Louisiana to Atlanta

A hair dye job even a Republican could love!

I was actually looking for a patriotic picture to post earlier today and I had to settle for stealing my brother's picture of the Blue Angels that is featured below. When I saw the pictures he took at the 4th of July parade at the cottage, I had to steal another one, it was just too good to pass up.

Now back to the open road.....

Since I left California on June 15 I have driven 4,067 miles. 613 of those miles came yesterday from Louisiana to Atlanta.

I have been checking the weather channel and www.weather.com religiously, trying to figure out the best way to avoid the rain. I decided that I could drive east on the interstate out of Lafayette, through Baton Rouge and then cut north into Mississippi and get away from the gulf coast that has been counjuring up all this rain. I managed to stay mostly dry on my ride east and as I cut up into Mississippi I figured I would be dry the rest of the way which turned out to be mostly true.



Now I went into Mississippi with an open mind and a willingness to overlook the dozens of jokes I'd heard in my life at the expense of these surely fine, upstanding people. But I had not been in Mississippi 5 minutes, even before I took the picture you see above, when I stopped for gas and as I was leaving what should I see but a man smoking a cigarette while filling up his gas tank! Literally playing with fire. I would say I did a double take but it was more like a quadrupple take and I might have asked the guy to put it out but I was already in my helmet and with my earplugs (headphones) in I'm neither a friendly face nor can I hear half of what people say to me - so I just took off as quickly as I could.

That was maybe the most interesting thing that happened to me all day.

I spent the rest of the day wondering how I got myself in the position of doing 600 miles in a day. I've now realized that being that time is not an issue on this trip I really should take it easier on myself and insert another day when it's appropriate.



And I trudge ahead on into Alabama. The last time I can remember being in Alabama was driving through to get to New Orleans for Mardi Gras in 2000. The time before that was in 1996 when my friend Kris and I road tripped to Atlanta to see the Olympics and went to Brimingham to see a couple early round soccer games. One thing I remember vividly from that trip, was waiting for one of the soccer games to start and the skies opening up to a torrential downpour. While most everyone else in the stadium went under the bleachers of Leigon Field since it was in between games and there was nothing to see, Kris and I sat in the rain storm, getting absolutly soaked to the bone. I can't say that we made the right decision that day but being that I still remember it maybe it 10 years later, maybe it was worth it. Anyway, it rained on me again as I was driving by Brimingham.

I have a lot of time to think while I'm driving and on this ride a lot of that time was spent trying to determine the weather. Specifically, trying to answer the question, "is it going to rain on me?" or "am I driving toward the rain?" or "how close is that cloud and will that cloud produce rain?" You get the idea. I've developed several techniques for trying to tell if it's going to rain on me, none of which are very reliable or scientific. I can look at the clouds and see what they look like, but that only really allows me to see the clouds that are ahead of me a bit, I can't really tell what the clouds right above me look like becuase it's hard to get your head pointed in that direction with a helmet on while you're going 70mph. I also can't really tell from the coulds if they are producing rain or not and I certainly can't tell if that cloud in front of me is one I'm going to be driving under or if the road will turn before I get there.

I can look at the pavement and see if it's wet and try and determine if it's rained on this spot earlier, this is somewhat helpful because if I'm trying to track the rain producing clouds in my head (which I am) than it's helpful to know where they've been. I can also make a half-assed guess at which direction the weather is blowing but, just like the rest of this experiment, it's less than precise.

I often find myself looking at the windshield wipers of the cars approaching and that has been helpful probably once but it doesn't offer much warning because if the cars coming toward me are in the rain than I'm either in the rain also or going to be within the next 5 seconds. Looking at the headlights of the cars approaching can also be helpful but again, it's just a guess as to why these cars have their lights on.

I can sometimes see the sky get darker when it's about to rain but then again sometimes this doesn't happen and it rains anyway. I can occasionally feel the air get a little bit colder, like the humidity has been taken out of it, and this can be a sign of rain, too.

It's all a very frustrating exercise as I try to figure out the last possible moment to put on my rain pants, which sometimes remind me of pant-shaped-garbage-bags. They actually remind me of the plastic suits that I wore several times in high school while trying to drop weight to make it into the lightweight boat on the crew team. Those suits are designed to make you sweat off water weight, these pants are supposed to keep my legs dry but I find I'm often as wet when I take them off from sweat as I would have been from the rain. (OK, that last part was an exaggeration).

But really the most frustrating part of the entire process is that when I'm right, and it is about to rain, my reward isn't something I want anyway.

So it rained on me in Birmingham.



And I finally make it to Georgia and about 50 miles after this picture I cross Perimeter Road and I'm on the home strech. And, as if to kick me one last time on the way out the door, the skies opened up on me while I was driving through downtown Atlanta and I got drenched for about 90 seconds, just long enough to make everything wet, and then stopped as soon as it started.

I may have made this day out to be more painful than it was, in fact, on the balance I'm quite glad I did it, but I don't want to do it again.

Alicia had brought some dinner home from her carbo-loading session and I had a great night sleep last night.