Wednesday, March 16, 2011

The End of The Trace

Greetings from Knoxville, TN!

Yesterday, I finished up the Natchez Trace. But I didn't finish it in the way I intended. Instead of pedaling gloriously past mile marker 444 to fireworks, marching bands and baton twirlers, we simply were forced to exit onto Tennessee HWY 100. In a car. Not on a bicycle.


No marching band, but there were these pork chops smothered in southern goodness with collard greens and creamed corn at Loveless Cafe at the end of the Trace just outside of Nashville

You see, on day five (Sunday), I set out from Tupelo, MS charged up with the wind at my back and encouraged by the fact that I'd passed the half-way point the previous day. I rode about 5 miles when I realized that my knee was kind of bothering me. I pulled over at an unidentified confederate grave site area, walked around, stretched and got back on my bike feeling fine. Then, about five miles later, I started feeling the same pinch on the inside of my left knee whenever I put pressure on it. Not good. I had counted in previous, less exciting miles about 300 times per mile when my left knee would be called upon to exert pressure. Pain in that knee when I applied pressure to it would add up quickly, considering that I had 170 miles left to go.

I stopped once more, stretched again, tinkered with my bike a bit and got back on, determined to make it at least the next 10 miles to my prearranged pit-stop location. But this third time, I only made it about a mile before my knee flared up again.

I decided to call it a day after riding all of 11 miles and give my legs a break. After all, I had been going pretty hard on them for the past four day. I figured they just needed a rest and I had factored in a day of rest on the trip anyways, so no big deal.

The next day, though, was rainy and nasty weather; Mom got sick, and my knee wasn't feeling any better. It was obvious that no biking would get done on Monday, either. Along side these hurdles was a growing boredom with biking the trace. I had biked 275 miles through forests and swamps and, while I had learned a ton about Mississippi and traveling on bike (see my last post) I felt like I was facing diminishing returns with the bicycling. I believe strongly that you finish what you set out to do, but I also understand that, for the sake of being pragmatic, sometimes you have to give up on something in order to maintain the overall objective. In my case, biking the Natchez Trace was a very small segment of a much larger trip around the world. The last thing I needed was to injure myself in the second week of my trip being stubborn on the trace.

Also, I felt like I could still appreciate other aspects of the trace by driving the rest of it. You see a lot more of a landscape biking it than driving it, but you seen even more walking it. I had walked very little of the trace for the first 275 miles - mostly because I was weary of expending the energy to detour 200-300 feet off the trace to the trail heads. But in the car, I was able to stop at every trail head, nearly every segment of the old trace left in tact, and really get down on the ground level with the trace. I got to the edge of Bear Creek and watched the eddies swirl debris back and forth along the banks in Tishomingo State Park, admire the Tennessee River in Alabama and walk through an old tobacco plantation in Tennessee. It's unlikely I'd have stopped to do any of thee things had I been on my bike, too focused just to get to the next mile marker so that I could drink some water or east some trail mix. So, in short, I got over any guilt I initially felt about giving up on biking pretty quickly.


Like I said, I'm a terrible photographer, but I worked too hard at this one not to post it. Any guesses what it is?

This experience serves as a really good lesson to remember for the rest of my trip. I'm sure I'll come to points later on where carrying out my intended plan will bring big consequences that may require changing that original plan. Seeing as how I already broke the seal on the Natchez Trace, I don't think I'll need to wring my hands too much about dropping future plans that carry too big of a price.

As for the knee, it's fine to walk on and even run on. If it takes me another 23,000 miles without another incident, I'll forgive it for skipping out on the last 169 of the Trace.

Next Stop: Washington DC

1 comment:

  1. My guess is either a high-res scan of the inside of your knee as it slowly deteriorates and chips away, or a moss-covered Paleozoic rock formation. Super cool either way.

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