November 8

I've got my dates mixed up, and I've lost a day somehow. It rained all morning after I left Ponce de Leon ,and by noon my gear and I were soaked. Got a motel room in Crestville where I dried out. Two months today. Am I a changed man? I am a lighter man. 168 lbs, dressed lightly, in a supermarket here. But a supermarket scale sho' ain't gonna tell you you fat, 'less it has to. I decided that I must be starving myself, so after I finished my more than adequate motel room supper I went across the street and got a hamburger and a milk shake at McDonald's. God, I am so ashamed!

I got an email yesterday from Al Heuback of the Lunenburg Bike Barn, congratulating me on not having any flat tires on the bike so far. I've had two on the BOB trailer, but those are easy to fix. And the morning I left Crestville I got a flat on the rear wheel of the bike. I was close to a gravel company, and used a sink in their office, having convinced the pretty little secretary that I wouldn't damage anything, to find the holes (3of them - used the last of my patches). Fixed it, got everything back together, rode five miles and it went flat again. But there was a woman on a lawn tractor mowing the grass next to the highway, and she offered to help. I took the tube out and pumped it up and dunked it in her rain barrel to find the leak (she had patch material) and then remembered that I was carrying a new tube. But the old one wasn't leaking. A glitch in the valve, I guess. There was a bike shop in the next town, where I got the tires rotated and the derailleur tuned up, and I headed for Pensacola at two thirty.