Day 22 – 04/24/2012 – Wynne, AR
We woke up a little earlier than usual this day, around 8:30. By 9:30 we had eaten breakfast and were almost ready to go, but I still had to cut my hair. My uncle didn’t want to come along and stayed at the hotel doing things at the computer. I picked up my bicycle without any load and went out searching for a place to have my hair shaved. I found a nice little saloon and had it done.
After I returned we quickly loaded the bikes and started the ride toward Wynne, AR. The first few miles going out of Memphis were fine, no issues. We crossed the Arkansas-Memphis Bridge, and then discovered things were not to go so smooth for long.
Right after crossing the bridge we noticed there was no obvious place to ride on. The way was blocked by stretch of concrete guardrail, and our only option was to cross a stretch of vegetation walking he bicycles through it until we could reach a small service road on the side. When we reached the road we took the wrong way and wasted 30 more minutes trying to find a way to return to where we should be. When we finally did, we discovered the path indicated by the GPS was not paved, but instead covered by gravel. We had to go slowly due to the high load on the bikes, which delayed us. A few miles later things got worse. We reached the entrance to a plantation field and our path became a trail in the middle of the plantation. People were working on the fields, and we were not sure if we were allowed to pass through it. However, due to the lack of options and the fact we were at least 5 miles away of any pavement, we deiced to just move forward. People were looking at us but didn’t say anything, so we kept going. We spent the next forty minutes crossing plantation fields through that uneven sand trail, and then finally reached a paved road we could follow.
The ride from that point on went well. The path was very flat with large shoulders which were at times large enough to fit both of us riding side by side. That way we managed to cover many miles with few stops to drink water or rest. However, due to the delays we had before we were not able to catch sunlight all the way. We saw an unbelievable sunset and took great pictures.
A few minutes later, when we finally got close to our destination, it was night already. We saw fields and trees covered by fireflies flashing all around us. That was an amazing show we could not capture on camera. At times it was like the trees had been covered by Christmas lamps. That was a really great gift from nature.
Next we went to a Walmart to buy our food, and headed to a cheap hotel close by. You know what happened next: dinner, washing clothes, updating the blog and preparing to sleep.
Day 23 – 04/25/2012 – Bald Knob, AR
The day started rough. Right away after leaving the hotel we noticed the wind was very strong. As predicted by the Weather Channel, the winds were coming SW but much stronger than we thought. As we started moving away from the city limits we entered an area where plantations surrounded us on both sides and there was nothing to block the winds. The wind speeds were averaging 30 mph with gusts of 40 mph and, since we were going towards the west, we were being hit sideways.
For a tough four hours period we could not move faster than 5mph, and therefore covered just 20 miles for the first four hours of riding. At times it was really hard to stay in the shoulders. We would use a lot of energy just to stay in the road due to irregularity of the wind gusts. When trucks passed by us a strong wave of air would make us bounce sideways and in order to control the bicycle we had to break almost to a complete stop.
A little further down the road we saw a truck with the writing “Oversized Load” on its back, but didn’t pay much attention. Bad mistake. A few seconds later we were almost hit a by a house. That’s exactly right. A truck carrying one of mobile house was going behind the first truck and due to incoming traffic in the opposed lane it could not move to give us more space. It didn’t slow down either. The house was large enough to use more than half of the shoulder space and its corner passed not more than 10 cm from the left side of my back. Had I been a few centimeters to the left and I probably wouldn’t be alive to write this summary right now.
We stopped to recover from the sock of being so close to a disastrous accident. A few seconds later time to recover was over, we still had a lot to cover. Many other mobile houses passed by us that day, but were not a treat since now we knew about the truck announced its passage, and had time to move away to a safe distance.
We kept moving forward and had covered about 15 miles under those conditions when a strong gust hit me and I couldn’t hold the bicycle on its way. In order to avoid a complete crash I jumped and let the bicycle fall down a small hill on the side of the road. My uncle stopped and helped me pull it back up. Nothing had been broken, so we just kept inching towards the next city.
After 24 miles we reached a city called Mc Crory. We decided to look for something to eat and found a pizzeria called Pizza Plus. There we learned the whole area was under a Wind Advisory. We were actually glad to know about the advisory since that meant those winds were uncommon around those areas. We eat a big pizza and almost two litters of coke, and then returned to the road. Thankfully, the next section of road was surrounded by trees which blocked the winds. We then could go a little faster, and by 8:30pm we arrived to a small hotel in a city called Bald Knob. That was not our planned destination but we decided to stay there.
Before arriving to Bald Knob we passed through a small city called Augusta.
Right upon arrival we unloaded the bikes in the hotel room and went out to get food. A small supermarket was not too far and we bought all we needed for dinner and breakfast. We then had dinner and did all those things we need to do before sleeping. By midnight we were finally turning the lights off.
