Natchez sunsets are absolutely gorgeous.
One thing should be made clear when it comes to my route planning for this trip: I hate riding on interstates and their foreign equivalents. They are long, straight, flat, boring, and most importantly, there's nothing to see. Moreover, with a bike as loaded with gear as mine is, the wind and air coming off passing cars and trucks tends to throw you all over the place, it's loud as hell in my helmet at high speed, and my fuel economy goes down the drain. Needless to say, the "avoid highways" option in Google Maps is almost always checked. This often leads to trips taking longer than I might otherwise like, but almost always ensures that I'll pass something interesting along the way, and so it went this time.
Crossing the bridge from Natchez to Vidalia deposits you squarely into Louisiana farming country. You could be forgiven for thinking, with acres upon acres of cotton, tobacco, and corn stretching off into the distance, and the names of the old plantations prominently displayed at the roadside, that you'd stepped back in time a few hundred years to the days of the Antebellum South. Thankfully, though, with machines doing the work slaves once would have. So it went for mile after mile; some would call it boring, I called it an opportunity to take in the scenery while listening to an audiobook through my helmet Bluetooth and not worrying too terribly much about where exactly I was.
The sign welcoming me to Texas was obscured by construction equipment, but the significant improvement in road quality was enough to tell me all on its own. As farmland gave way to forest and forest turned to coastal plains and swamps, I finally spotted the skyscrapers of Houston in the distance. As luck would have it, I'd found out earlier in the day that one of my former college roommates, Alex, was living in Houston and would be able to host me for a night. After a long and increasingly hot day in the seat, I was happy to have a roof over my head, a shower, and good company. The private tour of the Johnson Space Center that Alex's girlfriend arranged for us through a friend didn't hurt either.
Yep, I got a behind-the-scenes tour of THE place where American astronauts are trained, where the latest designs for International Space Station modules and potential crew vehicles are trialed, and where the space suits that keep them all breathing are designed, tested, and built. Nerding out doesn't even begin to describe it.
We got a very detailed explanation of the training process and the particular challenges faced as NASA prepares to send astronauts back to the Moon and beyond. Jocelyn's specialty is Human Performance, and she gave us some fascinating insight into the changes the astronauts' bodies experience over long periods in space; I'd been completely unaware that we undergo significant immune system changes, sometimes leading to dormant childhood diseases such as chicken pox recurring in adulthood, and that in a zero-gravity environment, blood and fluid begin to pool in the skull, causing chronically increased intercranial pressure and vision changes.
We also got a nearly complete history of NASA space suits and extravehicular activities (EVAs), and it was great to hear about the various challenges faced early on in the space program, how they were overcome, and how NASA is preparing for more landings in the near future. All in all, it was a wonderful look into the inner workings of NASA, and would have made the trip to Houston worthwhile on its own.
There was another piece of history I was hoping to see however, and that was the battleship Texas. Laid down in 1913 and completed in 1914, Texas was the last of the "Dreadnoughts", the first generation of battleships built prior to World War I. She is, as far as I am aware, the only surviving warship to have seen action in both World Wars, and served with distinction as both the flagship of the fleet supporting the D-Day landings in Normandy, and in support of several landings in the Pacific Theater, including Iwo Jima. She has been moored in San Jacinto Park as a museum ship for over 50 years.
Once again, stepping aboard Texas felt like stepping a hundred years back in time. The small but dedicated group of volunteers tasked with upkeep and restoration have done a thorough job of keeping the parts of the ship open to the public in the same shape they were when she was retired, and have actually restored some of her gun emplacements to working (though not firing) order.
Being able to tour the machine spaces and engine room of one of the last surviving ships powered by 1900's-era reciprocating steam engines was a joy, as was imagining the difficult conditions her sailors must have worked under while the ship's guns bombarded German and Japanese emplacements while Texas dodged return fire (she was only ever hit by enemy fire twice, with only one combat fatality in almost 40 years of service).
Though she has been kept in sheltered waters for the entirety of her time as a museum ship, 105 years of exposure have taken their toll; large parts of her hull have been weakened by rust, and a series of pumps work 24/7 to keep her lower decks from flooding entirely. Texas is scheduled to be towed to drydock in either Galveston, TX or Mobile, AL sometime next year for extensive overhaul and repair, including replacement of much of her hull plating and structure that have been damaged by rust. Hopefully that will keep her around to educate and fascinate another 100 years' worth of museum-goers.
I left early in the day on Friday, 8/2 for Corpus Christi, but with a great appreciation for what Houston had to offer, and with quite a bit more knowledge than I'd come in with.
that's a lovely sunset in Natchez
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