Day 7 – Mad Mad Microwave

Monday, October 27th

St. Francisville, LA to Bogalusa, LA

We left St. Francisville around 8:45 after getting some last pictures of the inn.  The hotel had provided what they advertised as an included breakfast, so we weren’t expecting much, but listen to this spread: soft fluffy scrambled eggs, sausage and cheese quiche, cheesy potato pie, hot homemade buttered salted grits (these were unbelievable – I’ve never tasted anything like them), sausage, bacon, cereal, grapefruit slices, apple pie crepes, cream cheese crepes with fresh blueberry topping, milk, fresh squeezed orange juice and coffee.

We headed toward Jackson and missed our turn to follow the Southern Tier route, so we passed through Jackson and took 68 to hit the next town on the Route – Norwood.  Though the road edges were rough, 68 was a wonderful morning ride – pretty scenery, very little traffic, gentle hills.  On the way to Norwood we met a guy riding with his dad and wife.  The couple were riding regular bikes and the father was riding a Toureasy.  They had come all the way from San Diego and were riding supported, camping, and averaging about 50 miles per day. We talked for a bit about their trip and ours and found out that if we had taken the turn we missed, we would have dead ended at a washed out bridge and would have had to backtrack.  Guess we got lucky on that one.

Other than that encounter, I don’t remember much about today’s ride.  It was cold – I remember that much.  And we had a lot of dogs chase us today. We took a lot of back roads that began to blend together – the worst one was a road west of Tangipahoa, LA – possibly 1050 but I don’t remember.  After riding that road, my abs hurt from keeping my back hovered over the jumping, jostling seat.  Hwy 440 also had some bad parts, but today was all about keeping the pedals moving, just keeping that bike rolling.  We stopped at one gas station to eat “lunch” (peanut butter crackers with tuna fish and a pear) and at another station – in Franklinton, I think – for a drink break.  Dad had a DP and I had a hot, sugary power & water cappiccino to try to bring the feeling back into my fingers (the sugar was nice, too).

We traveled over a hundred miles and were pleased my bike batteries made it all the way on one charge.  Once we rolled in to Bogalusa and checked into our motel, we ordered a pizza and found out that our microwave was possessed.

It was beeping every once in a while, and had 45 seconds on the clock.  We went to clear it, but the microwave doesn’t have a “Clear” button, so I mashed at the start button a few times and eventually got it going.  We let it run down and were relieved when it got to 0 and stopped.  Then it started beeping again.  It beeps once on occasion, beeps twice several times then beeps incessantly for a while, beeps and flashes “3:10″, beeps and removes the “3:10″ and has done this for over an hour.  It stops for a bit then will start beeping urgently out of the blue.  None of the buttons really work, so we decided to wait it out, but then Dad got hungry again.  He prepped some oatmeal, put it in the microwave and tried pushing buttons.  When nothing happened, I told him to wait for 3:10 to come around again. He kept trying the buttons and then hit one that made the microwave come up with “4:49″. He opened the door and “3:10″ came up, then microwave wouldn’t start.  He worked out a pattern of opening and closing the microwave door which he mixed with the button pushing.  This could get his oatmeal microwaved in 33-second increments which began on a 10-30 second delay from when he requested them.  Eventually we just had to unplug the microwave so we’d be able to sleep without dreaming of beeping.  Of course, as we unplugged it, it beeped.  Hopefully that’s the last we’ve heard from it.

Today’s Quick Stats:

Bike              Distance (mi)    Average Speed (mph)

MiniWini            115.10                   17.2

Sti(ck/g)           113.37                   17.2

Stampedes: 2

Roadside Pees: 1