On to Louisiana with trees, old homes and poor folks dominating. Every town featured more house trailers than homes. Sometimes, a nice brick home would see its opposite across the street or next door in a broken down, gutted trailer home. Most disturbing to see. Folks proved quite nice and friendly, however. Mississippi pretty much the same with small towns along the road with poverty and broken down trailers and junk everywhere.
One fellow drove up to me in a nice van: "Hey, can I trouble you by buying you a nice pizza for lunch?"
"Sure, but why do you want to buy me lunch?" I asked.
"Because you're living my dream," he said. "And, I'd like to find out how you do it."
From there, he shared with me his life story for 1.5 hours! He said, "When I ride my bicycle, the whole world becomes perfect. I want to ride the entire peninsula of Florida on my bike. Can I do it?"
"You certainly can!" I said.
I traveled into Alabama on the Selma to Montgomery freedom march route with Martin Luther King in 1965. I lived in the south at that time and knew about segregation, separate but equal and discrimination. Further along, I visited Tuskegee Airmen Museum in that legendary town. Again slow and poverty. I sweated from the moment I got up with 110 heat indexes to the moment I crawled into the tent at night. I drenched my jersey and sweated as I fell asleep. Essentially for 21 days, I lived in sweat in the South. Finally, I pedaled through Georgia with the same topography and poverty to the Atlantic Ocean at Savannah.
However, remembering the old cowboy that told me to "cowboy up', I didn't cry. I laughed hysterically! I may have whimpered a few times! I stopped at Subway Sandwich shops and ordered a six inch veggie sub and added "free fill-ups' lemonade. I drank 20 glasses of ice cold pink lemonade before stepping back out into the killer heat.
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