April 30, 2015
Copyright(c) 2015, Jim Beachy
250 miles, 1,234 miles total
I am awakened by the sound of the door to our hotel room closing. It's 5:50 and Kitty is already on her way to the gym for her morning walk. By 7:30 we are at breakfast, hoping to get a little earlier start today.
"There's a bike parked behind ours," she says. Last night I'd simply asked the hotel clerk for the best place to park the bike, and he told us to park it under the entrance canopy.
"What kind of bike is it?" I ask."Orange."
Orange? I laugh out loud at her response. Tens of thousands of miles traveling together, inspecting hundreds of motorcycles from Gold Wing to BMW to Triumph to Ducati to Victory to Harley Davidson, and this is her best answer? Orange?
As it turns out, there are actually two bikes pulled under the canopy behind ours: One orange and one green Harley-Davidson. I realize that I didn't pull forward as far as I could have, leaving the rear bike with barely enough room to squeeze in under the canopy. I actually write a little note of apology and slide it under the green bike's seat. We never see the riders.
This morning we are on the road by a little after 8:30. As we strike out westward toward US 61, which roughly parallels Mississippi River, we see six FedEx planes in the landing pattern for Memphis International Airport. There are no visible commercial flights. I'm reminded that Memphis is the hub for all FedEx overnight and airfreight deliveries; FedEx has become a global study in efficiency and out-of-the-box thinking: Who would think that an overnight package from, say, Baltimore MD to Washington DC would make the trip to Memphis and back? FedEx is the largest air carrier in the world.
Turning south on US 61, we immediately get a sense of the vastness of the Mississippi Delta. The flat lands stretch in every direction as far as the eye can see, millions and millions of acres, hundreds of square miles of fertile flatland agriculture. This early in the year, many of the fields are bare and we can see that much of the soil is sandy. The levees and swamp lands are full to the brim, often edging into the fields themselves.
We soon stop at the Tunica Visitor Center, which is focused on the history of blues music and the musicians who originated in this area. Howlin' Wolf, Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, these are names that spring to my mind. While not actually born in this area, BB King in a more modern era has certainly become the face of the Delta Blues style of music. There are many blues festivals in the small towns that line the Mississippi here in the Delta. After we leave the Visitor Center, I find Sirius XM Bluesville (Channel 70) and we are serenaded in our headsets for the rest of our day by the vocals and guitar riffs of 12-bar blues.
We've learned that corn is the first crop to go into the fields, followed by summer wheat, soybeans, even peanuts, and finally, cotton. We leave US 61 and find MS 1 as it runs closer to the Mississippi River. We never actually see the river; I'd expected we could find a small town, or a small road that leads to the river, and there probably are some, but dusty gravel roads are off limit for my big bike.
As we ride southward, we see vast fields in various stages of preparation or growth. I'm struck how in the days of slavery, before modern farm implements, raising crops on these vast expanses would have been economically unfeasible if the thousands of laborers had to be paid a working wage. Yet I find it repugnant that the cotton industry and other industrial segments were built on the backs of slaves who had no choice in the matter.
Today, huge farm implements replace the thousands of field workers. There are giant machines to prepare the soil, plant the crops, and, eventually, to harvest them. I imagine one of those giant machines can do in an hour what it took a hundred laborers a day to accomplish. Out here, the highway is a transportation mode shared between two tourists on a Gold Wing, the occasional car, lots of trucks, and sometimes large farm equipment.
The shoulders of the highway are constituted of deep coarse gravel so I can never really find a place for photography, but I shoot quite a few shots through the windshield by setting my camera to "sports" mode.
"What's your impression of the Mississippi Delta?" I ask Kitty.
She hesitates for a second and comes back with "Flat." Well, that's certainly an apt description. Our GPS elevation graph for the day shows a steady, imperceptible drop of less than 200 feet in several hundred miles. This is awesomely flat land!
Nearing the town of Benoit, Kitty says in my headset over the guitar of BB King, "I think you'd better find a place to pull over."
Instantly alarmed, I ask what's wrong, and she says she feels nauseated. Nauseated, inside a helmet, and on a motorcycle - these are not good combinations. Fortunately, at that moment we pass a little cutout for the entry to a field, and I'm able to sneak the bike and trailer off the road and set the four-way flashers. She drinks some water, eats a protein bar, and after 20 minutes or so feels OK to continue into town where we stop a gas station to assess our future.
After another half hour, she feels ready to continue, but just as I start the bike she has another bout. We try to figure out what's happening. Low blood sugar? Probably not because it did not really improve upon eating. Hypovolemia (not enough water intake)? Possibly, because before and after her 4-mile walks she normally drinks copious amounts of water, and today, knowing rest room breaks would be at a premium, she drank less. Or possibly food-related? We never really figure it out, and an hour later we set out again to the town of Greenville where we have a proper lunch. Afterwards, she feels fine. It remains a mystery.
About 40 miles north of Vicksburg, the topography begins its metamorphosis from the flatlands of the Delta into the rolling, wooded hills of central Mississippi. This is evident on the GPS elevation graph.
We arrive at the MACH hotel a little before 4:00 PM. Only a few folks are here at the moment. Gordon (who sucked diesel fuel out of my fuel tank in a galaxy long ago and far away), Gibby (who always comes over to give Kitty a bear hug), and others. The small group decides to head out for dinner; I'm still removing bugs from the bike, so I tell them we'll catch up. Just as I finish and am ready to leave, the Missouri contingent arrives on a dozen or more Gold Wings.
After dinner, we all pull out picnic chairs (see, you can carry picnic chairs when you tow a trailer) and sit in a circle chatting. Suddenly the manager and an assistant appear carrying over half a dozen conference room chairs, and a large package of bottled water. It's a quiet group and the hotel likes having us here, but the gesture surprises me. After a while, someone begins talking about a campfire, and within a short time someone produces a disposable sterno "hotplate", some graham crackers, marshmallows, and chocolate bars. Having no sticks for toasting marshmallows, someone runs to the little store down the hill and buys some metal coat hangers. With the help of a Leatherman side-cutter, we are soon roasting marshmallows. And thus, sitting around our "campfire" in the middle of a hotel parking lot, we create and devour our s'mores. At some point someone produces a package of Jiffy-Pop popcorn that's heated over the flame and we all have several small servings of popcorn. A second packet is attempted but the sterno peters out before it's finished, and a loud lament is heard throughout the land. Nevertheless, our impromptu campfire has been a great success!
Nobody sings Kum Ba Ya.
GPS Track (gray)
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