2010 In Review / Looking Ahead in 2011

I would say that, in sum, 2010 was actually a pretty good year for me. There was a lot of personal shit I had to deal with, but as a result of that I got into much better shape and lost about 15 pounds. All that crap is pretty much settled now, so 2011 should be a banner year.
I don't really talk about work here, but it was kind of cool that the project I was on that wrapped up in February has gotten a lot of attention. It was a pain in the butt to answer sporadic questions throughout the year, but at least I know it hasn't gone off into the ether.

Here are the goals I set for 2010, and results:

• Complete riding in all of Texas' 254 counties - Completed in October
  
• At least five state highpoints (this can include revisiting ones) - Made it just under the wire on Monday
  
• At least five state capitols (can include touring ones I only photographed) - Completed in October
  
• Enter some sort of athletic competition - Triply done in August, September, and November
  

Some new goals and plans for 2011:

• 3M Half Marathon, January 30. Definitely want better than 2:30, my stretch goal would be under 2 hours.
  
• CapTexTri, Olympic distance, May 30 (my 33rd birthday). I don't have a target time yet, I'm just hoping to not drown at this point.
  
• Any new races/distances, I would just like to do my best and be satisfied with my result.
  
• Any repeat race and distance, to improve on my previous time.
  
• Eight state high points, hopefully to include biggies like WY and MT this summer.
  
• At least five state capitols, even if it includes driving and touring capitols I've already photographed the exterior of.
  
• Be better about writing here than I was in 2010. [Side note: I joined twitter recently @mldarm]
  

Odometer readings at the end of 2010: Fat Boy, 109082; Night Train, 7528; Roma, 1369; Secteur, 1781. I'm pretty sure that 7404 is the fewest miles I've ridden in a year since owning a motorcycle. I'm not surprised I rode my bicycle more than the Night Train, in fact I'm pretty sure that until the September road trip I had put more miles on the Secteur than both motorcycles combined. I think the only time I rode the Roma this year is when the Secteur was in the shop getting a tune-up.

Guadalupe Mountains, Carlsbad Caverns, White Sands

On Sunday morning, I packed up and drove out to West Texas. When I told some friends about my plans, they were surprised I wasn't riding, but I've done that before and it can be extremely cold riding this time of year, especially in West Texas. I had thought I might spend the night in the town of Van Horn, but when I got there around 2pm, it didn't look all that interesting, so I went on to Guadalupe Mountains National Park and set up camp there. It was pretty warm when I got there, but once the sun started getting lower, the temperature dropped rapidly. I had dinner as the last sunlight was fading and was in my sleeping bag at 7pm (actually 6 local time). I read for a while, then went to sleep. I woke up a couple of times in the night, and started moving again at 5:30 MST.

I had breakfast, broke camp, and started on the Guadalupe Peak Trail at first light, 6:30 am. I felt I was way overdressed - three layers on top, two on bottom, and a warm cap - for hiking, and felt certain of it going up the relatively steep initial section. However, that section was also in the lee of the mountain, and once I topped that first ridge, a cold wind started blowing. The trail also flattened out, causing me to generate less heat, so I didn't have to strip down, I just changed my head gear. While hiking up that first section, I came upon an 8-point whitetail standing in the trail. Fortunately, it wasn't a repeat of my experience in Glacier, as he quickly went on his way in the other direction. Also going on in the first stretch was an evaluation of my right knee, which was bothering me since running Saturday. I took the unusual (for me) step of using trekking poles on this hike, and figured I would hike for an hour, and if the knee was hurting too badly, I would quit hiking. When I got to that one hour point, I was already 2/3 of the way to the top, and the knee was feeling okay. I didn't see anybody on the trail until I got to a backpacking campground where a man and two boys had apparently camped and were starting out for the summit. I was almost surprised when I got to the summit around 8:45, it felt like it should have been further or steeper or something. As windy as it had been on the approach, it was even more so at the very peak, and almost knocked me over once or twice. I had a snack, had the man (who arrived with the boys a few minutes after I did) take my picture, and signed the register. I was worried about the descent, since it's even harder on the knees, but by taking it a little gingerly and using my poles and left knee, I made it down with a minimum of pain a little past 11. While I was glad for the layers I had on at the summit, I was ready to be rid of them at the bottom, even after shedding hat and gloves and opening my jacket up. I took off a layer and drove north to Carlsbad Caverns. I had planned only to get tour information and take a tour the next day, but I found out pretty much all the ranger guided tours were sold out for the week. I went ahead a got a general admission ticket, and went on the self-guided natural entrance tour, and after its 800 ft vertical descent, did the big room tour. The place was a madhouse of people, all kinds of idiot tourists gawking and yapping. When I finished the big room tour, I was going to take the elevator back up, but the line was outrageously long, so I hiked out the way I came in. At that point, surprisingly, my knee was feeling fine, and the paved trail was pretty gentle. It looked like some people I had seen in the big room were just getting back to the visitor center at the same time I was, so the natural entrance was definitely the best way out of the cave for me. I checked at the ticket desk before leaving, and found there was an opening for the Wednesday Left Hand Tunnel Tour, so I booked that. I was thinking I would spend the night in Carlsbad, but the two places I checked didn't have anything reasonably priced, so I headed to Alamogordo. I hadn't looked at the distance that closely, and it was well past dark (but still only around 7pm) when I got into town and got a room.

Tuesday morning I drove down to White Sands National Monument. I cruised through until I got to the trailhead for the Alkali Flats Trail. I hadn't checked the trail out at all, so I just started out with just a water bottle, in my sneakers. If I had known more about the trail, I would have brought more stuff with me. Near the trailhead there were bunches of families, sledding and having fun on the gypsum dunes, which look a bit like ski hills. When I started on the trail, there were two other pairs of people who also seemed like they would be hiking as well. After I had gone about a mile, however, I couldn't see any of them, and in fact didn't see anybody at all until I got back closer to the trailhead. The trail was marked with plastic posts (and lots of footprints), but it was a pretty arbitrary course and surely changes regularly based on the "movement" of the dunes. Travel was not very efficient over the sand- some sections were pretty solid and easy to traverse, while others were soft and caused a lot of energy loss. The back sides of the dunes were particularly soft, and the steepness led every step slide downhill. Going uphill, it made for almost twice the climb, and downhill caused a lot of sand to get into my shoes. For a while I went barefoot, which actually felt slightly more efficient in the soft sand. The sand was cold on my feet though, and it was colder below the surface than on top. The trail turned back at the end of the dunes and the start of an ancient lake bed, and presumably near the edge of the missile range, as there were military-looking buildings in the distance. The signpost there had a distance marked as 2.2 miles, much farther than I had anticipated. It was after 11 at that point, and I would have packed some snacks at least had I realized how far it was. It was around 1 when I got back to my car, and after trying to shake off the sand I had some lunch. I headed about 30 miles south of the monument to the entrance of White Sands Missile Range. Rather than get a permit to drive 100 yards, I walked over to the museum. I rather enjoyed the place, it was really nerdy and full of engineering porn. One of the big claims to fame of the range is that it was the site of testing of captured German V-2 rockets, and allowed the US to catch up to and surpass their knowledge of rocketry. I also have some interest in nuclear weapons, for whatever reason, and WSMR was the site of the Trinity test, and they have a Fat Man casing in their outdoor area. They didn't have much information on my favorite rockets such as the Tomahawk, or ICBMs, but there were several short- and medium-range rockets capable of carrying nuclear or conventional warheads. I drove from there back to Carlsbad and checked into a motel.

I woke up at 7 Wednesday, had breakfast and went down to the caverns. I took the elevator down to the big room and met up with the tour group for the Left Hand Tunnel, one of the early tour routes that was effectively abandoned, neglected, and abused years ago. The abuse is evident in the tailings of the elevator shaft construction piled up at the start, and the broken calcite crust and many feet worth of missing silt slightly farther in. The tour didn't really go that far, distance wise, but the guide offered a lot of information about the early development and use of the caverns, as well as cave biology and development. Since there are no lights along this tour, everyone was issued a candle lantern. It was kind of like my tour of Jewel Cave, but the lanterns were different and many of them rattled when the holder was walking. They did issue one brand new LED lantern, which threw things off a bit as it produces a completely different color light. At the furthest point of the tour was a little cave biology lesson with many millions of years old fossils, and undetermined age (decades at least) bat "mummies." We went back to a larger room for a blackout, after which the guide told an interesting story about giving a tour to a blind woman, which kind of changes the perspective. The lead ranger had some lame songs and more even lamer jokes. His best line of the tour, I think, was after someone asked about things falling in the cave (meaning formations dropping and such, due to geologic activity) and he replied "my jokes fall flat all the time." It was kind of remarkable that he is the fourth generation of cave workers in his family, going back to 1932. At the beginning, he implored people not to publicize the entrance to the left hand tunnel, not that it's a great secret, but he asked if anyone had a blog and I sheepishly half raised a hand. So I won't reveal that it's just off of the lunch room. There's a locked gate, so it doesn't make a big difference any way. Leaving the caverns, I headed back to Guadalupe Mountains NP, and went to McKittrick Canyon for the first time. Since it was already 1pm and the gates to the area close at 4:30, I didn't have a lot of time for hiking, so I went as far as the Pratt Cabin. I thought it was pretty nice, and I really would love to have something like that of my own. The buildings are mainly stone, with some pine timbers, but the setting was magnificent with the mountains looming overhead. I decided to camp in the park again that night. It was a very windy night. While setting up, and while preparing and eating dinner, everything light had to be weighted down to keep from blowing away. I was afraid the tent was going to blow away or collapse. I only used the four anchor points I normally use, I should have added more. Twice, relatively early in the night, a stake pulled out of the ground and I had to go out and pound it back into the ground.

It was a lot less windy the next morning, so breakfast and breaking camp were not as fraught with peril. Since I had abandoned my original plan of doing some backpacking, I thought I would hike in Balmorhea State Park, not realizing that there are no trails and the main draw of the park is a large spring-fed pool. It wasn't too cold out, and they said the water is always around 75 degrees, but I didn't really feel like swimming. I went on to Fort Davis, where I stopped at the Fort Davis National Historical Site. It sounded interesting enough, so I stayed and checked it out. It was a Civil War-era fort, used mainly to protect the San Antonio to El Paso road, abandoned in 1891 when it became obsolete. I found it to be fairly interesting, but the wind was howling, making it unpleasant to walk between the restored buildings. Also not helping my enjoyment was a family with a child constantly crying. There are some short trails on the site, but I didn't want to stick around with the wind whipping the way it was. I figured that it was just as windy in the state park a few miles away, and headed straight home from Fort Davis.

Holidays

The day after competing in the Natural Bridge Caverns Duathlon and almost no sleep, I took an early flight up to New York to spend Thanksgiving with my parents, sister and niece. The early flight got me in in the early afternoon, which would have allowed time to do something, except that I spent most of it sleeping. On Tuesday I went for a little run along the Hudson on a paved trail built within the last few years. On Wednesday we drove upstate to our friends' place we've been having Thanksgiving for many years now (with exceptions such as last year when we were in Costa Rica). I absolutely stuffed myself every practically every moment we were there. I did manage to get in a short run while there to mitigate the overconsumption. We drove back to my parents' on Friday, and I flew back to Austin on Saturday. It was an early flight again and I got home early enough to take a short bicycle ride in the afternoon. I went for a run on Sunday, but didn't do a properly long distance. I worked my distance back up, running 7, 8, and 9 miles in subsequent weekends.

On the 19th I drove up to the Dallas area to have Christmas lunch with my aunt, uncle, and cousins. The food was good, and I almost always gorge on those occasions that I do get a home-cooked meal. I spent most of the time I was there playing with my cousin's children with Nerf guns and other toys. I drove home later in the afternoon, and in all spent about as much time in the car driving as I did visiting.

I didn't do all that much yesterday or today. I had thought about swimming in Barton Springs yesterday, but it wound up raining, so I just swam at the gym (after I went back to sleep from 9-11:30). This morning I went for a run, and did the full 10-mile loop for the first time. The trail was a little hard to follow on the east end where it meanders through ball fields, not being familiar with the area, but I didn't get lost. There were a lot fewer people out than there normally are on a weekend (even a cold and overcast windy day), but there were still quite a few people out- mainly serious runners and people walking their dogs. My right knee started hurting at the end of mile 9. I probably should have stopped and stretched or something, but I wanted to hurry and get to the movie theater to see True Grit. I also failed to stretch properly after the run, which probably didn't help anything. As a result, my knee has been hurting all day since. Hopefully it gets better overnight or in the car ride out to West Texas in the morning... More on that when I get back.

Natural Bridge Caverns Duathlon

After doing the Lost Pines Triathlon, I definitely wanted to do another race. I thought the Natural Bridge Caverns Duathlon sounded pretty interesting (also run by the same people), so I signed up for the "Woolly Mammoth" distance- 5k run, 26 mile road ride, and another 5k run. However, after the Austin Relay Marathon, I took up a suggestion to run the 3M Half Marathon in January. Basically, I started training for that and figured the Du would pretty much sort itself out. In October, I started a training regimen of my own device- midweek: two days of strength training, one fast and short run, one day of either swimming or another short and fast run, and one day of rest; on the weekends: one long bike ride, and one long run. At first I had no idea if I could run far enough, since the 3.6 miles at Lost Pines was the longest distance I had ever run. My first long run was 5 miles, and since that went pretty well, I added a mile every week until I got up to 9 miles the Sunday before the Duo. Unfortunately my right foot started hurting after that 9-miler, and running a 5k Tuesday morning (at an 8-minute pace, which pleased me very much) didn't help at all. I didn't really run for the rest of the week, just about a half mile on the treadmill Wednesday and Thursday as a warm up for strength training. It wasn't hurting this morning, and even now it's not that bad, but it did hurt right at the end of the race.

I hydrated and consumed lots of carbs yesterday and did as little as possible of a physical nature. I got a pretty decent night's sleep, but it did take me a few seconds to realize why I was awake at 5 o'clock this morning. I had everything ready to go, so I pretty much just ate breakfast and got in the car for the hour drive toward San Antonio to the cave. I got my packet and timing chip, and got my bike situated in transition. I changed my mind about how I wanted my gear arranged a couple of times, but wound up just setting out my bike shoes, sunglasses, and gloves and left everything else in the car. In the pouches of my jersey, I just had a couple of gels and my car key. There was a pre-race meeting at which we were told that the nastiest looking part of the bike course - down into Krueger Canyon, turning around at the bottom and going back up - was cut out because of the weather (overcast, humid, and some drizzle). I didn't check out the canyon beforehand, but some people who had said it would have been pretty gnarly even if it had been bone dry. Most of the bike course was totally dry, except for the road leading into the canyon, so it was probably for the best. I wasn't heartbroken.

The race started a little bit late, around 8:15, with the "T-Rex" (longer, harder run, same bike course) runners. Once they were off, the Woolly Mammoth runners went down into the cave. Supposedly, this is the first multi-sport race ever inside of a cave. We walked down a sorta steep, sorta slippery path to the staging area, then started time trial style according to expected pace. The cave portion started pretty flat, but narrow and with lots of turns. Closer to the exit (a different one than the one we came in), we had to stop running and walk up the switchbacks. I didn't really mind not being allowed to run, my heart was already racing. Even though it was fairly warm and humid outside, it was even more so in the cave, and it was refreshing to come back outside. My new toy is a GPS watch, and I decided that since it obviously wouldn't get any reception inside the cave, I would just start it once I exited. Once I did, when I first looked at it, it said I was running at about a 9:30 mile pace, and I was shooting more for a 9:00 pace, so I sped up a little. When I looked again a short time later, it showed a 7:30 pace, which is way too fast for me to maintain for anything more than a mile. I slowed down a little, but I had to really suppress the urge to keep up with the people in front of me. I finished the first mile out of the cave at 8:21, which was still too fast of a pace. The second mile had a long but not steep uphill, so it was natural to slow to a 9:21, and the third mile was 9:02, right on target. I'm sure they measured it, but the course was definitely longer than 5k, more like 3.4 miles. I kept around a 9-minute pace until just before the first transition where the course went uphill and I slowed down. At that point, my heart rate was way too high, over 180, so I took a little longer than necessary putting on my bike gear and starting on that course. The traffic had picked up considerably from the 1-mile turnaround for the shorter races, so there were already a lot of bikes on the road.

The bike went well, I passed a lot of bikes, but mainly on the portions that were coincident with the shorter course (and thus a lot of less strong riders). I realized about 4 miles in that coming out of T1, instead of hitting the 'lap' button on my watch, I had hit the 'stop' button, and it wasn't recording. I got it going again, and managed to hit the correct button coming out of T2. The course was pretty hilly, but pretty normal for the Hill Country. One of the last hills, however, was decently steep and long, and I was not very happy at the top of it. My right knee was hurting a little for the last miles of the ride, but I didn't fully realize how much I had overdone it until I dismounted and my legs started really hurting. I again took some extra time in transition, had one more swig of water and a gel I should have had much sooner, and started the second run.

I started rather slowly, about a 12:30 pace, in order to get my running legs back. My legs started to come around soon enough, and I finished the first mile at 10:46. The second mile did not go as well. I walked for a little bit, and went up the hill fairly slowly, ending with a time of 11:41. Once I got to the turnaround point and knew the end was in sight, I was able to pick up the pace again. Helped by the downhill, I finished the third mile with at time of 9:33. I'm not certain what my pace was for the last few tenths of a mile, because I forgot to stop my watch right as I crossed the finish line, but I think it was around 9:20, so even though it wasn't a great 5k time, I was still able to finish strong. Of course as soon as I stopped my legs started hurting, but with a little bit of time, some stretching, food and all that good stuff, they came around. My total time was 2:31:41, which was good enough for 5th place in my age division, but less than a minute from fourth, which is a bit maddening. At the start, when I saw there were only about 40 people doing the "Woolly Mammoth" distance, I thought I might have a half-decent shot at a "podium" finish in my age group, until I looked around and saw that seemingly half of the men were in my age group, and at least two were expecting to run much faster than me. My time was 18th overall for that distance [ed: according to the final posted results, I was 16 of 28 finishers]. Most of the nearly 300 people who raced did one of the shorter distances.

Another Crazy Road Trip

I'm always thinking about road trips. When I'm on a road trip, I'm either thinking through the details of that trip, or plotting out some future road trip. I also probably spend far too much time at work thinking about road trips. In plotting to ride through my last Texas counties in the east, I started piling on more points of interest. "As long as I'm going to the Louisiana border, I might as well go on to Baton Rouge to the Capitol." "If I'm going to Baton Rouge, I might as well go to Jackson, MS." "I wouldn't want to go all the way to Mississippi and not go to the highpoint." "If I'm already in the northeast corner of Mississippi, it's just a quick hop over to Nashville, TN." I'm sure I played around with adding even more points, but those are the ones I settled on for a roughly 4-day time frame. I was thinking, based on weather and other stuff going on, I would take this trip late in October or possibly early November. When I happened to learn that the Highpointers organization was going to be in the area of the MS highpoint the weekend of October 9, I figured that was the best time for this little ~2000 mile trip.

I left well before dawn on Thursday, October 7. It was probably in the mid-40s at that point, so I was fully dressed with chaps, jacket, heavy gloves, and neck gaiter, which kept me warm but not hot. As the day warmed up, I stripped gear at every stop until by mid-day I was just in jeans and a long-sleeved t-shirt. Since I was heading almost due east, I was forced to stop just past dawn to change from clear to dark glasses, and even then it was hard to see anything. I passed through Liberty and Hardin counties (2 of the final 6) on the way out of Texas. I got to Baton Rouge and the capitol around 1pm. At 450 feet, it is the tallest capitol in the country. There is an observation deck, but it's not quite at the very top, and worse yet, they don't let you go outside. Other than the Mississippi River (which isn't pretty), the view isn't all that interesting anyway. The only other things in the building I was really able to see were the House chamber (currently under renovation) and the spot where Huey Long was assassinated. From there I hustled up to Jackson, MS in order to get to the capitol, worried that it would close at 5 and I wouldn't be able to get in and look around.
I arrived right around 5, and even though it seemed as though it was after hours, the doors were still unlocked and the guard post wasn't even manned. Whereas the Louisiana Capitol is more modern, essentially a skyscraper, Mississippi's is more of a traditional capitol with a large central dome and two wings for the branches of the legislature, and the governor in the middle. The Senate was closed and dark but with windows to see in. I was able to get into the House gallery, which is sort of unusual that people are seated behind the speaker, instead of looking towards the speaker's podium in most capitols. Once I was done looking around and taking pictures inside, I walked the grounds and took pictures outside, including the most coveted picture of my motorcycle and the capitol together. Leaving the capitol, I had another short stint of interstate until I got off onto the Natchez Trace Parkway.
I've ridden almost every mile of the Trace over two previous motorcycle trips (plus once in the car), and it a beautiful road. Other than the quaint woodsy setting, the best thing about the road is that it bans commercial traffic (meaning no trucks). There are no billboards, and it doesn't connect directly to any larger roads (it has something akin to on/off ramps), so it's almost like a world unto itself, hearkening to a bygone era. The only problem with the Trace is that the speed limit is 50 mph, but since there isn't really another road that goes from Jackson to the northeast corner of the state, it was still the quickest route to the state highpoint (Google maps didn't entirely agree, suggesting sort of a stair step, but that wouldn't have been very fun). There was a fair amount of traffic at first coming off of the interstate, but most of the cars turned off after a few miles. From that point, the road winds gently along a reservoir that looked spectacular in the setting sun light. I really wanted to take a picture, but there was nowhere to pull off. It started to get dark, even though the sun hadn't officially set, with the sun going behind the trees. I stopped briefly to change to clear lenses and put my jacket back on as the temperature also started dropping. I didn't ride too much longer: for the same reasons it's a beautiful ride in the day, it's kind of frightening at night, "real country dark," you might say. I saw a couple of the deer I was most worried about, so who knows how many were hanging around that I didn't see. I stopped for the night around 8:30 in the town of Kosciusko, and had a crappy dinner and stayed in a relatively cheap motel.

It was pretty chilly again Friday morning when I got off around 7. I got back on the Trace and cruised on up toward the town of Iuka, and more specifically the state highpoint near there. My GPS coordinates for the highpoint were right on (for once), but there were also a couple of signs pointing toward Woodall Mountain, which are apparently relatively new. The roads were all nice and paved until the last one, a small dirt county road. I looked as though it had been worked on pretty recently, but the work may have actually made it worse for me. The surface was really loose and hadn't gotten enough traffic to work in a groove for me to follow. I've ridden some dicey roads in the past, and this one was one of the worst to me. I gave up the fight just before the final steep section to the top of the "mountain" and walked the last few hundred feet. There wasn't much up at the top, a couple of cell towers and a little turnaround. There was, however, a brand new plaque on a big rock (which was probably also "new") in the center of the circle. The plaque was dated October 9, 2010 (the next day) so I must have gotten there too early to meet up with any of the highpointers, also evidenced by the complete lack of any other visitors to the site while I was there. I didn't particularly have the time or inclination to stick around or go out and find them, so I moved on after a quick stop in the town of Iuka, cutting the corner of Alabama. I rode the Trace for a little further, until I got closer to Nashville and cut over to an interstate. It was quite warm in Nashville that afternoon, amplified by the "heat island" cities create, and the slow speed (and traffic lights) of city streets. The Tennessee Capitol is not as large as many capitols, and has more like a cupola than a dome. I didn't pursue it, but I don't think they allow the public up the tower. Also different than most capitols, the House chamber is much larger than the Senate, and they're not symmetrically placed. There was some sort of book fair going on, so the building was full of people, many of them sitting down in the House and Senate chambers getting ready to hear a talk. I wandered around and took pictures, from the chamber floors and galleries, and the former Supreme Court chamber which also had some talk. The capitol is set at the top of a hill and has a fairly nice view, at least in the background. The foreground looking west is industrial and not pretty. I got gas and an ice cream bar before getting on the interstate heading west. I stopped for gas just outside of Memphis and searched on the internet for a cheap place to stay downtown. I found something, but rather than use GPS navigation I tried to wing it, more or less (I still used the GPS for the map). I missed one turn, and had to take a spin through surface streets, then when I got closer to where I was trying to go I ran into one-way streets and had to take a circuitous route to get to the hotel. The place wasn't anything amazing, but for $100 downtown, it was perfect. After checking in and unloading the bike, I walked a few blocks to a rib place the clerk had recommended, Rendezvous Charles Vergos. It was delicious, and I would recommend it to anybody who likes pork. From there I walked another couple of blocks to the world-famous Beale Street. I would say that Beale Street is somewhere between Austin's Sixth Street and New Orleans's Bourbon Street- not as crazy as Bourbon, but a little looser than Sixth. The only problem, to my thinking, is that most places have a cover charge, which I am almost universally against. The way it's set up, however, you don't really have to go into any of the clubs anyway. All the clubs have speakers pumping the live music inside out onto the sidewalk, and, like New Orleans, you can buy and consume adult beverages on the street. It was fun, but of course I was quite tired and went back to the hotel around 11.

Saturday was mostly a torture session riding 800+ miles from Memphis to Austin, even though there was no real reason that I absolutely had to get back. I went straight down the interstate through Mississippi pretty much just stopping for gas. The one brief other stop I did make was in Yazoo County, when I got off toward Yazoo City because it's a fun name and the Ys for the ABCs of Touring, but turned around when I found out it was more than 20 miles away and not worth it. I got off the interstate for good (well, almost) a little ways into Louisiana. I took state roads into St. Francisville where I took a ferry across the Mississippi River to New Roads. It was a short ride across, helped by lucky timing to where I rode up and straight onto the ferry. When I made it into Texas, I realized that I had been to Newton County previously, but hadn't marked it on my master map of counties I've ridden through. I wasn't as sure about Jasper, Tyler, and San Jacinto Counties, which completed my goal of riding through all 254 of Texas's counties. From there it took longer to get home than I was initially thinking, and of course I was more than ready to be home (or at least off of the bike). I ground out those last miles and made it home around 10.