On the drive back to St. Paul my brother asked, "So what were the highlights of your trip?"  I frantically searched my huge brain for something to say.  I fumbled for words.  Only "Hmmmmmm," "ah," " "um," and "er" came out.  Embarrassed that I was drawing a blank, I finally mumbled something about Clarksdale being really interesting.

Now, of course, I can rattle off plenty of highlights:  riding the Mississippi River levee to downtown New Orleans; eating jambalaya in the jambalaya capitol of the world; downtown Baton Rouge; petro-chemical love; the Natchez Trace; the Mississippi Delta region; the Blues Museum; Memphis and its BBQ ribs (and yes, even Graceland); the state parks; Frank's Real Live Bait Shop; martinis at St. Louis's Chase Park Plaza Hotel; Nauvoo; the world's largest truck stop and the world's largest muskie; the Mother's Day meal with my folks in our old hometown, that awesome final night of camping in the Chequamegon National Forest . . .

. . . but how can I properly convey the joy of the simple, routine things I did on my bike tour:  those first few turns of the pedals at the beginning of each day; dismounting the bike at the end of each day; talking to strangers; making little jokes in my head about things I observed; looking at the sky; all of the sights, sounds and smells; campsite coffee in the morning; campsite beer in the evening; crawling into my sleeping bag at night; a little family-operated motel found at the end of a rainy day; chuckling to myself as I recapped my day in my notebook; working and breathing hard up a big hill . . . THOSE things were the TRUE highlights.

One of my goals for this tour was to discover the differences between the southern half and the northern half of the United States.  Here are a few generalizations about what I learned:

1. Southerners and Northerners are equally normal and equally weird.
2. Southerners are more overtly friendly and they make better food.
3. Northerners are more reserved and they make better beer.
4. All other differences are picayune (my new favorite word.)
5. We live in a picayune world.  True, we Americans have serious issues and we have to deal with them every day, but to maintain sanity in the face of our problems I think we have to appreciate the little things, to see the humor in almost everything, to be able to make fun of yourself and to accept being made fun of, and to love the picayunity of life.

I hope this Journal-Picayune was as fun and as frivolous for you as it was for me.  After all, fun and frivolity was the main objective according to the subtitle of GOING UP . . .etc.

  PEACE!