prologue and day one -- dayton to clarksville, TN

after retrieving my bike from the shop just under the wire thursday night I scrambled stuff together to ride toward a thunderstorm in cincinnati. and after rearranging luggage for the third time was underway for real by 10.30am friday from newport, KY. highway miles to get some road between me and home and then into the bluegrass scrubland. abandoned pasture and clearcut forest on the comeback, lush tobacco fields and horse fences. land that is ever so clearly suitable for coal and cash crops and now sometimes goats. and on a mid-july day, lots of swimming cows. 97 degrees had brown and black shapes crowding around and sliding into muddy ponds. the best picture I didn't take (see link at left) was of holsteins submerged in a lividly algae-green pond at the bottom of a woodsy hollow.

towns tidily composed at the center but with a sense of the provisional creeping in just a few blocks out -- no sidewalks, haphazardly named streets. and I was unwittingly on the 'abraham lincoln heritage trail' on US31E -- boyhood homes and birthplaces and museums and the 'Lincoln freeze' dairy bar. (I also noted a place that sold 'multimile tires,' and other that advertised 'soda and heavy explosives.') kids driving off to war wearing desert fatigues in a convoy of deep-emerald humvees. and after 350 miles or so I pulled into the hilly river town of clarskville, where a generous couchsurfing host sent a friend to open up her cottage and introduce me to her fly-chasing cats maya and sophie. and now into the valley of the big muddy and then a long climb into the ozarks -- conway, AR next.