38.9 mi / 14.3 mph / 521 ft. climbing
Home: Scott’s AirBNB

We woke to another abnormally-warm morning, and yesterday’s evening rain had blown itself out, leaving everything nice and dry. The steady breeze would normally require a bundled-up breakfast, but at 68℉, it was a rare camp morning where I was fine wearing shorts the whole time. My parents weren’t so lucky. Their original intention was to have us both converge on Mobile today, us via a 40-mile bike ride north, them with a 2-day drive south from below-freezing Chicago. But icy weather across Tennessee (followed by heavy rain) forced them to convert to a more-circuitous 3-day drive to dodge the worst of it. They still ended up getting drenched on a walk between their Birmingham motel and Applebee’s, a more-thorough soaking than anything we’ve endured over the last six months while living mostly outdoors. What a reminder of our long-term luck!

Since we no longer needed to beat my parents to our AirBNB check-in, we had time for a walk back to the beach (this time together) before breaking camp. As Rett said, it felt like we had been flirting with the Gulf of Mexico for weeks, making brief eye contact from the other end of the bar, as fog, barrier islands, or stacked-up-houses would pass between us. Now we finally got up and introduced ourselves. She responded positively, giving us her full attention on the still-deserted sands, and granting us a unique sunrise.

We exited the campground through the back gate directly onto a bike path, and while the morning light on Mobile Bay is what made me stop for a photo, I knew that it would be the woman sitting with a dog in a stroller (appropriately-named Tiny) that would make Rett stop. We had a nice chat with Sandy, a woman surprised that we could detect her still-strong Minnesota accent (another Midwesterner!), but even without that clue, her no-nonsense openness would have tipped off her regional origin. While Rett will most remember the attention and kisses she got from Tiny, I think she got at least as much value from the conversation and hugs from Sandy.

Mobile is the original home of Mardi Gras, and two nights ago we began seeing campsites decorated for the celebration. But on our way off Dauphin Island, we saw houses decorated like people elsewhere do for Christmas (or more recently, Halloween). We collected some beads left in a park that Rett used to decorate her bike (a parade had already come through the island days ago), and as we left the island over its massive bridge, we saw dozens of “bead roadkills”, strands of worn and broken beads littering the shoulder, presumably blown off floats as they flew down the highway at high speed.

The 3-mile-long Dauphin Island Bridge was nearly empty and had a nice shoulder anyway, and with the strong tailwind building up as promised, we cruised across it at 25mph. On the other end the shoulder became less generous, but was still no problem, especially with the minimal traffic. But then we hit a 10-mile section of AL-93, the one shortcoming in my otherwise-perfect plan to get us into Mobile. I knew from StreetView (and from all the “heat” disappearing from the cycling heatmaps) that it was a terrible setup for cycling, a narrow two lanes where only about 6 inches of shoulder existed between a rumble strip and encroaching vegetation. But I figured we could grit our teeth and survive 40 minutes of nightmare-riding (kept short because of our 15+ mph wind-aided speed), since the other options would add 10-15 miles of extra distance. It turned out to be far more pleasant that I’d feared, mostly because traffic on this direct route between Mobile and Dauphin Island was much lighter than I’d expected. We were able to mostly ignore the dangerous shoulder and spend most of our time in the travel lane, because it was rarely a problem for overtaking vehicles to move into the oncoming lane to pass.

Our entry into Mobile took us through some sharp contrasts, from rickety housing on the outskirts and more cigarette smoking in one day than we’ve seen in a year, to an Airbus engineering office and the elegant historical houses of downtown Mobile. We picked up lunch and groceries at Greer’s, which sits right on the Mardi Gras parade routes, and the manager said that parade coming up on Friday, the one that opens the parading season, is the most exciting for the locals to see. Excellent, we’ll be there!

Just as we were set to ride the final mile to our AirBNB, rain opened up, but it passed quickly and we made it mostly dry to our home for the next week, a character-filled, Mardi Gras-decorated historic house draped with a majestic live oak outside, and equally-majestic 14-foot ceilings inside. Booked two weeks and 500 miles ago, it’s another comfortably-hit target that will now let us see Mom & Dad for the first time in seven months!