Sunday, July 5, 2009

Day 21 Cape Girardeau, MO to Clarksville, TN 164.7 miles
















Hampton Inn had a great breakfast, I had 2 danishes, a bowl of cheerios, a giant blueberry muffin, a yogurt, and washed it down with a couple glasses of orange juice. I had the spread out before me at the table and felt like eyes were on me judging how much I was consuming. I was in the 24 Hours of Booty kit so I was a sight regardless.
I was on the road by 7:30 confident I would make some good miles since a cold front had pushed through overnight and the high today would be 90. The winds are picking up in my favor according to the weather channel, but we’ll see if they’re right.
As the trees became a part of the landscape I was more aware of being in the south. There were no more casinos and gambling halls. Churches replaced liquor stores on the street corners. Kudzu was rampant. In Missouri there were oak trees everywhere, I began to recognize the foliage. Aspen trees, to me, are exotic. I entered Illinois with much internal fanfare after crossing the Mississippi. I was officially in the east and the wind started to pick up in my favor as predicted. Illinois had beautiful roads and good asphalt. There wasn’t a lot of people around as I thought there would be, the land was kind of swampy from the river. I rode into Cairo to a shocking scene. It was as though the town stopped its clock in 1950. There were blocks and blocks of buildings with “Speakeasy” signs and other notes of an earlier time. There were no gas stations, no chain restaurants, only rundown buildings, homes, and broken windows. The city’s residents were destroying their own town. I later looked up the town on Wikipedia and it confirmed my thoughts, it was a town built for 20,000 but only had 3,000 people living in it. The remaining residents looked like zombies milling around town, it was a sad sight to see. If Hollywood wanted to do a post apocalyptic movie this town would fit the bill. I did not take any pictures, no one frame would do the town any justice. Apparently there are many towns along the Mississippi where dependency on the river trade made them obsolete after the 40s and 50s. There is a lot of heritage in the towns and I think I would like to tour the old river road someday in the future before it is gone. I left Cairo over the Ohio River and into Kentucky with some trepidation as I hear the locals are less than friendly with cyclists as well as their dogs.
I had nothing to fear in Kentucky, it was a nice leisurely ride in the 80s with the wind at my back. The motorists gave me plenty of room on my way through Mayfield and Murray. An odd feature of Kentucky roads was the rumble strips which seemed to be an afterthought of state legislation to mandate rumble strips on all state roads. The rumble strips looked like they were formed by a tractor rolling a tank tread over the outer edge of the road where most of the strip was about 3 to 6 inches wide. I’d be in the ditch before I would wake up from those road strips. These road features just meant I had to ride to the left of the white line which I wasn’t excited about. KY-121 was a great road though with good asphalt, I entered Tennessee welcomed by a confederate flag at the border, I consider it the unofficial entrance to the south.
I was happy to be in Tennessee, it was adjacent to North Carolina and would be a reasonable drive for my wife should she have to come pick me up for some reason. I was in Clarksville by 7:30 but I thought it was 8:30 because of eastern time. I was wrong though, and I would never find out where the change in time was. I stayed at a sad Quality Inn that was a former Holiday Inn setup with the indoor pool and gaming area surrounded by the guest rooms. It was a large compound for so few guests. I think 4 rooms were occupied that evening. The pushboard letter sign noted Quality Inn but the years of dust still hinted the welcome to Holiday Inn. It appeared the enclosed bar overlooking the pool was now a storage area. Everything looked tired like me. My dinner options were Hooters or Shoney’s. I walked over to Shoney’s to friendly service, lasagna, a nacho appetizer mess, sweet tea, and a sundae. All for $15. Nicely done. I normally don’t drink caffeinated drinks at night but going to sleep was easy these days and the novelty of ordering “tea” without attaching “sweet” in front of it to get sweet tea attracted me to order it. That’s the 2nd sign you’re in the south, no tea comes without a pound of sugar in it.
The weather channel indicated westerly winds at 10-20mph for the day tomorrow so I have high hopes of doing another 200 mile day like the one out of Colorado. I was planning a rest day in Nashville because I am extremely tired after the past week but I can’t pass up good tailwinds and a mid 80s day. It’s a gift I won’t turn away. We’ll see what happens.
Calories were the Hampton breakfast, Shoney’s dinner, 2 gallons of Gatorade, 1 M&M pack, and it was nice to ride a dry bike with dry handlebars without all the heat.

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