Night Wind

I'm just back in my hotel, on the north shore of the Arkansas River. I walked across a bridge over the river, nearly 400 yards wide, to downtown Little Rock. I had some food and three beers and walked back across the bridge. At 10:00 downtown Little Rock was already very subdued; a car crossed the bridge every minute or two. The humid, still-warm wind blew from the south. A child of Southern California, I've learned to associate warm, humid wind with vacation, somewhere far away from SoCal.

There was an internal combustion noise from somewhere and then a speedboat  streaked out from under the bridge on the dark water, paused and circled a quarter-mile upstream, and streaked back again. No lights; probably no brains, either.

OK, so... Arkansas. My ride from Knoxville to Memphis was pleasant. Tennessee seems to never run out of hills, big or small. Interstate 40 was seldom straight and seldom level. As I got close to the Mississippi River the landscape got more formal and flatter. On the far side of the Mississippi, Arkansas started out as a flood plain. Lots of fields and very few buildings. Flat as a Pancake. Interstate 40 was dead level and mostly straight. Tomorrow I'll get into the Ozarks, so my impression might change, but for now? I have to admit, my overriding impression was, why is this a state? Lotsa Mississippi floodplains, the very infrequent range of hills, rice paddies, fertile fields – this could be Mississippi or western Tennessee. I went 120 miles from the river crossing and never saw much in the way of civilization until I hit Little Rock.

Today was a ride of about 540 miles. It was interrupted pretty early on when I got too optimistic about the bike's range and ran out of gas about half a mile short of a service station. I walked there, only to learn that they did not lend fuel containers. I had to call for roadside service and lost over an hour in that incident. Live and learn. As the miles wore on I got pretty tired and sore until my last fuel stop, about 30 miles east of Little Rock. Then, after some stretches and some attention to my riding ensemble, the last bit was very tolerable. My left leg, the one hurt in the crash in the Texas thunderstorm, is much better but is still quicker to get sore than the right leg.

I'm 1661 miles from home. That's four 400-mile days, which would get me home Friday night. I'm pretty sure I can do that. It might even give me enough time to make one or two detours. I'm really riding past a lot of interesting stuff in the name of getting home for Mother's Day.