Mississippi - How to ride through muddy puddles by G. Mook

Mud, glorious mud, there's nothing quite like it for making you laugh!!!

Especially when it's your mate getting covered in it... hee hee

Every day we swop leads & one of us is up front doing the nav & the decision making, the other is there to point out when you go wrong or to take the pics &/or film of your cock ups... today was my turn to record the errr less skilful riding techniques of Mr Mook!!

We left Tennessee this morning by crossing it's namesake river & entering Mississippi. Almost straight away we were on gravel roads, with me having a minor moment of front wheel wobble in deep newly laid gravel, I managed to stay upright & we wound our way through some great off road bits, mixed with plenty of back roads to link them all together. 

In the notes, Sam makes a comment along the lines of 'the tracks here are single lane dirt roads, dirt comes mud, be warned' So our fun started when we started to encounter muddy trails instead of gravel roads, these had the odd puddle on them but they could be an inch deep or 2 foot deep, you couldn't tell until you ere in them! This caught Geoff out a couple of times, the best of which we both got on film, so I've uploaded both his & my version to YouTube, (see the links below....)
Steve's Footage:
Geoff's Footage: - coming when we can find it on Geoff's camera!!

He got fairly soaked, swore a bit & had soggy feet for the rest of the day!!! hee hee...

No. 2 for the day was a puncture at the end of the day, somehow a nail went through the rear tyre, we were sweating like the proverbial by the time we'd changed it so then it as off to Water Valley, the lace to stay for the night, (great  Mexican restaurant here).

Once in the room, (a naff little motel in Water Valley), no. 3 for the day happened, Geoff turned on the shower & got soaked!!! He had a proper swearing fit whilst I just fell over laughing!! No doubt my turn will come, just not too soon I hope!

So other things for today, Mississippi is hot, much hotter than Tennessee, it seems more affluent too, but with a greater divide between the poor & the well off, properties seem well cared for , but there seems to be loads of places with tons of scrap cars outside them too... odd one that...

People seem a little more taciturn but then in Water Valley, someone left a card on my bike saying welcome to town, so maybe just a more reserved type of friendliness, we'll see.

We have another 100 miles to go in this state & we need some back tyres now, so that is part of tomorrow's to do list, as well as cross the Mississippi river, eat more pie & soak up more of his lovely warm sunshine.

Oh & we missed out on calling into see Sam Correro in Corinth his morning which was a shame, would have been cool to catch up with the guy who set up this trail, maybe another time...

great stuff, have fun ya'all...

oh yeah, another bit to Geoff's dunking was all of his paperwork including passport is now sporting a brown stain!! ;-)