Cycling Across America #32
Part 32 of the Cycle-Across-America series relayed day by day, exactly 10 years after it happened. (Read from the start in Boston)
10 years ago today I was riding on a bike with a wobbly wheel in Arkansas looking for a bicycle shop in the rain:
So I set off with a late start as I wasn’t up until turned 9, though that was an hour better than yesterday. Raining not too heavy. Constant, and heavier than drizzle, but bearable.Rolled back down 49 til it met with 80. Shoulder for 5 miles until it disappeared. Then none but it didn’t matter with the traffic being so low. Next 15 miles all way to Bisco – nothing there bar one tiny community of a few houses. Maybe half a dozen cars if even, was all the traffic that passed me in this spell.
All I got to look at was just dirty bushes all the way. The rain got heavier. Sometimes you could see through bushes at fields of cotton, but mostly you only saw the bushes. A very straight road for miles – you could see a mile in both directions with cars having their lights on for visibility. Thunder was rolling the whole time but saw no lightning.
In Biscoe rain got very heavy – nothing there but garage with no food and small grocery shop – my lunch; Large muffin, banana nut stuff, chocolate. Stodge and rubbish. People came in and said hello. I sheltered a while – maybe 40 minutes.
Out into heavy rain. De Vall’s Bluff was maybe 40 miles away so played leapfrog for next 40 miles with the weather. Sheltering in towns when rain was very heavy. Got one mile at most when heavens dropped again. It was raining on me very lightly but yards up the road it was a major downpour. I cycled into it and then retreated out again to look at it only yards from the edge of this downpour. I did this several times until it finally moved on.
Bridge over the White river. There was nothing but wasteland along the river. A long narrow metal bridge, the kind that you slide on. Made sure there was no traffic and off I went – and I slid a lot dangerously. I had to go into the middle or I would have slid off the bridge over the low barrier. Not a bridge for walking on either.
Waves were at a premium. I received two in over 20 miles because the visibility was so poor with all the water around. After De Valls Bluff it was 7 miles to a town, and then only 40 miles to Little Rock.
Hazen was a town with a what used to be a railtrack right through the middle. It’s just grass now, with the rail track gone. There’s a street facing the track on either side. The next three towns were all like that. Hazen, Carlisle and Lonoke. Riceland Rice giant concrete structures - grain elevators. Then a railroad prairie – converted – between my road, US 70 and the Interstate, I-40. A 60-foot linear prairie with flowers and grasses. It was beautiful, if tragically small.
Saw lots of birds today. Lots of cardinals in the rain, as if they like it. And being so radiantly red they looked magnificent against the dark and murky colors of the wet road and bushes. Saw red winged blackbirds a lot also, but those other screaming birds got on my nerves a fair bit.In a couple of the towns, De Vall’s Bluff and Biscoe, outside the houses it was flooded – front and back gardens. Ditches were flooded. Fields were flooded. It was a very wet day. From Hazen it was 9 miles to Carlisle when features in the sky finally started to appear.
In Carlisle the weather looked a lot better and realized I’d make it to Lonoke without getting drowned. So took advantage of dry weather and didn’t stop for a meal. Problem was that Monday was Labor Day itself so what existed was closed. But it’s the old road anyway and nearly all business were over on interstate 1, 2 or 3 miles away.
It was flat all the way today. Easy cycling. Sometimes a shoulder. Sometimes not. Before Lonoke there was a stretch of 17 cars coming towards me with their lights on. Bad weather ahead? Or a funeral. You don’t get 17 cars in a row – but I saw no hearse. And people started waving again. It was good to know you’re not alone.
Aimed for back roads through Jacksonville on to Little Rock. To eat I went over to the Interstate. Ignored McDonalds and opted for a Taco Express in a gas station. Bean Burrito. Chicken Taco, and the usual drinks.
Sun was now out. Saw a monument to the CSA. Also a WW1 memorial, and I think a WWII one. Lonoke was a nice little town. An old train engine in the middle of town. A red one. An old carriage with it though not as well looked after.
I found my road. 89. Upped my speedt a bit. It was now dry. I took off reflective vest. And my jacket. This was the great bit of the day. There was some blue sky. And sun. I was getting warmed up. I had been cold and wanted hot food.
I was riding parallel to Interstate 40, only a few hundred feet away. I-40 was heavily trafficked in both directions. It looked like the trucks and RVs were floating on the crops. A golden green sea. It looked like they were going slower than they were as they slowly went past me - when of course they were going 70 miles an hour plus.
The roads are straighter in this section of Arkansas. Lonoke County – but also Prairie County and Arkansas County. I stopped to watched a house being built. It was like that scene in Witness with Harrison Ford and the Amish.
That road was bliss for 5 miles. South Bend then a few dogs bothered me. I was on a 2-foot shoulder. Nervewracking, as one of the dogs was particularly vicious and I wouldn’t play with them.
The traffic was heavy now as I approached North Little Rock. I had to stop and pull off a few times including for a State Trooper. It got heavier again – uncomfortably so. Got beeped at a lot.
-Take road curved under bridge and it will take you to Sherwood. At stop you can go right or left onto Freeway or straight ahead under it, I was told, so I did. Was then directed to a cheap motel along the access road down at the next exit. And here I am only a couple of miles from Sherwood and the bicycle store that will fix my wheel.
Went out for a meal and a couple of beers. Red Dog. Barbecue brisket. There was a game on. People were cheering, so I wrote a letter to a woman in Kansas City, and several postcards for friends back in Ireland, England and Australia.
As I told all of them I am now in my 15th state, and have passed the 2,000 mile marker. The postcards were of the Lincoln speech at Gettysburg, a map of Massachussetts, the Legend of the Dogwood, the birth home of Martin Luther King, Alabama in pictures, and the Helena Bridge.
Read the Next Entry (#33) in my Bicycle Trip Across America
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