November 21

I've fallen way behind, especially in the last ten days. Stopping early in the afternoon, staying two days at the Haas-Cienda, side trips to gulf Port and Baton Rouge for bike parts. And headwinds and hills for the last five days. I think my load is heavier - I've added that camp stove and I carry more food, and the clothes I bought yesterday - but then, I’ve lost at least fifteen pounds, so overall I'm probably moving less mass than I was when I left.

Today I indulged myself, again. Didn't get started till 10:10, when Dave finished up. Dave is a Viet Nam vet, Marine Corps, has a "W in '04" sticker on the back of his Volvo, was overflowing with caution about the criminality of the neighborhood I was staying in, and has fallen out with dubbya over the immigration issue (didn't know Bush had done anything to favor Hispanic immigration, but then, I'm deliberately avoiding that kind of input). And Dave is a hell of a nice guy. When he cautioned me about a certain neighborhood that I shouldn't ride through, I told him that I had stopped in a gas station (from now on, when I say gas station, understand that a convenience store will be attached, and there will be no hoists, mechanics, or any such greasy things) there to ask directions and was treated like royalty. He had no response to that. Then I told him about the crazy guy outside the store when I left, who was accosting everybody, shouting at them, wanting to know what was going on, what they were doing. He was in his twenties, a big guy, dressed in cool, expensive clothes, and when I was starting to get on my bike he begged for change from me. I was wearing sweats without pockets, and I patted myself and said I couldn't carry any money. He asked if I had been in the military, and I said a long time ago. Long time ago, he said, that's good, man, that's good. He was smoking a cigar. He made the brotherhood fist, straight on, which I joined with mine and we told each other to be cool. I'm no threat to anybody, nor is 5'6" stocky 58 year old Dave. Neither of us would have presented a physical challenge to this guy. But Dave might have had a different parting. You know I'm talking about a black neighborhood, and that the crazy guy was black, and that white Dave suffers from racism. But goddammit I still like the son-of-a-bitch.

So I rode north on Highway 61 to St. Francisville. Yes, that highway 61. The one Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf took, along with about 25,000 other black men in the late 1940's, walking, getting rides when offered, from the Mississippi Delta to the South Side of Chicago. To 65 th and Cottage Grove, the center of the South Side, two blocks from where my racist grandfather Joe McAbe owned a small apartment building, where he and his family lived, and where my parents met, in 1920, when blacks first settled there. Joe died before I was born. And now I'm in St. Francisville, a very pretty little town, that seems to have an inordinate number of snooty rich white women, and a funky bed-and breakfast, and some old houses and warmer weather, and one hell of a good used book store, where I bought a copy of An Empire Wilderness: Travels into America's Future, by Robert D. Kaplan, who, along with Tocqueville, Carrick, Steinbach, and William Least Heat-Moon, have made the trek through these loosely united states. And now I will further indulge myself with a supper at the Magnolia Café, highly recommended by Dave and another reactionary I met in the bookstore.