April 20, 2018
We are cruising through states fairly quickly these days since we are going through the narrow parts of Mississippi and Alabama. This will change when we hit Florida. However, today we entered Alabama and our good weather is holding.
Yesterday I noticed my derailleur was not changing gears properly so before going to bed I decided to make an adjustment or two. Unfortunately, when I looked further, I noticed I had about an eighth of an inch play in my crankshaft. Since this could cause my bearings to fail before reaching St. Augustine and since I did not have the parts or tools to fix it, I needed a bicycle shop. There were none on route during the next day and I did not want to take a chance that the one shop we would go near the following day might not be able or willing to do the repair right away. Mobile, Alabama was about 10 miles off our route but it had 3 bike shops. Kelly, one of our ACA leaders who was driving our van that day offered to ride me to one but I have been determined to bicycle every single inch of the trip. A compromise was reached whereby I left at daylight to get a head start with Kelly meeting me at the point where the route to Mobile departed from the route we were traveling. There we loaded my bike into the van and drove to the Trek Store where an off duty bike mechanic just happened to be in. He had a shim installed and everything put right within an hour. Kelly then returned me to the exact point where I had left the route so that I could continue to ride every fabulous inch of the route.
Bayou country in Alabama is quite beautiful. This was especially true of the little town called Bayou la Batre. If that name sounds familiar, it is the town that Bubba came from in the movie Forrest Gump. It is also where Disney secretly launched the Black Pearl for The Pirates of the Caribbean.