Day 39 - St Francisville, LA to Franklinton,LA

86.7 miles today
2,066.5 total trip miles
13.7 mph average
2,913’ climbing
FF - 7
MP - Jerry Wick & family - he was my best man & I was his. We’ve been through many adventures together, both good & bad.  My best teacher on how to be a grandparent because he loves it so much.  I know I can always count on him to give me “the” answer to any question, dilemma or problem. (and I’m amazed at how often he is right!)

In some ways today’s ride was a bit of deja vu from Texas Hill Country.  We had a bunch of rolling hills like in Texas, but fortunately they weren’t as steep because my knee didn’t want that yet.  The knee gave me a little more trouble today because of the hills, but I never doubted that I would finish.  I have already done an initial dose of icing before dinner & will do another after I’m done here.

The weather was great today - 70’s & 80’s with sunshine & no oppressive winds.  This is timber country & the most common trucks we saw on the road were filled with logs.

This load would be of no interest to us as Kettle Moraine Hardwoods.  Too small diameter pine, but it is impressive to see the length they bring out of the woods.  I’m not sure exactly what they do with this stuff - maybe OSB or particle board.  I do know that when they are traveling down the road there is a regular cloud of wood dust & bark chips that flies off the load which adds an extra challenge to riding a bicycle near them.

We were mostly on 2 lane roads, sometimes with little or no shoulder & I have been impressed with how courteous the drivers have been to 43 bicycles taking the same route they are.  One of the staff got a nice picture of me riding.

Kind of a short post tonight because it’s starting to get late & I need to get ice on the knee.

WDYLT - ILT an apparent delicacy in Louisiana is “pickled pig lips”. It is exactly what the name says.  Someone in our group actually ate one.  It wasn’t me.