BENGARLAND!com

January 10, 2007

The sunrise over the bay this morning was spectacular. I left the park early and made it to Pascagoula, MS just before lunch time… although I thought I was in Pascagoula, AL since I never passed a “Mississippi State Line” sign on the highway. The padding on my handlebars was worn down so I stopped at a Lowe’s hardware to buy more pipe insulation. While there, a woman walking into the store asked me where I was going and told me about the Hwy 90 bridge down near Biloxi. Her husband, a police officer, gave me exact directions on how to go around it by taking the I-110 connector bridge for about 3 miles. The traffic on the interstate wasn’t bad, but dodging the 1,000 plastic reflectors stuck all over the roadside shoulder was annoying.

Riding along the shoreline between Biloxi and Bay St. Louis was depressing. Nothing remained but skeletons of restaurant signs, turn lanes to nowhere, and empty shells of condominiums waiting to be rebuilt. It was apparent that this 30 mile strip of beachfront property was previously a bustling testimony to human manipulations of nature. Now, however, the only things left are the 100+ year old live oaks.

I had my first flat about 2 miles from the ferry. Fortunately I was able to pump it back up and keep going.

While waiting for the ferry to Bay St. Louis, an older guy in the car behind me got out to talk. He was from the area (a community called Pass Christian) and told me about how all of the houses were completely blown away. Yet, he said, when the insurance money comes in he and most of his neighbors plan to rebuild.

I got off the ferry as the sun was setting, had a flat, pumped it up again, and rode into Bay St. Louis. A guy on the ferry told me that there is a Burger King in town but I couldn’t find it. I saw McDonalds, Wendy’s, Sonic, Taco Bell… everything but the Burger King. So I saved my free Whopper coupon for another day.

On the other side of town a frontage road paralleled Hwy 90 so I used it to avoid the traffic. At mile number 102 for the day, I found an abandoned church that was completely gutted on the inside, and was in the process of being remodeled. It was locked but I found an open window around back and crawled through. I unlocked the side door, brought my bike inside, and made myself at home. Amazingly, there were several cases of bottled water in what must have been a closet at one time, so I took a few, filled up my water bottles, made a tuna sandwich, listened to some music, and went to bed.