25th May 2015, a day that shall forever be remembered as the day I stripped off into my bib shorts and nearly drowned in the Atlantic ocean following the completion of my epic 3000 mile cycle. I’ve kept this website mothballed in the hope that one day I would get the chance to undertake another ill advised and not really that well thought out adventure. Well the 8th of Jan 2021 could be that day! Watch this space…..I can promise less lycra, more snakes and a significantly higher chance of serious injury and death!

Also please let me know if anyone actually reads this. Cheers!!

Only joking………….I actually made it to St Augustine and the Atlantic coast!! Today was a short easy ride of around 35 miles, Florida obviously doesn’t want me to leave as I was blasted with a strong headwind that slowed me to below 10mph. I will write some more once I’ve taken it all in but in the meantime here are some pictures from the day.

As I write this I’ve only got around 200 more miles to go until I reach St Augustine and the Atlantic ocean.

Florida has been pretty brutal so far, high temperatures combined with high humidity have made for the most difficult riding conditions of the trip. I often find myself wishing for a headwind to provide a bit of relief, i never thought i’d say that! The roads on the other hand have been the best I’ve ridden, no chip seal in sight, perfectly smooth and maintained.

Nothing too remarkable has happened the last week, I’m just pushing on getting the miles in. Services are much more regular in this part of the country, all the small towns on route seem to be fairly stable unlike all the ghost towns I saw in the west.

I hope to cross the finish line on Sunday 24th so watch this space!

.

Details from this little section are a little sketchy, if you read on you’ll understand why. I left Bunkie after a pretty restless night and made the long ride to New Roads, the following day I crossed the Mississippi river on the newly opened John James Audubon bridge.

That evening I had arranged another warm showers stay in the town of Jackson with Perry who is highly rated on the site. Along with her husband she has built a real cyclists haven with private accommodation,  restrooms and outdoor shower

I had the place to myself and carried out a few minor repairs on the bike, it was thirsty work.

Perry was great, cooked me an excellent dinner, allowed me to use her laundry facilities and we even watched dancing with the stars together! (The american Strictly). Her place is also a wildlife hotspot, I spent hours trying to get some good shots but failed miserably, this cardinal is the only half decent one.

The firefly show once the sun went down was amazing and I slept really well for the first time in days.

It seems that my time in Louisiana was cursed. First my shredded tyre, second my cracked rim, both requiring unscheduled days off and trips to off route bike shops. As these things come in 3’s I was expecting some other form of mechanical at somepoint soon. Little did I know that it wouldn’t be the bike that failed but me! Probably as a result of my unhealthy petrol station food diet I awoke at 1am in my motel room in the town of Franklinton and felt a little queezy. I’ll spare you the grim details but I was unable to get out of bed (apart from the obvious) for 3 days with the worst case of food poisoning I’ve ever had. I couldn’t eat and drank only orange fanta the whole time, it was bad and the fact that I was wasting days in bed was stressing me out! I left on the 4th morning still not feeling great but suffering from cabin fever needed a change of scenery. It was a horrible ride, I felt weak and only managed 20 miles that day ending up in the town of Bogalusa. Before I left for this trip I read a book by a guy who did the same journey 12 years ago, it was a good read and gave me a little insight into what I was getting myself into. Bogalusa stayed with me as when he was getting close a local sheriff told him ‘don’t camp there, don’t stop for a cup of coffee and don’t be going through in the dark!’ Ha! Sounds like a great place and I had no choice to but stop there! Apart from staying in the worst motel ever and the terrible smell from the paper mill it wasn’t too bad, but I was pleased to leave the next morning and make it to Mississippi, state number 6!!!

I cant remember if I uploaded this picture last time, here’s me crossing the Sabine river which forms the border from Texas to Louisiana my 5th state. Annoyingly there were no ‘welcome to’ signs on route in either Tx or La.

I had mixed feeling about the next portion of the trip, most people I’ve met along the way have been less than flattering about Louisiana, the quality of the roads and the loose dogs being the biggest complaints. I’ve assembled my anti-dog kit but thankfully the 1st 3 days have been incident free.

The roads on the other hand are a different story. I had noticed my rear wheel had been out of true for a day or two, I’d made an attempt to true it but I don’t really know what I’m doing so made only a slight improvement. On the way to Oberlin it got much worse and I thought it would need a trip to a bike shop to true, annoying as it would mean another delay to my journey. I checked in to my hotel and met Lesley and her husband Marco, she manages the place and he does all the maintenance. I told them I was having problems and they went off to find me a bike shop, 40 miles away in Lake Charles in the opposite direction was the nearest. Not wanting to double back on myself I thought I’d give it one last go getting the wheel true. I quickly discovered that the LA roads had taken a toll as the rim was cracked in about 10 different places. Bugger. Now I was stuck, I couldn’t risk riding as the wheel could buckle at any minute under my not so insignificant load. Hiring a car and driving the wheel to the store seemed to be the only option albeit an expensive one, I asked Lesley where I could rent a car but she immediately offered to drive me herself! Amazing, can you imagine a hotel manager in London doing the same? No neither can I! So the next morning we were off and 2 hours later I had a brand new wheel and was ready for the off, another potentially serious problem overcome.

On the road to Bunkie I passed my favourite sign of the trip so far, they need some of these for the hipsters in London, I never knew ‘slabbing’ was the official name!

The next stop was Chico state park for a scenic ride through swampy woodland, I saw my 1st living armadillo having previously only seem them dead by the roadside, I was so shocked I didn’t take a picture but here are some of the park.

That night I had a warm showers host booked at the Bunkie fire department, they cooked a great meal of red beans and rice and I enjoyed the banter of the crew on call that evening.

I’ve now finished map number 5, only 2 more and around 880miles to go until.I reach the Atlantic ocean!

I awoke in Navasota to ANOTHER storm, 2 inches of rain in an hour according to the weather channel. There is only 1 thing to do in situations like this, go back to sleep! I hit the road in bright sunshine at around 1030 a little concerned that I had 65+ miles to do in the heat of the day. Past the town of New Waverley there was a section of road works where the road surface was very rough, I got through it no problems and pushed onto my motel for the night. It was all the H’s that day, hot, hilly and humid! Making it a pretty tough day. My bike ended up paying the price with the road surface tearing up the rear wheel pretty badly.

OK so I now needed a new tyre, I had no idea how long this one would last. The green you can see is the puncture guard so it wasn’t all the way through the tyre just yet. Looking at the map there was nothing in route until Baton Rough maybe 350 miles away, no good. Over to Google and I found a big town called Beaumont with several shops around 100 miles away but only 30 or so off route. I swapped the tyre to the front wheel hoping the reduced wear would give me time to get there.

I was a bit nervous setting off the next day but it seemed to hold up well and didn’t visually deteriorate any further. It was a nice rode through the Sam Houston National Forest (this may have actyally been on yesterdays ride looking at the pics, I can’t remember)

I arrived in Kountze, still on route and would head to Beaumont the following day. As I was heading off map I had to rely on Google maps for directions, this proved frustrating as it would not map me on a direct route but instead took me around the houses and turned a 20 mile ride into a 46mile one. Anyway I made it, got my tyre replaced and brakes adjusted by the guys at Bicycle Sports. They also told me I could head straight up the freeway that Google was routing me away from, so that’s what I did and got back onto route with 60 ‘bonus’ miles in the legs, more than making up for the 20 I did in the truck to Globe 🙂

Fast forward 2 days and I’m now in Deridder, Louisiana my 5th state of the trip with more than 2000 miles on the clock. I really enjoyed my time in Texas, the scenery may not be the best and the roads are terrible in places but the people are so warm and welcoming it more than makes up for this. Also its huge, I’ve been here just over 3 weeks and covered around 1000miles.  The best thing though is being able to listen to and enjoy country music without the fear of persecution! (M & H I’m looking at you!)

If anyone is wondering what I do when I’m not cycling, here you go – sit around and watch Friends repeats. Living the dream my friends!

As usual I made a late start leaving a city to avoid the rush and as usual the first miles out of the city and through the suburbs were pretty unremarkable. In fact the only interesting thing I came across was the Circuit of the Americas, I was only 3 weeks late for the motogp! I tried to get In for a lap but its shut pretty tight and I remembered this is gun country so thought better of it.

The best part of the day was the scenic ride from Bastrop to Beuscher state parks. A very beautiful and very hilly 11 miles that proved tough with 40 in the legs already. Bastrop was devastated by fire a few years ago and I’m told it will take around 100 years for the park to recover fully.

Some of the hills were brutal and once again I had cause to get off and walk, these should be some of the last really steep sections of the route, it was a very muggy day and once again I was soaked by the time I crested the hills.

It started raining as I reached Beuscher so I decided make camp there. It turned out to be a good decision as it was one of the better tenting sites I’d seen, clean bathrooms, hot showers and plenty of tree cover.  If it wasn’t for the noisy neighbours playing music and screaming at each other all night it would have been a very restful evening.

The following day I considered pushing all the way to Navasota, around 95 miles. However after around 30 miles I was feeling so sleepy from the humidity that I decided to cut it short and head to one of the campsites on Somerville lake. I stopped off at a cafe in a small town called Burton and bumped into Gordon, another fully loaded cycle tourer. Gordon was doing the sensible thing of taking a short trip to test out his gear and bike set up before taking a coast to coast trip at somepoint in the future! Why didn’t I think of that??! It makes people laugh when I tell them the 1st time I packed my bike up and rode it fully loaded was the morning I rolled out of my hotel in LA! Anyway we had lunch together and decided to ride to overlook park to camp for the evening. The campsite was stunning and our pitch was right on the lake but the toilets and showers were disgusting! The worst I’ve ever seen and I’ve seen some bad ones especially when motorcycle touring in Europe!

We both decided to pitch our tents without the fly as it was another muggy night and the breeze would be very welcome. At around 5am I felt the 1st rain drop and fitted the fly, about 10 minutes later I hear Gordon begin to pack up his tent. He obviously checked the weather and knew what was coming, he was soon packed up and headed for more suitable cover! A short time later the storm was upon me, torrential rain, lightning and 50mph winds battered the tent a d tested it right to its limits, only my poor staking the previous night let it down. I sat there for about and hour cursing the texas weather and the fact that i’d not packed the tent when I had the chance. Thankfully I survived and joined Gordon under the pavilion, there was a motorcycle meet that weekend so were were lucky to be able to get breakfast on site.

The ride to Navasota was a short one through farming country. Here’s a picture of some suspicious looking cows, they always look like they are plotting!

I arrived early in Navasota and checked into a motel as even though the cows were standing up more rain was forecast! That evenings task was to dry out all my gear, its unbelievable how much weight a wet tent adds to your load.

Not sure if I’ve mentioned this before but I’ve become slightly obsessed with checking the elevation profiles of my upcoming rides on Google maps. I made it to Johnson City from Fredericksburg and was planning my ride to Austin the following day

50 miles, 1500ft of climbing with a net downhill! Easy! Well let me tell you something, Google maps is a massive liar! The route consisted of steep rolling hills sometimes at gradients of over 15% and was anything but easy. I’m getting better at the climbs but 15% is an automatic get off and push! 3000ft of climbing later I reached the suburbs of Austin, as always when entering a big city the ACA maps are a mess and I spent a lot of time checking directions on my phone. I eventually reached the centre and found the cycle path named after everyone’s favourite sociopath Lance Armstrong, I’m sure they’ll be renaming this at some point.

I eventually reached my hotel and settled in for the next 2 nights. It’s difficult to see much in a single day, especially after a well deserved lay in but I was close to the University of Texas that houses the LBJ library so went to have a look.

I then took a walk to the Capital building downtown.

By this point is was around 2pm and I was hungry, I walked down to the lively 6th street and found a place called bikinis, think hooters but better! My afternoon sighseeing was ruined by a number of friendly characters and I ended up leaving at 7pm a little worse for wear, oh well, back to the hotel to pack and early to bed.