John B. Herrington : Blog

Miss Windy's Alabama Sweet Potato Pie

November 6, 2008
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Ingredients:

1) Take one slightly bruised roadside sweet potato

2) Locate a knife, preferably with the blade closed and not rusty

3) Stuff both of the above items in one "Bama" shoulder bag

4) Take to someone that can at least hold a knife, won't cut their fingers off and knows how to throw this stuff away

5) Buy a pie at a local bakery...

It's amazing the things I find. I should travel the country taking pictures of the junk beside the road. It would make a good coffee table book. Better yet, maybe I can find a coffee table book lying in the grass somewhere!

Today I jumped from one college town to another. Starkville is home to Mississippi State University and Tuscaloosa is home to the Crimson Tide of the University of Alabama. In Mississippi I swore I saw Elvis riding a bike on the turnoff to Tupelo and in Alabama, Coach Paul "Bear" Bryant is just about everywhere!

I wandered through the hills of Starkville before popping out on Highway 82 headed eastbound. The wind was slight, barely 5 knots from the south. The shoulder of the Mississippi side of Highway 82 had an ever changing shoulder; rumble strips, gravel, no shoulder, more gravel, more shoulder. What a treat it was to cross the Alabama State line. A NEW HIGHWAY with a REAL shoulder! A rumble strip strategically placed in a proper spot giving me ample room to stay to the far right side of the highway and avoid the plethora of trucks that were constantly zooming by.

The hills of western Alabama were a joy to pedal. It was nice to not be constantly looking over my shoulder and on guard for an errant truck. My Dad stayed within a few miles of my position and had some fun watching a State Trooper stop at least 6 people within a four mile stretch over the period of an hour. The trooper must have been having fun because he gave me a big smile and wave as I passed by!

In the small town of Gordo, AL, I stopped at a gas station to grab something to drink and came across a fellow that was obviously lost. Without a map or even a good understanding of exactly where he was going (or where he was for that matter), he ends up giving me his cellphone and wanted me to ask the guy on the other end where he was supposed to go. The lost soul gave me the name of the town, Corinth, 184 miles to the northwest! Yow! Talk about lost, but he was a nice guy!

While he was lost going west, I didn't fare much better going east. I knew where I was going, but the highway went from wonderful to woeful. My beloved shoulder went by the wayside, some wayside, but certainly not the one I was on. I think there is an inverse relationship between the width of the shoulder and the amount of truck traffic. Decrease the width, increase the traffic. That would be equivalent to decreasing the denominator of a fraction and increasing the total value of the fraction. Truck traffic = 1/shoulder width. That is the mathematical insight for the day.

There is an old adage in aviation. Flying is actually hours of pure boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror. I think that could be transferred to my experience today on the road to Tuscaloosa. One section of the road kept me on the edge of my seat for about 15 miles before opening back up to a wide shoulder. When I thought I had seen enough, road construction began and the highway necked down to an even narrower road and NO shoulder! Now that was fun! I decided in the best interest of my personal safety and a desire to live a long and prosperous life, I bailed out of the construction lane and pedal on the side that was being paved. None of the road crew gave me any grief, probably because they would be happier letting me pass than scraping my body off the pavement! My Dad was strategically placed at the end of the construction, keeping an eye on my progress using a pair of binoculars. I think he earned more gray hairs than I did!

I made the final push into Tuscaloosa around 5:00 pm, not before finding the county ran out of money to keep a wide shoulder and they decided to neck it down to keep costs under control. I picked up a hitchhiker for a mile or two before I pulled into the Budget Inn on Highway 82. I put the bike away and made a beeline for Velo City Pro Cycles in Tuscaloosa to replace the tire tube that I used the other day. They gave me some great advice on how to navigate through town tomorrow and find my way south toward Montgomery. Always nice to get local advice (and high carb goo for the road)!
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