As I left Baton Rouge, I was greeted by an awesome tail wind allowing me to keep up a very easy and fast speed up and out of Louisiana. As soon as I was coming to the border of Mississippi, however, I was greeted by what seemed to be foothills of some mountains. Long, rolling hills.  I kept pedaling till I came to historic Natchez, MS 100.5 miles later. I stopped at a fire station to ask if it would be alright if I camped out in their back yard, but after a quick recon I realized there were no fire fighters in the building. One of the two trucks was missing, so I assumed there was a big call and they all went. I sat and waited there for over an hour but the sun was setting and I couldn't wait any longer. I had noticed that across the street way up on a hill was a building with a big "For Lease" banner waving in front of it. I decided to investigate further and hope the fire truck came back in the mean time. The building turned out to be an old funeral parlor and the truck did not return. I set up my tent behind the funeral parlor with only the slightest sense of creepiness and worry of zombie attack. Luckily I made it through the night, and was able to head out on the road again the next morning.

Crossing over the Mississippi river was a pretty cool experience. It was a big, old steel bridge that I went over and I saw a couple barges being pushed by tugboats and even a classic casino river boat. She was a wide river for sure, and it made me feel accomplished to have made it this far on my bicycle. I continued on through rural Louisiana fighting a sadistically strong head wind. After several hours of head wind I finally found what was driving the pressure difference and got caught in a decent storm for about an hour and a half as I continued down the back roads of the deep South. Eventually the rain let up, and I made it to my destination of Monroe, LA nearly another hundred miles away. I had made a contact here through the online traveler-hosting network couchsurfing.com and headed to the University of Louisiana Monroe campus to meet Thomas and fall onto my couch for the evening. About a mile and a half before reaching his apartment, coming down an offramp going about 20 miles per hour I felt like I hit a rock, but immediately noticed my back wheel sliding wildly to the left and right. I had a complete blow out of my tire. So I stopped, fixed the flat, and finally made it to shelter. Thomas was a really nice college senior, about to graduate and take the LSAT in order to hopefully go into environmental law. The next morning after crashing pretty hard from back-to-back 100 mile days, I woke up still really tired and packed up to leave. I called my Rotary club contact in South Carolina before heading out and realized that I was a day ahead of schedule for the upcoming meetings. I quickly decided to spend a day resting and head out the next morning, and Thomas was totally fine with sharing his couch one more night. This was so perfect because my legs were actually shaky getting back onto the bike. So I rested. And the next morning felt so much better. Leaving Monroe, I was once again greeted by a friendly tail wind that made cycling so enjoyable. It was a beautiful, sunny day through a lot of no-mans land Northern Louisiana and Southern Arkansas. I arrived at my destination of Monticello, AR after 90 miles in really good time and had enough light in the day to hang out in a coffee shop and play on the computer. I eventually had to find a place to camp and the coffee shop manager was kind enought  point me in the direction of a small lake up the road a few miles. I made it to Lake Monticello when the sun was just perfectly setting over the water and I dragged my bike and trailer into the woods out of park ranger view and set up camp.

Thursday morning I packed up and headed for my weekend resting point of Little Rock, Arkansas. Almost 90 miles to my contacts house, I made it there around 4:30, very tired due to a decent head wind. Thanks to a series of contacts made by my friend Renie in Mobile, AL that I can still barely follow, I was connected with several extremely nice people who opened their homes, work, and lives to me. Two women in particular were super excited to meet me and use all their networking power to help me in my journey. They call themselves my "ground crew" since I'm always on the move. Friday, May 15th, I went to pick up my SPOT GPS tracking unit that Thomas Fowlkes with MDi in Mobile had secured for me as a sponsorship from California. I can now be tracked throughout my journey and even press a button if I need help or emergency rescue, though I hope I never need that option. I'm still working on putting the GPS map up on my website, but it will be there soon. Thomas also tells me that soon I will have a few different "refueling stations" on my trip where Clif Bar will be sending me food. On Saturday I was able to help out with an Americorps community outreach program where we worked with around 60 middle school kids to spruce up a local alternative school. It was a great experience meeting all the volunteers and kids. After we finished there, a bunch of the volunteers and I went to a Greek Orthodox food festival where I devoured a gyro and some awesome baklava, while watching some traditional greek dancing. That evening I went to the Little Rock Film Festival and watched two movies. The first one, 500 Days of Summer, was a really good love story and I recommend that to everyone. The second was a Russian rendition of 12 Angry Men called "12" and was two hours and forty minutes of Russian with subtitles that nearly dragged on forever. I do not recommend this one. The theater luckily served beer and I took advantage of the long winded commrads to enjoy a few beers. Yesterday, Sunday May 17th, the Americorps volunteer who is hosting me, Kristin Pederson, one of her coworkers and I went down to Hot Springs, AR about an hour away. It was a cool little town nestled in the foothills of the Ozarks where waters averaging 135 degrees flow out of the ground. There was a lot of history there with cool old bathhouses and huge old hotels that didn't quite seem to fit in the scenery. We sat next to a spring for a while and tried to soak our hands and feet as much as we could, but the waters were almost scalding hot. I had never seen a hot spring before and really enjoyed the relaxing day. After returning to Little Rock we made a little dinner then went to a screening of Field of Dreams that was playing in an open baseball stadium. It was fun to bring a blanket and sit in the outfield grass watching the big screen on the score board. And that was the wrap up of my resting time in Little Rock, Arkansas.

I woke this morning a little later than planned, but am heading out on a 90 mile day up to Newport, AR where I've been connected with a family of a guy here in Little Rock to spend the night. Then Tuesday I head up to Pochahontus, AR to another guy's family's place for a nights rest before heading into Missouri. I'll have two nights of camping in state parks in Missouri before I reach St. Louis hopefully Friday. I plan on spending at least the weekend resting and visiting a Peace Corps friend in St. Louis before turning back West. Until then, I thank you all for keeping up with my journey, and if you want a more often update of where I am and what I'm doing, I've started Twittering. So you can either log onto Twitter.com and follow me, or you can see my updates on the home page of my website.