Day 97, November 6th 2007 (Biloxi,MS to Daphne,AL)

The motel offered an excellent continental breakfast. Full of cereal, toast, pancakes, juice, and coffee. It blew my oatmeal straight out of the water. I was able to enjoy my second great meal in a row and was looking forward to the great day ahead of me. As I started to exit Biloxi, I ran into more of the downtown traffic. It seemed like a very large city and with all of the traffic I didn't recieve to much special attention as a cyclist. No shoulder to ride on and with a large bridge approaching things weren't looking good. The bridge was recieving some road work and usually this was a problem that I had to face on a bad day. This was a good day though. The road was recieving some special attention and I was able to have an entire lane to myself on the bridge. It was an excellent way to cross a large body of water. Truly a beautiful city and it seemed like the casinos in the area probably had a lot to do with it. When I crossed the bridge I couldn't have been more than 10 miles into my ride when a driver slowed down beside me and told me to get one road over and I wouldn't regret it. This was the first good person I had met on the road. As soo as I went one road over I was travelling on a much nicer piece of asphalt. The traffic had practically ceased to exist and I was thankful for the input he had given me. Then I saw the same guy and he was flagging me down on the side of the road. He had a Mississippi road book out and was ready to show me where I needed to go. His name was Barry and he continued to be more and more helpful. His office was located directly where we were and so he let me come in and went to work. He had road maps of just about everything near where I was. He started printing things out and copying things on his copy machine. By the time I left his office, I had about 10 maps printed on paper with a direct route highlighted to get me across the Gulf. It was an excellent way to start the day in the right direction. He warned me about the drivers, and I wish I could have told him that I had no idea that they were so rude. I started riding off on the course that had been layed out for me and I was looking forward to getting myself closer and closer to the game that lay ahead this weekend. Being away from most of the traffic I was able to enjoy a little more of the great outdoors. The trees were truly amazing and that is about all that I was really looking at until I made my way into one of the larger and scarier cities in the south. I had just crossed over into Alabama and the first big city I had to get across was Mobile,AL. I was on a continous route without a shoulder and to go through a city of this size was suicide. I made it all the way to downtown and after almost being run over a few times I ran into what seemed like an even larger problem. Ahead of me I had three options to get across the city. There were two tunnels that stretched across about 4 miles to get across the city. They consisted of no shoulders and were prohibited for bikers and pedestrians. So really I only had one other option. I was going to have to bike about 15 miles north of the city to get on another road to start going east. Then to travel along the Gulf I would have to go back south that 15 miles and then continue along my merry way. Well I didn't really feel like going that far out of my way so I tried another option. I stuck my thumb out to see how well the hitchhiking worked to get across. I guess my think looked fairly well, because in a matter of thirty seconds I had a truck pulled over and he was ready to carry me across. I put my bike in the back of his truck and he carried me acroos the tunnel and then across a very long bridge that had no shoulder on it. It was a good lift and he helped me out a lot. Before I was out of his car and on my way, he made sure to let me in on a story. He told me that the road that I was headed down had recently been a road that two cyclists had been run over on. I thanked him for his excellent story and then I started to head down the road. The traffic was fairly busy as the sun was setting, and I didn't want to ride on it while it was dark. I had no problem finding a piece of land at a church, and that is where I called home for the evening. I had quite a few close calls through out the day and I was starting to get more and more tired of riding my bike in the south. Each day wasn't a scenic ride any longer. I was now on a quest to stay alive on my bicycle. Each day was another day to see if I would come out alive at the end of the day. Looking on my map and seeing how far I had to get to Billys, I knew I still had a good three days ahed of me. The game sounded to good to miss, so I was going to have to make more progress than what I was currently making.

Daily mileage: 71.8 miles
Average speed: 13.0 mph
Total mileage: 6,061.3 miles