This morning promised to be some tricky urban riding for folks who have been spoiled by many weeks of rural riding. Our mission was to get from our hotel on the west side of Mobile to the battleship Alabama on the top (north) of Mobile Bay. Appropriately our first few miles were on US 98; we will be riding many miles along route 98 as we make our way along the Gulf Coast.
Oak trees on route 98. This would be a pleasant ride on a Sunday morning, but not in rush hour traffic
Jeanna, our master route planner, had laid out a route through a gritty industrial area along the West shore of Mobile Bay. The traffic was surprisingly light and it was interesting to see an active rail center. Good job Jeanna!
We were making good progress until we came to a rail spur crossing the road. A train was creeping along the tracks and came to a stop, blocking the road. The frustrating thing was that only the locomotive was left to cross the road, if the train had been a couple of cars shorter we would have been able to cross the tracks.
Pofig is a useful Russian word and concept for situations like this. To be pofig is to disregard rules that are keeping you from accomplishing something. Since the train wasn't moving, and didn't look like it would move any time soon, we decided to be pofig and push our bikes around the stalled train.
A GT locomotive. Is it operated by Georgia Tech? No, it's not yellow and black.
The Tombigbee River merges with the Mobile River and flows into Mobile Bay. If we had swapped our tandem for a John boat back when we crossed the Tenn Tom waterway, we could have floated down in comfort and reached here a week ago. Perhaps some of the barges we saw have come down from the Tennessee River.
One of our excuses for our pofig behavior was that rain was predicted for the afternoon. The rain is associated with hurricane Hermine, but we are west of the storm and all of the bad weather should be on the east side of the storm. Still, we didn't want to get wet if we could avoid it, and we arrived at the battleship park right on schedule.
Approaching the battleship Alabama. Notice the nice blue skies.
The battleship park tour includes the battleship, the USS Drum submarine and numerous aircraft. We could have spent the entire day there if we weren't trying to avoid getting rained on.
The beautiful teak deck on the Alabama is badly in need of repair. A volunteer told us that the most expensive part of the repair would not be replacing the wood, it would be removing the lead paint beneath the old teak.
This exhibit in the Drum says the mercury was for gyros. I'm not an expert on Greek food, but I suppose it makes sense to rig up some sort of meat thermometer to ensure the gyros are properly cooked.
The park also had an interesting replica of the Hunley, the first submarine. Hunley carried a single "torpedo" at the end of a lance. The idea was to come right up to a wooden ship, then blow a hole in the ship without also blowing up the Hunley. The contrast between the relatively spacious battleship Alabama and the claustrophobic submarine Hunt is startling. But the Hunley would have been like being in a coffin.
Leaving the battleship, US 98 runs for miles on a causeway across Mobile Bay. Interstate 10 also crosses the bay, but the interstate is raised up on stilts. The causeway seemed to be only inches above the water level. We were glad the Hermine storm surge was not impacting Mobile Bay.
Interstate 10 is high above the water, the US 998 causeway not so much.
After crossing the top of Mobile Bay, we went down the East side of the Bay. Whereas the west side is industrial and urban, the east side is suburban and decidedly upscale. There were many fancy houses on the waterfront. We managed to get to our destination in Foley ahead of the rain. Half an hour later it started pouring. Tomorrow we will cross back into Florida. We will be watching the weather channel with interest to see if we are heading into flooding from Hermine.
