Day Forty-Three
I'm holding west of Mobile, Alabama, as this powerful storm system blows through. Inches of rain, flash flood warnings, lightning, hail, winds gusts predicted to reach 70 mph in places. East Texas is flooded. Again. Tallahassee is cleaning up after getting hammered with rain and 80 mph winds few days ago, and they are about to get hammered again.
It's a fast-moving storm so I should be able to make some progress south to the Gulf coast this afternoon. I'll have about a 5-hour riding window after this system passes and before dark tonight. I need to check to see if the Dauphin Island ferry is running. If I get there and it's not, I'll lose a day waiting, or I'll have backtrack north and around the top of Mobile Bay, a 60+ mile detour. I've sent some photos and videos of the view outside of Ranell's home, and the television weather reporters. It's a big deal, and I'm lucky again to have a welcome place to stay as bad weather blows through.
I stayed in Mobile today, grounded by the weather. Ranell and Cherish are wonderful hosts. Today we saw it all: severe thunderstorms, torrential rains, flash flood warnings, hail, and tornado watches. Everything short of frogs and locusts fell out of the sky today. I watched the weather reporting all day, at first to see if I would get a weather window this afternoon so I could scoot south to the Gulf Coast and turn left towards Florida. Then, after it finally sunk in that I was safe and welcome here and would not be going anywhere for a while, I just watched the weather reporting to see the carnage unfold. Another system was following close behind. As we were getting hammered in Mobile, Houston and Beaumont, Texas were getting hammered by the next system coming our way. It's hitting tonight, all night, and the skies will start to clear tomorrow. Then I can scoot south to the Gulf Coast and turn left towards Florida.
Ranell worked from home today and I split my time fixated on the weather reporting and writing up some thinking blog posts. About every two hours Cherish would call Ranell to see how I was doing. Ranell said, "What? You never call this much to see how I'm doing!". Cherish said she talked to her coworkers all day about my ride, telling them, (Ranell said), "if Mark can to this, we can get moving some more ourselves", or something to that effect.
Cherish also called a reporter she knows in the local Fox10 television newsroom. The reporter, Ahniaelyah Spraggs, called me and asked if she could come to the house to interview me. Of course! She arrived at the Franklin home at 5:30 PM and we had a nice conversation about the ride. She also interviewed Ranell about our reunion. 25 years ago, Ranell was an 18-year-old intern for my urban forestry nonprofit group, staying with my family in the summer of 1999. The interview was great fun. We worked in a weather angle to the story about me being "stranded" in Mobile due to the storm, because most of the news tomorrow will be about the weather here, not about some old guy riding his bike through town. We'll see if it airs in the morning.
This evening, we watched Franklin family videos, of Cherish on the Wheel of Fortune game show, where she won a ton of money, and of Ranell proposing marriage to Cherish, getting down on one knee, at a luau on Oahu. And we fixated on the weather some more. The second storm coming from the west picked up speed this afternoon and is hitting now, at about 9:00 pm, rather than later tonight. This means it should clear the area by 7:00 AM tomorrow instead 10:00 am, as previously forecast. I'll be on the road early tomorrow and on my way to the Florida coast.
Ranell and Cherish’s wedding.
I’d love to hear from you. Donate to the ride and send along your words of encouragement and tell me why getting kids outside matters to you.
