14.5 mi / 9.5 mph / 303 ft. climbing
Home: Amtrak City of New Orleans

We might have seen more on the day that we left Memphis than we did in the whole week prior. That’s the value of being “forced” out of our comfortable AirBNB twelve hours before our train left for Chicago (but I didn’t feel guilty for doing the South America-prep while holed in Memphis either). Luckily it was an absolutely perfect spring day to spend outside.

As the sun began lowering, we departed Overton Park and headed away from downtown to another brewery we’d been wanting to check out. Good beer and a bicycle theme are reasons to recommend Hampline Brewing Company, but unfortunately they don’t run their pizza oven on Tuesdays, which threw our dinner plan awry. We stayed for a drink in the cooling air, but then decided to reverse back to downtown for dinner on Beale Street.

We turned back up into the city from the riverfront (up a steep hill that made it feel very much like the Seattle waterfront), and navigated to Beale Street. Two or three blocks were pedestrianized, though there weren’t really enough tourists on a Tuesday evening to be filling the pavement. With a gaggle of police manning one of the vehicle barricades, it felt safe enough to lock our bikes (with all of our bags) to a historical marker while we got dinner in B.B. King’s Blues Club.

Luckily a band was starting up just as we sat down in the packed club, and we got to hear “BB King’s All-Stars” play some classic blues. For…two songs. Then they quickly transitioned into various pop and rock hits from the ’80s to 2010s. They were exactly the sort of “professional”, “performing for tourists is our job” band that I had been fearing in New Orleans, but never actually encountered there (making the New Orleans music scene even more amazing, in retrospect). BB is surely rolling over in his grave listening to this sellout crap, but I can’t really blame the band too much. Playing several times a week, they have surely taken direction from their audience, an audience who pretends they want to hear the blues, but the band has discovered that their tips don’t lie (luckily we left before they actually played a Shakira cover). A smaller club across the street had its doors open and we could hear real blues coming from there, but of course that place was nearly empty. Wrong choice by us, but now we know for next time!

In darkness we rode south to the Amtrak Station. Google Maps featured a big dot for the Lorraine Motel half a block off our route, and I quickly cut over while Rett waited on the main street. I was surprised how emotionally affected I was while I stood astride my bike and gazed at the site of Martin Luther King’s assassination for a few seconds, something I had barely even thought of until seeing the dot. Even in darkness, the ’60s-era motel felt just like the photos I remember from history class, but somehow that late-’60s era of civil unrest feels much less-distant now than it did when I learned about it 30 years ago.

The Amtrak station in Memphis has largely been taken over by a trendy and fancy motel (similar to Union Station in Denver), with the drab Amtrak waiting room surviving in one corner. Our train was frustratingly-slow in arriving, but otherwise it was a trouble-free overnight journey to Chicago, which was hardly a guarantee for only the second post-flood train to make this run.

Day 2

15.8 mi / 10.2 mph / 32 ft. climbing
Home: Mom & Dad’s House

With the weather clear and us needing to maintain some semblance of cycling-shape, we turned down Dad’s offer to pick us up in their pickup and rode the 16 miles northwest from Chicago’s Union Station.

Despite the chilly north wind, and a detour around a closed section of Milwaukee Avenue, the ride was going well until we caught a flat tire. Thanks Chicago streets! And then I put in a tube that I apparently hadn’t patched, so had to replace it with another one. By that time, it was well-past our lunch, so we gave up and dived into a McDonald’s just a few miles from Mom & Dad’s. But with that late refueling, we were able to finally complete the familiar route and closed the loop on the last 10 months of our nomadacy.