Cross-Country Ramble 33: Across the Father of all Waters

Date: 3/21/98 6:21:41 PM Central Standard Time

After the gut-wrenching, knuckle-whitening, never-again sprint across the long, no-shoulder I-10 bridge over the Sabine River into Louisiana, the question of how we were going to get across the Mississippi never left my mind. I am a natural fretter--able to fret even when all is well--and this dilemma got my fret machine going full blast. It got going especially well in still of the night. Even while I was Cajun dancing at Borque's, part of my mind was worrying away at the problem.

Getting across rivers is one of those problem that sort of snuck up on us. Crossing rivers had been no big deal for the first 1700 miles of our trip. During the whole two months, we had only crossed two rivers with water in them, the Colorado and the Rio Grande, and for all the publicity they get, they are really more streams than rivers.

The Mississippi is different. From everything we hear, crossing the Mississippi involves big, heavily traveled bridges preceded by long, probably narrow, causeways across the wetlands between the Atchafalaya and the Mississippi. Going that way has got to make the Sabine crossing seem like a picnic.

Finding a route that will work for us is a classic linear programming problem--find the optimum solution within specified constraints. Our routing problem is made more difficult by our particular constraints: no biking in the dark, stay indoors at night, bike no more than 40 miles per day, no shoulder-less river crossings, and minimal hills. All my fretting wasn't getting me a solution. In desperation, I broke the masculine rule against asking for help, and issued a plea to my colleagues of the Touring Newsgroup on the Internet. Several wonderful people responded and told me where to look. Scanning the map, I was able to discern in small print the letters "FY" which I took to indicate ferries at Melville on the Atchafayala and at St. Francisville on the Mississippi. The route jumped out at me. It would involve biking 50 miles, 5 of them on gravel, but it would work! Ecstasy!

I recalled that AAA maps have a little box that gives details on ferry schedules. Should I bother to look? My fret machine springs into action, and I look. The map says the ferry at Melville runs only between 4-8 AM and 5-9 PM. We'll have to bike the 25 miles from Washington to Melville after sunup and before 8 AM or we'll have to bike the 25 miles from Melville to St. Francisville between 5 PM and sundown. Quick figuring tells the sad story. We can't possibly make it. Arghhhhh! The fret machine fires up again. We need some way of being magically transported to Melville before the morning ferry closes.

Divine intervention comes to us in the form of June, our B&B host who had taken us to Borque's the night before. She checks out some of the people she knows who own pickup trucks, and when they can't help, she offers to transport us in her Jeep early the next morning. Oh Joy!