Day 79

Huge spiders
I woke up and realized I needed to decide what to do next. It was a really crappy situation- it came down to choosing between riding on the tiny shoulder of a freeway pretty much all day but then getting to a 41 mile paved bike path or riding on highways that didn't have a shoulder at all and skipping the bike path. Either way, I had to go on the freeway for a bit. While packing up my stuff, I discovered that this area wasn't as free of spiders as I had hoped. I could see the spider I had seen from a distance last night- it was in fact several webs and spiders. And about 10 feet from my tent was another. I could get close enough to really check it out. I can't even imagine what it would be like to accidentally walk into one of these. The web would probably completely wrap around then persons face, pinning the spider there. As I left, I went slowly to insure that didn't happen to me. At first I really didn't like the freeway. The shoulder sucked. But after a while, I realized it wasn't too bad. There was very little traffic. Every time a car passed, they could easily get into the other lane. Realistically, it was better than actually being in the road. At one point the shoulder was so small that I couldn't understand how I could stay on it. I decided to take the freeway most of the way- Google gave me a route that had backroads for the second half of it. Before I got to my turn, the traffic got just a bit much. A few trucks passed by in the lane closest to me- too close for comfort. It was probably because I was closer to a big city and the hills were more plentiful here, so visibility was limited. Instead of seeing a bright green dot way up ahead and therefore having plenty of time to figure out that it was a biker and passing, people would only have 100 feet or so. I decided it was time to turn if possible. It was. I took the back way into Brookhaven. With the freeway being so desolate, it was easy to guess that the backroads would be too. I made it all the way through the big city wth no difficulty at all. On the outskirts, I could see rain clouds, hear thunder, and every once in a while, the road would light up in a flash. Later it started to drizzle, but not much. I forgot to turn at one point, but luckily it only added 2 miles or so to my trip. Because of the clouds, it got dark fast. I found a place to check out for camping, but there were small spiders in their webs blocking my path. I didn't want to disturb them. As I got back on the road, I found out that I got a flat tire. I tried to ride on it just to get a bit further, but it was useless. I had to push. I looked around for another spot, but I realized the previous spot was going to be my only choice. If there were spiders accross the front, people must not use it often. It started to rain a little more heavily as I set up my tent. All of a sudden I got the sensation that I was getting bitten a bunch on my ankle. I went to scratch it and found out there were a bunch of ants. Great. I got them off. Hopefully that was from a while ago- it would suck if I was setting up my tent on an anthill.