Today's route

This morning I am in the McDonalds in Hodgenville, KY, preparing to push ahead to another free camping spot about 40 miles to the west. The spot is behind a grocery store, and offers a shower and sink, but unfortunately no WiFi. I thought I'd better post this entry this morning to inform that there may be no blog post forthcoming tomorrow, at least until I can forge ahead to find WiFi again.

I slept well in the tent last night by the baseball field. Today's ride should be fairly easy, more rolling hills and open country. This is Abe Lincoln country, and there are signs of it everywhere, from historic sights to businesses carrying Abe-related names.

Today I will reach, or at least nearly reach, the Central Time Zone. That is a significant milestone. An hour of my day will disappear, to be relived again like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day.

For breakfast just now I had McDonalds sausage gravy and bisquits, a southern dish that most people in the north have never heard of. You can't get sausage gravy and bisquits at any restaurant in New York. McDonalds here also offers sweet tea, another unheard of thing in the north.

It has occurred to me as I ride past bourbon distilleries and the fields of tobacco which are ubiquitious here in central Kentucky, that those two things are less innocuous than they seem. I was addicted to nicotine, as a smoker and chewer of tobacco, for 20 years before kicking the habit four years ago. I did it all, cigarettes, cigars, chew, and snuff. I also did my share of imbibing, and suffering the consequences therein. My first impression of the gentle agrarian scenes which the tobacco crop fields evoke crumbled when it became apparent to me in realizing what those crops actually are: drug production. And the same goes for the bourbon distilleries: drug production. A drink and a smoke. A lot of misery is derived of them, as anyone addicted to either one of those substances will attest.

There is not much more to say this morning, only more pedaling to accomplish, and so I must get to it, and stay tuned as I seek WiFi later on down the road.

until later...