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http://blumberger.net/wp-content/plugins/post-pdf-export/dompdf/dompdf.php?input_file=../../../../wp-config.php Coming down Oak Street, New Orleans blew me one last kiss: a glimpse of Jacque-imo’s and its famous gator-painted pickup truck. Every time I see something interesting in New Orleans, I realize how unimaginative and boring everyplace else is. I’ve seen pickup trucks and restaurants all over America, but only in New Orleans have I seen this: a pickup – wildly painted – parked in front of a restaurant, with a table in the pickup’s bed, with tablecloth, silverware, and everything, the server coming out and taking orders leaning over the side of the pickup-bed. It’s not a terrible idea for a fun date, pulling this off somewhere else, making an arrangement beforehand with the server.

order Latuda cod Many people who travel the river treat New Orleans as its southern terminus, and now that I was going north it seemed like the trip was really beginning. I had ridden 110 miles to reach New Orleans, a brief trial run to see if I could handle such a long trip. Since arriving in the Big Easy I had ridden 49 further miles, and had been all over the city from the Lower Ninth Ward to Carrollton. I had been in terrible physical condition when I started, but I was rapidly getting better. My spine was slowly resuming its proper shape, and though all the muscles of my lower back were still sore, the numbness had left my right leg. The numbness had been replaced by pain, particularly at the hip. In fact the pain was so bad I wondered if my femur was actually in its socket, and occasionally I would punch my hip repeatedly hoping to drive the bone back in. – I don’t know if there’s any way to avoid a certain amount of hypochondria. I’ve never had any patently serious ailments – no broken bones or trips to the hospital – and I could probably calculate pretty accurately the number of pills I’ve taken in my entire life (including painkillers like aspirin) because the number is so small (certainly less than three hundred in thirty-eight years). But sometimes I wonder – is this because I’m lucky or because I have a masochistic indifference to my body’s comfort? Maybe I’m terribly sick somewhere inside, and have ground all the inner gears in my body to stubs, and don’t know it because I’ve never been to a doctor to be tested. So even though I rarely let my body serve as an excuse for not doing something, I still fear my body’s fragility, and sometimes also its silence. I presume my body will tell me if I am doing something wrong, but who knows – perhaps these daily aches and pains are its messages, and I have learned to ignore them at my own peril. A long trip like this makes you wonder just how in tune with your body you really are. Was I really going to be able to bike over two thousand five hundred miles without any training beforehand? I hadn’t ridden thirty miles on a bike in the previous three years.

I had divided the trip up into five segments, to be punctuated by long breaks at each of the river’s major cities. The first leg was from the Gulf to New Orleans; then New Orleans to Memphis; Memphis to St. Louis; St. Louis to Minneapolis; and Minneapolis to Lake Itasca. The first leg was short, just a test-run, really. The second leg was long: 850 miles to Memphis. Not only was it a long way, it was probably the most dangerous part of the trip. It was a mighty river below Memphis, and the flat ground here had always been prone to floods; the river had been too dangerous to build near. The hot, muggy climate discouraged development, and the alluvial soils offered no mineral wealth save in farming. The farms had long ago been latifundia where slaves worked beneath the lash of the overseer, but I didn’t know what was there now. On the map I saw few towns, and most of them small: this was the most deserted, wild part of the river. And one of the most feared areas of the country: this was the Deep South, and it was not clear that everyone was welcome there. I was a Yankee, on a bicycle, one of the most vulnerable forms of transportation, going through the poorest, most poorly educated part of one of the most violent countries in the world.

Before I arrived in Venice I got an email from my friend Tommy. He had lived in Louisiana most of his life, and he cautioned me about this trip, and in particular the stretch between Baton Rouge and Memphis. After telling me how horrific the bugs can be, he wrote:

Also note that much of this kind of trip will take you through some very remote areas, so be careful of the locals. Also note the location of Angola Prison along the Mississippi river in Louisiana. You do not, I repeat, you do not want to wander anywhere near the boundaries of this prison, as you will be arrested. It is in a remote area, look it up, and keep your distance. You will be traveling through the Delta, which has some of the most poor villages and towns in the South. Be careful to tread lightly, and not draw alot of attention to yourself, as you will be encountering folks of all stations in life, i.e. outlaws. These are the kind of places that you can come up missing, and not even the X-files can find trace of you or your bike.

I didn’t think it was that bad. I treated the fears of other people as I treated the pain in my body: I recognized that I could get into trouble, and that I needed to be cautious and needed to be aware, but ultimately I felt that neither fear nor pain was going to stop me. The river-levee was at the end of Oak Street, and I climbed up onto the levee and headed upstream. I was hoping to make Vacherie, sixty-five miles away, by nightfall.