urban bicycle journeys

My friend Lyman and I set off on a 2-3 day cycle tour in Northern Mississippi.

Five hours north of New Orleans, on her way to Memphis, Lyman’s wife Gillian dropped the two of us and our folding Bike Fridays around 5:00 PM at a gas station three or four miles south of downtown Oxford MS. If we cycled that little section it helped us pretend we were arriving Oxford that evening by bicycle, not by car.

We cycled into town.

Oxford MS might be one of the most distinctive and beautiful college towns in America simply because it is so remote, preventing it from being a suburb to anywhere else. Home of the University of Mississippi (“Ole Miss”) Oxford is nearly eighty miles southeast of the closest major city Memphis TN. Oxford’s downtown centers on the county courthouse. Lyman cycled ahead of me.

We parked our bicycles outside the courthouse and saddled up to the bar of a restaurant called Boure. We carried our IPAs out to the second floor balcony and sat to peruse the lovely late afternoon looking over the courthouse square. We eventually walked back on the bikes.

We rode three quarters of a mile to our Airbnb, a small 1940’s two bedroom house just south of the Square.

Oxford has some fancy places. At 7:30 PM on a Sunday night with no reservations we found seats at the Michelin-listed restaurant City Grocery.

After asking “what’s a coulotte?” I ordered the menu’s “Grilled Herb Marinated Coulotte.” That beefsteak with came with broccolini and potatoes and was all magically delicious. Lyman’s “Herb Braised Leg of Lamb” was disappointingly cooked dry. I tried a bite and it just did not taste good. I have never sent-back any restaurant dish in my life but in hindsight maybe we should have tried that. I don’t remember if we ordered dessert.

The next morning near that same Courthouse Square we walked into The Byrd House Organic Cafe.

The last few months at home for breakfast and/or lunch I have been trying to make avocado toast, obsessing on the quality of the bread, how properly ripe the avocados are, and creative use of spices. Here at the Byrd House in Oxford MS avocado toast was prepared with a precision and care that bested even the much more expensive restaurant the night before.

Even the garnish tasted like the best arugula and olive oil I had eaten in a while. I wish they had real utensils rather than plastic.

We cycled out of town.

Cycle touring without camping gear in northern Mississippi requires planning because towns with hotels can be far apart. The nearby town of New Albany MS had places to stay and was also the jumping off point the FOLLOWING day for what sounded like a great north – south paved trail. If we cycled on the dangerous seeming busy two-lane-without-a-shoulder Mississippi Route 30 it’s only thirty-four miles from Oxford to New Albany. Cycling alternate routes on safer but smaller back roads would be much longer. Google Maps only sometimes shows a difference between paved and gravel roads. I need to learn to use different mapping apps but my Luddite brain resists

We chose to take back roads and five miles out of Oxford veered off busy MS30. It was immediately peaceful, lovely, and smooth sailing.

Out here some person is keeping miniature donkeys while longhorn cattle and zebras graze together. Across the road a horse came up to visit Lyman.

After we had cycled enough miles on the paved road that turning around was no longer an option Google Maps gave us no warning that the state “highway” would suddenly transition to a gravel road. There were hills. At several points it was steep enough that Lyman had to get out and push.

Gravel cycling has its place but we were not riding bicycles properly set up for this. Our seventy-plus year old brains were under constant rattle as we rumbled along. It was exhausting.

The woods were otherwise fairly free of dumped stuff but if you had two unwanted La-Z-Boys why not just leave them here?

Twenty something miles into the day’s cycling we retreated and cycled for maybe five miles back on busy MS30. After stopping at the only mini-mart in the entire area we again left the main highway and found tiny roads that more or less paralleled the major highway.

The roads were now paved but with little grading it required cycling up and down steep hills. We were quite exhausted when about 4:30 PM we creaked into the surprisingly prosperous looking New Albany MS, population 7,600. Perhaps because it is Faulker’s hometown people seem to be moving here. On the way in I saw real estate signs for new upscale construction.

New Albany is on the Tallahatchie River. More on that later.

Brain Freeze frozen yogurt sits at the trailhead of Tanglefoot Trail in downtown New Albany. We would cycle that former rail line the next day forty-four miles New Albany to Houston, Mississippi. It had been a long day and we sat down, me with a coffee flavored frozen yogurt topped with chocolate sauce.

For less than the cost of two hotel rooms in New Albany I had found a two-bedroom two-bath house on Airbnb. New Albany had a choice of several downtown restaurants. We chose seats at the bar of the Italian place Nico’s.

We split a pizza with two vegetable side dishes.

On the way back to the Airbnb we passed Union County Courthouse.

We cycled out the next morning. Lyman always wants a big breakfast early but I convinced him this day to wait until we had cycled ten miles down the trail to the tiny town of Ecru MS, where I confirmed there was a restaurant open. The Tanglefoot Trail was smooth and easy.

At 10:08 AM we rolled up to Zuby’s Cafe, the only restaurant open in downtown Ecru MS, population 900. Like I have seen in rural North Carolina, Southern buffets seem a big draw. Eight minutes earlier Zuby’s had cleared its breakfast buffet but the lunch buffet would not be out until 11:00 AM. They let us just order what we wanted. Mine was the best cheeseburger I have had in a while, with a side of green beans; Lyman a BLT with onion rings. What a breakfast.

While eating I stared at these graduates from seventy-one years ago. William Faulkner said “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

We went back cycling on the Tanglefoot Trail. I could not stop singing in my head Ode to Billy Joe by Bobbie Gentry, maybe because the day before we had crossed the Tallahatchie River.

On the bike trail we saw a sign welcoming us to Chickasaw County where I knew Bobbie Gentry was born.

Despite the Southern Gothic feel of the song, Bobbie Gentry (not her real name, of course!) was a seasoned professional when scoring her one big hit in 1967, almost sixty years ago. She had had a rough upbringing. Shortly after her birth in Chickasaw County Bobbie’s mother left her in Mississippi with poor rural grandparents and ran off to California with some man. Growing up, Bobbie was tossed around by relatives in northern Mississippi before being moved at age thirteen to be with her mother in Palm Springs CA, of all places. Bobbie had always been musical and creative and went to both UCLA and CalArts before writing and recording several songs, including Ode to Billy Joe. The song calls up images and names from her childhood. I now know there are several bridges over the Tallahatchie River, none immediately next to the Choctaw Ridge. Instead “Choctaw Ridge” and “Tallahatchie Bridge” delightfully rhyme in the repeated closing phrase of a perfectly constructed song that tells a fictional first person short story. BBC TV regulations from that era required that all the music be performed live. Bobbie is actually playing guitar and singing here, with the BBC adding orchestral background music, images, and subtitles.

The Tanglefoot Trail continued.

Forty-four miles after starting in New Albany MS the path led us into Houston MS, population 3,800. It seemed less upscale, more blue collar than New Albany. On the north side of town the trail passes a huge furniture factory. In downtown Houston at 3:45 PM we found ice cream and coffee at The Drip N Sip Cafe. Though they were technically closing at four, they invited us to stay as long as we like while over the phone I haggled a deal for two very nice rooms six blocks away at Bridges Hall Manor Bed & Breakfast which sits across from a McDonalds.

Bridges Hall is done up in the usual Victorian decor.

I carefully checked, and there was only one restaurant open at night in downtown Houston MS. No Way Jose was big, brightly lit, and lively when we ordered enchiladas at the bar. Afterward, teenagers with Christian sayings on their t-shirts were hanging around in the parking lot.

Lyman, an architect with a background in historic preservation, likes to stare at courthouses.

The next morning our included breakfast at the b&b was prepared by Pat, who said she worked at her eighty-plus age because she was bored sitting around. She was surprised that even though both of us described our backgrounds as Southern, neither of us had heard of “chocolate gravy” (“everybody knows about chocolate gravy!”) for breakfast. You spoon it over your biscuits.

It was time to go home. Setting up these two to three day bike rides often requires complicated logistics. This is the bike ride we had taken in two days from Oxford. Note Tuscaloosa in the lower right of the map.

If we could get the hundred twenty miles to Tuscaloosa AL it seemed the perfect spot for me to catch Amtrak to New Orleans and Lyman to get picked up by Gillian who was driving them back to Austin TX from Birmingham. Uber!

We called for an Uber in Houston MS and were greeted by a Toyota Camry driven by the engaging personality Irene. Having folding Bike Fridays made it relatively easy to jam everything in the trunk for the two hour car ride. Irene lives in a trailer in rural Mississippi and said her life was fascinating meeting all kinds of people driving for Uber. For example, several Brits fly every year into Memphis so they can do homage to Elvis in Tupelo MS. Irene’s nineteen year old daughter is artsy and Irene wishes she could afford a more expensive college for her. Irene was so gregarious that I found myself treating her like some kind of therapist while Lyman slept. She dropped us off at the Amtrak station in Tuscaloosa.

Lyman and I had three or four hours to bicycle around Tuscaloosa AL. Perhaps that is another story but my biggest takeaway from the University of Alabama is how imposing the football stadium is. At a key intersection in town is the stadium comes right to the curb.

Lynman took this photo of me and my bald head schlepping with difficulty the folded Bike Friday up the stairs and onto the train. Once inside it’s quite easy to put the bike somewhere.

Of course Amtrak was an hour and a half late in the already slow seven hour run back to New Orleans. I still find these train rides relaxing.