came frozen from a Sysco truck.  Our joy on being presented with a ‘burro’ stuffed with grilled beef, cheese, beans and veggies, was immense.  No, it wasn’t a burrito; this thing was made with a tortilla about 70 or 80 cm across, the finished product had about the same size and heft as 2 litre bottle of water, and served two.  There may even have been happy noises as we demolished it.  Yes, real food can be found in many places in both Scotland and the US; but for a hapless stranger out in the sticks, it can be hard to find.  Here, it is everywhere.  Yesterday, breakfast of eggs ad refried beans, cooked to order at a roadside stand.

Ripe fruit.  Folk in the UK and the US are so accustomed to unripe fruit that it has become the norm. The taste of properly ripened fruit is incomparable.

The presence of cheap and cheerful hotels and motels in most settlements; faded glory or great intentions, these wee places are safe and welcoming.

The prices!  Being a poor, beleaguered Brit at the mercy of the current exchange rate, we found our time in the US extremely expensive.  Suddenly, the basics of a travelling cyclist’s life – food and accommodation – are cheaper by two thirds to three quarters.  This in the notoriously expensive, touristy area of northern Baja California.

There you have it.

Down to a Shining, Dying Sea

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You invite a couple of Australian hydrologists with a reputation for irrigating large tracts of Australia to come and do a similar project in Southern California. There’s a suitable river not too far away, the rock is soft, gravity and topography are all in their favour. The Coffey brothers set to and dig a canal to plunder the flow from the Rio Colorado, the same Colorado that is carving out the Grand Canyon. Initially it proves a successful project: 100,000 acres are irrigated; so successful that to protect their investments, the investors decide that the desert greening could easily be increased substantially by the addition of a further two feeder canals. Only the problems are already starting to build up; for the new agri-oasis is 200 feet below sea level, there’s no outflow. The agricultural run-off and the river sediments are fast creating an ecological disaster. What was a geological depression is now an agrochemical sump. Not deterred, the canals are dug… in Mexico, without the consent of that country’s national government.

img_4140.jpgIt’s now that nature steps in and does that which it does best: puncturing Man’s infinite hubris. A wet winter high in the sierras bloats the river, which bursts out and cuts a new channel; not to the sea, but with the obvious aid of gravity, down into all that low lying land. That sump becomes a Sea, The Salton Sea.

Not to be deterred, the Aussie navvies reconstruct the now-flooded railway and for sixteen months haul rocks into the breach, even dumping the rail cars onto the heap at the finish, so convinced were they that they had thwarted nature. Declaring that the New Sea would recede and disappear within the year.

24251CFE-1FB1-4D8A-B2A6-51E4DD7EC2E2All this occurred over a century ago. The Salton Sea is still here.
This is our second visit to this aberration, taking a few days detour to come back deliberately to wander around it, to walk it’s strands – not of sand not even of pebbles but of salt barnacles and fish bones. These a case of classical bio-transfers; the former arrived on the floats of sea-planes and the latter as fish farm escapees.
It’s a poignant place as we scrunch the drift dunes of fish bones and dead Tilapia, the sea’s skin a placid glutinous silence, spatter-dashed by hatching waterbugs, that leaves an ominous primordial echo. A solitary white heron stalks the margin, disturbed, it gives an indignant croak and languidly relocates further along the shore-line. But on a stormy day this Sea takes on a different persona, or at least a different smell; then the bed sediments are disturbed and a sulphurous odour pervades. It’s that which I remember from our last visit; part knacker’s yard, part fishing port, part off-eggs.7BD19439-E0CC-4675-AF3D-607DFC257D23

Sifting through the detritus on the tideless margin, I manage to uncover a rod complete with spinning reel and nylon line, encased in a crusted scab of salt and barnacles. A modern archeological find: from the age of Bakelite, circa 1950, from a time when this seashore was the holiday playground for the Los Angelinos. Two hurricanes and the ever increasing salination has killed off those aspirations, along with a dropping sea level that now leaves the marina dock and boat ramp stranded high and dry.

Maybe with further water loss the old railway track, the salt extraction plant, the irrigation ditches and fruit tree stumps will reappear just as those 19th century developers predicted, only a century later.

For now it should remain as a salutary monument, a reminder that Nature will always prevail given time. For that one idea alone, makes a visit worthwhile.

West to the Dry

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If the GulfShores were about bleached sand-strands and sprawling resort condominiums and the HillCountry about irresponsible free-wheeling and small cow-towns, then what comes next is an anticipated delight. The portents have been increasing; the beaver tail cactus hidden in the woodland understory, the grit-strewn naked limestone pavements, the juniper trees giving way to the mesquite scrub, the mosquitoes that are now absent. Those rolling hills have been pulled, stretched out, now they’re elongated gradual ascents, and dependent upon wind, warmth or mood can be a toil or a joy. Those flatland rivers that were either deep tannin mysteries or sluggish, grubby and glutinous with sediment, that then gave way to the sharp steel-green clarity of impatient HillCountry rivers are now intermittent aberrations, entirely dependent for the sustenance of thunderstorms. Dry gulches of flood-swept tideline grasses, grounded tree trunks, and occasional stranded, dehydrating puddles. Here today – gone tomorrow.

We’re moving through deja-vu and west Texas. We’ve seen this picture film before, and yet it should be no surprise. National governments have no major impact on macro scenic geology, (or at least not until they award licences to extract a mountain), we could so easily be in northern Argentina, highland Bolivia, or as we are, western USA. Rounding a bend to come on a long, narrow linearly-developed rail-town set in the bottom of a canyon.  Single storey properties, red roofs glinting in the vast desert light, the whole punctuated by slender pencil-thin Lombardy poplars. Potential twin-town names scroll in my mind, that is until we start to roll down Main Street, when it takes on a particularly poignant USA story. Town centre has withered, the sidewalks are deserted, the cobwebbed windows are papered over, the faded ‘open’ signs now a fib of long term lies. Commercial life, the motels and gas stations have drifted to the perimeter. One Cactus Plaza doesn’t even have one cactus.

The potential is there for stereotypical adjectives like depressing, despairing and oppressing to predominate, if it wasn’t for a simple encounter. We’ve stopped briefly to consider our overnighting options, to review the larder’s contents and consider our next move, when a gent hails us from a distance. Waving from the dark shadows of a motel is Danni and yet another stereotype. It wasn’t immediately obvious that he was in anyway connected to the motel other than the fact that he is Indian, as in south Asian, a group who run so many of the family motels. It transpires that he is the sole cleaner, receptionist and as we soon find out, conversationalist. There’s no heavy selling, he even seems surprised when we decide that we wish to take a room. I get the impression that his interests are more in conviviality that commerce. A fact emphasised by the snack tray in our room and the fact that he insists on cooking us a traditional Indian meal for our tea. Suddenly this town feels very different.

The railroad made Sanderson, there to serve the small sheep and goat ranchers; then the government removed the textile subsidies from wool and mohair in ’93 and the decline set in. The up-train still stops, but only to allow the down-train to pass; those small ranchers, their stockyards and collecting corals now raise tumbleweed and fly-dust, their unprofitable spreads converted to hunt camps and in one instance to: ‘exotic hoof’ ranching. (aondad, mouflon, zebra, axis, kudu, addax, ibex, markhor, bongo, scimitar, red deer).

We’ve been meeting a number of touring cyclists over the last short while and it would be possible to divide them into two sub-sections: those who are desperate to leave the desert and those that are in a total thrall to it. One even seems addicted; he’s been in the Chihuahua Desert for a month and who is now heading north to find “a different type of rock an’ dirt”.

We’re going to do the same. These vast open spaces, the sharp cut light, the cold wind that mingles with the hot sun becomes addictive.

Oddities on the Road….

Pelicans to Pecans

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They really are the most improbable of birds, ones that should reside in the fossil record or at the withered tip of an evolutionary tree. A bird made for easy comical characterisation, lumbering on take-off, landing like a float-plane on touch down. And yet, as I sit on a sea wall, one can but marvel at their grace in flight. A wing of pelicans are travelling the shoreline, heading out to the fishing grounds, a single long line skene. They each rise and fall in easy succession, an aerial graph of the sea’s undulating contours, as if drawing energy out of the breaking waves. Gliding, the leading bird offers a few leisurely wing beats and the subsequent followers follow suit, like a flicked pulse travelling down a skipping rope.

Yet those pelicans’ few oscillations have probably gathered more accumulated height on that short fly-past, than we have in the last six weeks cycling through the states of Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and eastern Texas. The handlebar computer gives a height gain figure that can only be accounted for by totalling up the bridge climbs and adding them to the kerb clambers.

And now we meet our first true hill, a salt dome appropriately name ‘High Hill’, all 25 feet of high hill. Still, it’s a foretaste for when we eventually decide to forgo the levels of the Gulf coast and head in land to the Texas HillCountry and the groves of pecan trees.

“Ya’ll in the Texas Hill Country now…” or so I’ve been informed by our volunteer warden who’s checking us in at the next state park: “My, I hadn’t noticed”, ……” could that be why my thigh muscles are a bit taut?”.  But I didn’t say it.

We’ve gone from the flatlands of the Gulf Coast, travelling inland and upward; it’s now that I’m reminded that there are two sides to a hill, that for the first time on this trip we get that interesting sensation of a freewheel. The best type of freewheeling: brake-free freewheeling.

Crest the rise… a flat stretch that gives time to inspect the cattle in the paddocks…. then a gentle falling away…. a long gentle drop down a straight line… set off… the speed picking up…. the novelty of effort-free travel…. faster still…. no I’m not going to brake…. no braking, only this could hurt… hurt a lot if it goes wrong…. hope there’s no gravel at the bottom… don’t want to brake… got to keep the momentum going, see how far up the other side I can get…. won’t brake… good, no gravel…. oh bugger, there’s an expansion joint… bang!…. reckon that made the panniers flap on their hinges…. still I didn’t brake and I got part way up the next rise. Try to remember that on the next drop. Trouble is, I seem to have a very short memory.

Tales of the Week – 12th February 2017

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Fat Tuesday

No sooner has twelfth night passed and the Christmas tree has been packed away, than it’s time to bring it back down from the loft again. Only the colour scheme is no longer red and white but gold, purple and green. Santa Claus shuffles away, making room for Mardi Gras. Easter is late this year, so the parades are still a four weeks away, but that doesn’t stop the anticipation from pervading the city. We stroll the French Quarter from end to end, wandering through a heritage of French colonial homes with their iron filigree balconies, gas lamps and windows decked in the montages and memorabilia of Carnival.

The supermarkets, however have a predicament; the clash between one saint’s day and the bacchanalia of pre-Lenten festivities. St. Valentine’s heart pink vies for the therapeutic retail dollar with the purple justice, gold wealth and faith green of Carnival. The latter has a hint of Catholic cleansing to it: faith substituting for the problematic pagan fertility. The former’s merchandise majors on the predictable chocolate, hearts and roses, whilst the latter’s is wreaths, masks and beads.

Beads; we’ve been spotting their evidence all along the roadside’s gutter for several days, such that I knew there was story to be found. It was either a fadding trend with juniors in middle school or a scrap lorry had travelled exactly our route, shedding its load. Then I see a painted advert on a wall: ‘Mardi Beads: 40c/lb.’ paint fading, inflationary challenged, but obviously pertinent, so with a bit more investigation, I come up with ‘the throws’. The tradition is for the different ‘krews’ to literally throw the beads from their passing decorated floats to the crowds on the pavements, kudos being gained by how full your stash bag is. However, how you attract their attention seems to be debatable. I can confirm that the Navigator acquired her string by morally acceptable means. She did not flash the ladies.

Bridge Heritages.
Around New Orleans – and that can be up to a weeks worth of cycling – when you meet with a fellow traveller, the cross fertilisation of information turns quickly to bridges. Like the ‘bear tales’ of Canada, we’ve all acquired a tale. Usually the result of erroneous information that sends you up an access ramp that at first appears to have little traffic, a reasonable shoulder and an adequate parapet. Only for a thunder of heavy semis to growl behind, at the same moment the shoulder shrinks and the barrier between yourself and a long drop dwindles, all in direct proportion to an increasing side wind that wants to help you get you better acquainted with the Intracoastal waterway far below. Then your front wheel wobbles on a crud of rotting ‘crete and an expansion joint, only for a whole window frame with jaggy glazing to appear in front.

These errors these day are less endemic, in part as many of these mid 20th Century’s crossings have been replaced with new structures and the wondrous advent of ‘street view’. Still, we’ve managed to accumulate a few new tales. Crest one bridge, expecting a mirror image of the ascent only to find that the shoulder-less road morphs into a narrow causeway that snakes around the bend and disappears into the middle distance. Just don’t look in the mirror. State-lines, certainly in the South, have a tendency towards no-mans land, neither brand of governance feeling the need to maintain the asphalt, so running the interstate motorway out of Louisiana and expecting the vast hard shoulder to cross the state line marked by a bridge was, in retrospect, ambitious. Pedal like fury.

Still, these steel girdered bridges are an emblematic heritage in a place where any modern and potential new heritage is so easily ripped down and replaced with yet more near-temporary structures. Several are now shrouded in polythene, the racket of riveters and apparently miniature scaffolders working on gantries high above me testifies to their status as working museums. Still, I won’t be visiting them as they’re still in their 1933 width, that of a horse cart passing a Model T Ford.

Primitive camping….

As a descriptive, it’s a movable feast; no two campgrounds seem to agree on the definition. At Topsail, Fl. we opt for their version, which when we find it has seclusion, shelter, electricity, water and a raised gravel pad: ‘lux-primitive’. Move on to Sea Rim, Tx, and the exact same term, to find ourselves pitched on the sand, literally within the storm high-tide line. It looks idyllic, the setting sun dropping into a tropical sea, the gentle lapping of the waves lulling you into your slumbers. What isn’t obvious is the drift of sticky, salt infused sand that pervades every crevice and surface, the ever present anticipation that somebody will drive over your tent, and the voracious mosquitoes waiting to feast on homo cyclista scoticus. The odd thing was, we had cycled fifty miles out of our way to gain this experience, only for an attempted trumping the following evening by a park whose wash facility was a six mile round trip from the tent site.

I must be getting a bit old for this style of camping, especially if I’m obliged to part with dollars for what in essence is a stealth camp. Where once, as a recovery tonic, we would have stopped for some hot street food for breakfast, now it takes a motel, a bath and time. Still it will remain memorable.

Gulf Shores, Mississippi

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Last week of January, 2017.

A quick perusal of the app-map suggests that the road and coast stay in close proximity, which would be a continuation of what has become the style for this journey, a close and intimate connection with the Gulf of Mexico’s shoreline.

Of course, I’d made that egregious mistake of presupposing, of visualising a place; I’d had an image of swamp mangrove, bald cypress trees swagged in Spanish Moss, a curtain of silent marshy vegetation between ourselves and the water, with only occasional glimpses of the sea. Where sand had birthed a beach, a canyon wall of condominiums would have sprung up, each tower sequestering its own private beach. It’s an image drawn in part from previous travels along other similar shorelines. Only it’s been a revelation: the surmised image has been shattered. True, there have been bogs and resorts, but the sand spit barrier islands have easily out-competed the concrete .

Then we arrive on the Mississippi Shores. The state has a relatively short exposure to the Gulf, but has garnered a blazon of disaster publicity. Hurricane Katrina made landfall here on 25th August ’05 and in so doing glaringly exposed an ossuary of political and social skeletons. The clean-up is complete, but the evidence still visible. Yet for the distance cyclist there is the glory of an uninterrupted boardwalk, post-Katrina now rendered in cement, that runs for over sixty kilometres. A classic promenade with an uninterrupted view across the shoreline to a vast open sea that today is gentle rippling steel, edged onto a mottled mackerel sky of fractured sun shafts.

Derelict pier post Katrina

To landward are the storm survivors, avenues of grand oaks that lead to the gracious plantation mansions, interspersed by vacant lots of clipped grass with a forlorn, fading ‘for sale’ signs. Ghost plots: even the vacant cement plinths, the concrete flight of three steps to nowhere, have been removed, as if no memorial should exist to depress the real estate’s value. The sole reminders are a series of sixteen commissioned high rise public conveniences distributed all along the coast, high enough to carry the high water mark, the surge of twenty-three feet.

Stand and look out over today’s innocent ‘scape, it’s near incomprehensible to contemplate the power of that past hurricane’s natural force. It’s easier to stay in the present tense and return to the easy pedal-trance down by the shore.

Some people see life in one way….

I calculate all that power to be somewhere in the region of 840 horses champing at the bit, waiting to enter the national park. It’s not an extreme example, they’ve been passing us ever since we left Miami. No, we are the oddities; we with our fore-end quarter of one Clydesdale power of bicycles.

That multiple assemblage of rig, which could contain up to eight people and would still be considered one unit, yet two people on two bikes are of an equal score. The charges are similar. In fact they will be seniors who will have purchased a ‘$10 life-time, all-state pass’ and so gain free entry and a half price discount to hook up their motor coach. But that’s not my grump; they’ve served their sentence, paid their taxes, earned their benefits, no….. They will now be provided with a hard standing, sewage drain, water tap, 50 amps of electricity, manicured lawn, grand shade trees, all supported by a splendid wrap around view. The tent camper, paying exactly the same tariff, (we’re not alone), will be crammed onto the tyre-rutted, tree-less, grass-less, value-less corner into which one of these septuagenarian driven behemoths would have difficulty negotiating.

The injustice can feel stark and yes, I am in a grump, in part as our immediate and near intimate neighbour had an in-depth two-hour ‘phone conversation, one that terminated at two in the morning.

And yet I know who has the greater freedom, as we, the following night, pitch in a beautifully secluded spot reserved for those that are prepared to walk a short distance from their mode of transport. And a couple explain how they’re stuck, unable to move on, as they’re awaiting delivery of a new servo motor, to replace the one that retracts their bedroom extension.

Whilst others see it differently…….

 

 

 

 

Juxtaposed signage…..spotted in New Orleans:

One’s the patron saint to several countries, the other the liberator of several more….. however I suspect this is the only place where their lives have crossed.