Hoping for a Tail Wind

The culture cipher arrives. Cuarenta.

I wake up and pack up. No coffee. One movement from the digestion orchestra. I’m ready to make up the miles we lost yesterday. Plus it’s bike path for 15 out of the first 24 miles. Motivation and energy coincide and I get my Ramadan on for the first couples hours of the day.

Though I’m complaining less, we are still without a tail wind. Outside of the ride into NOLA, it’s been side or headwinds every day since we Texas. Maybe I need to change the name of this blog. Today it’s gulf coast force winds in our face. More noticeable than the last few days because there’s a storm on our tail. A storm we probably could have successfully beaten out of the gulf coast if we hadn’t spent yesterday on hold. There’s wasn’t even hold music. Nonetheless we’re going until we can’t go anymore.

I pull into our one and only Alabama Walmart. God is great, as long as god is either you or me, or maybe them. Maybe. I score three bike tubes, some bananas and a salad. The salad is my 500 calorie break fast. I like my women like I like my Walmart salads: lightly dressed and bold enough to break shit.

Damon chomps vegan cookies and applauds the Alabama level of masking inside the store. I don’t even notice that kinda shit anymore; instead I’m striking up a conversation with an employee named Erica. She says she used to travel around a lot more. She’s awesome. Erica tells me she’s gonna pray for us. I want to have the god discussion but instead accept this sorta thing and later mention all of it to Damon a few miles up. So much praying for him and I, probably for nothing. Damon speaks fluent hipster, his only reply is “we’ve mad angels in the outfield bro”. Sho nuff and praise jeebus.

I am fairly certain it is Tuesday or Wednesday and this Gulf Coast bike path is in high demand. Traffic volume that isn’t reported on your local morning news. Groups. Families. How many of these folks even know that this bike path is a published cross country route?

State numero ocho! Florida gives us a sign and a few miles up we meet a rate fellow long haul cyclist heading in the other direction. I can tell by his gear load. We stop and chat. His name is Justin. We hold a conversation across a traffically-thunderous two way road. He started in Key West, up to St Augustine, on to San Diego, then on to Santa Cruz. Fantastic. He’s super optimistic and it gives me a boost too.

The sunshine state. I’ve been inside you so often. Most of your major cities. I’ve biked your Keys. The whole set of them. The volume of motorists motorizing goes way up. The quality of motorists motorizing diminishes. Your roads are pretty good so far. Florida is showing me the hidden chambers where dodging hanging vines over the shoulder while dodging vehicular traffic in the road is the ultimate maneuver. We have only thirty five chambers, there is no thirty sixth. I know that but I want to create a new chamber. Oh and what would that be?

Break time in Pensacola provides an afternoon outdoor bar hang. The bartender Nick tells me that the bar is owned by a brewery and they has a party and drank all of their beer. They are out of beer. Only in Florida. We settle on afternoon cocktails instead. Feels good; a unique feeling being back east. Familiarity and funkiness. Damon, in his fluent hipster, calls it a vibe. He’s been struggling over something today so hopefully this can recharge his batteries a little bit. Another place up the road take claims to be the original bacon cheeseburger circa 1939; their logo is a pig with wings. I didn’t get a photo but I have serious concerns about the validity of their claims. I guess I should have stopped.

A dozen miles out of Pensacola and our Nolan Ryan-esque no hitter streak of staying out of the rain ends. Sort of. Add an asterisk. Lightning fills the sky and the humidity goes through the roof. As the lightning frequency increases, I pull off under cover of a store. There’s ketchup and mustard on the weather radar. This is five minutes before the downpour. And it is a downpour, with plenty of rolling thunder and lightning. This 15 minutes before Dave saves us 8 miles in rain and wind and lightning by picking us up and delivering us back to his place for the night. He’s got a trailer we load out bikes on and we manage to somehow stay dry. Yet another angel in the outfield, as Damon put it.

Back at Dave’s place, his wife Stacy is hooking up what is one of best — if not the best — meal of the tour. Shrimp tacos for me. Jackfruit tacos for Damon. I crush maybe 6 or 7 tacos. Dave is basically building their house while they live in it. It’s got steel beams to survive hurricane winds. It’s got an upstairs sort of bungalow for us to crash in. I mingle with their dog Tank and a couple of the handful of cats perusing around. Tank is 13 or 14 and recently lost his doggie friend. Dave and Stacy foster kittens. One is named Domino. One is Devito. One named Queso jumps up and lays next to me, purring away. I think it’s Queso. It wasn’t Domino. It could be a rotation of pussy sleeping with me all night for all I know. The rain beats on the metal roof; natural white noise is in full effect and I am grateful to be dry.

I’m under a house. My head hurts. A throbbing headache has robbed my brain of its operational abilities. Dehydration for certain. It is real. I pound a gallon of water and we pack up and move out, looking for coffee and toilets. Everything is closed on this sleepy island. Most things don’t even open again for four more days. Gas station fried chicken is now a breakfast food group. Fight me about it.

Not gonna fight me? Great. I’ve got a ferry four miles up to catch. Ride!

The pseudo-hangover continues in the form of a US Coast Guard inspection on the Mobile Bay Ferry. The boat off this island is presently shut down. The gentleman at the ticket booth explains further, “probably back up and running at 1pm”. Well, ok then. Damon and I adjust plans; I cancel on the backyard camp permission and he calls a state park half the distance up. We enter a holding pattern formation.

The holding pattern evolves into a picnic table nap, which evolves into picnic table yoga. I’m having a hard time sitting still. Damon is exploring Historic Fort Gaines; I head back to the ferry docking port. I find another picnic table, public restrooms and electrical outlets. Another ferry worker now ballparks the time at 2pm, if all goes well. I’ve got a bad feeling about this.

I shoot the shit with a guy by the name of Towhead Steve. Steve is in a canoe. He’s been traveling solely by canoe for 6 months now. Crazy. He’s quite the character. Interesting guy and loves to talk. When what he calls his “operation” is done, he will canoe as many miles as we will bicycle on our operation. Amazing.

The USCG hasn’t even arrived yet; I can’t sit still; I decide to handle some bike maintenance while the ferry folks handle some boat maintenance. My tires are in serious need of rotation — the back one is heavily worn. I’m rather appalled by how unevenly the wear is. In the process, I figure out that the adhesive on the tape I used on my tire boot is eating away at the tubes, causing at least one of my two flats yesterday. I remove the tape and clean it all up. I break the valve stem on a tube I’m about to patch but successfully patch another one. So I at least have one functional spare.

Dauphin Island is truly a beautiful place; I’m starting to feel like I’m trapped in paradise. All of this maintenance and reflection is interrupted by an impromptu pop-up photo shoot. Of the avian variety. The bird bird bird is the word. It requires very little direction on my part, honestly. This gorgeous creature really knows how to work it and soaks it up; a true professional in the industry.

Eventually, all the idle maintenance and empty photography lead to Damon coming back around the way and ponying up for a couple craft beers from the ferry concession stand — which leads to me grabbing us a couple more after that. Feels like what a beach island vacation might feel like. Thanks, Fairhope Brewery — though I’d hope to get outta here fairly soon, please. At this rate, I’ll wake up back under the stilts with an actual hangover tomorrow morning.

The Coast Guard eventually shows up. Two hours later and the ferry is shut down due to needed repairs. Fuck. Now what?! To ride up to Mobile and around would be about 120 more miles. Miles through a city and miles on a highway. We’ve asked 10-20 people with boats to help us out, without any luck whatsoever. I’ve even offered someone $50 to take us over. Everyone finds a different way to tell us no. Sitting around any longer is tough. Plus, I feel like I’m in some remixed version of Groundhog Day. Seated at the picnic table by the ferry entrance next to a “ferry closed” sign, I repeatedly find myself responding to motorists’ inquiries: “the ferry is shut down”. “I don’t know”. “Hopefully, I’m on this bicycle so I can’t even just drive for an hour and a half to get around”. Eventually I decide to save oxygen and simply give the guillotine-hand-to-the-neck signal when motorists show up and open their yap. What I wouldn’t give for one of them to be ghost bustin’ ass Bill Murray, all of this frustration would be worth it.

Back in not the land of make believe, we decide to ride the miles to Mobile, right after we make a last second attempt to find anyone with a boat… finally one of the Maritime Pilots offers to take us over! His name is Reed and it seems he genuinely wants to help us out. Alright! We get our bikes on board and we are zooming along the water, three short miles to Fort Morgan.

As quickly as it appears, success is snatched away only to be replaced with bittersweet defeat. Two point nine nine nine miles later and this big official boat is too big to dock in the low tide on the other side. Smaller than the ferry, bigger than the fishing boat — Reed doesn’t wanna risk tearing the boat up or losing his job. Fuck. It’s so close I feel like I can probably jump it. No dice, we head back across the water, with no solution in sight. We were literally only feet away. It’s one of the most deflating experiences of my life. Similar to a time I flew from Bangkok to Kathmandu, circled Kathmandu airport for two hours during that horrific earthquake and ended up back in Bangkok after 14 hours of going nowhere. Ugh.

We have given up. We are defeated. This is Groundhog Day. Or worse, maybe it’s My Cousin Vinny. It’s some sort of classic 90’s comedy. We are stuck in Alabama Mud. I’m pretty sure I may have said “I shot the clerk”. Though I don’t need a lawyer, I need a fisherman. Butt. It turns out Reed planted a seed with Daryl. Daryl has a fishing boat and might be going off sea fishing. Might. We wait. Wait. Wait. Then. Like a 1986 Strawberry, Daryl comes through in the clutch. He and his crew show up; we load up; they get us over!

Two boat rides on the day and finally we break on through to the other side. The Doors were not on the playlist today. There was no playlist. But we’re now at historic Fort Morgan. Instead of an island this is more of a peninsula/archipelago kinda deal. Beautiful gulf coast you have, Alabama. After a long mentally-draining day I’m ecstatic to no longer be “water-locked”. The road is recently paved and smooth. I feel like riding miles on miles on miles. Butt. The sun is setting on setting on setting. We won’t be making Florida today. We settle on an RV park instead of remote sleeping in the natural preserve. Didn’t expect an 11 mile day. Didn’t expect a second night in Alabama. But we started on an island… now we’re here. No longer bound by water, tomorrow we can pedal our faces off to make up for a day lost on Dauphin.