Canton, MS

Today I officially swear off making plans. Every time I make a plan, set a date, set a time, something comes up to change it. No matter how sure I am. Today was no exception.

Last night a South Park marathon ruined my early to bed, early to rise streak. I didn't do too terribly bad though. I realized that I actually got out early enough that I could maybe make it to Biloxi in time to go to the church that I used to always go to when I lived there. As long as I was going on a sunday, I might as well go there, right? I checked the distances and AAA's estimated drive times and everything seemed like it would just fit.

I stopped for breakfast at McDonalds and got an egg mcmuffin. Now I gotta ask....didn't egg mcmuffin's used to be good? I used to love them and would try to find excuses to get one now and then. So today I was excited to finally have a reason....and it was really, really bad. I got two, and didn't even finish the first one. Hmph.

Anyway, I got on the road and was making really good time. Then, all of a sudden, the highway closed. No signs, no warnings, no detours, nothing. Just all of a sudden two cop cars with their lights on were blocking the way and everyone had to exit. I had had the radio on for the entire drive and there hadn't been anything about the highway being closed. I'd even checked the official highway information station (which was nothing but dead air). I never did find out what caused the closure, though I just googled it and found this. Ironically, the first post on the comments is about how confusing the detour was for out of towners. Yep. Next thing I knew I was being shipped off onto this itty bitty little neighborhood road. Thankfully the people I was following seemed to know where they were going so I just followed them, kept heading south, and hoped for the best. I made it through, but it took a loooooong time to make it through just a few miles. The whole church thing wasn't looking good, but I still wanted to try.

I finally got all the way south and started heading west. Right about that time the rain started. And boy did it start! This was no little sprinkling. It was POURING! Suddenly I went from averaging 75 to 55 and I couldn't see a thing. Needless to say church was a no go. In a sense though I'm glad it happened this way. It would've been frustrating to have almost made it and been just a few minutes too late. By the end of everything I was close to an hour off. I was over it by then.

Coming in to Biloxi was awesome. As corny as it sounds, it felt like I was seeing my little child all grown up. The town looked really really good! It looked like a functional beach/casino town, rather than that town the big storm hurt. I went out for a walk on the beach and couldn't even find for sure the spot where we used to run because the beach was totally different. There were cool little benches and staircases up to the road, and the parking lots were redone. It's hard to explain exactly, but everything just seemed purposeful instead of the randomness left behind from the storm. The whole beach road was covered in new, brightly colored hotels and condos. Of course there were still gutted buildings, empty foundations, and vacant lots, but from what I know of Biloxi it would have all of those things storm or not.

I was really proud of myself...I was able to find the church and the school almost immediately. I was able to find Yankie Stadium, where we lived, not long after that. It was a little harder just because everything was really built up around it, much more so than when I'd been there. The stadium is no longer being used for volunteer housing anymore though, and my beautiful trailer was gone. Not that I miss that tiny little thing with 12 of us in there! Ok I do miss it a little bit.
I parked in the parking lot for a bit while I was checking things out, and managed to look sketchy enough to get the attention of the security guard. Ok she said it wasn't that I looked sketchy, I looked lost. And I'm sure I did. Solo white kid from Montana with a bike on the roof sitting in the bad part of town. I'm sure it was quite a sight! lol I talked to her for a bit and found out that they painted over all the handprints from volunteers on the salvo (salvation army) side of the bleachers (ppl would live under the bleachers for a week to volunteer and leave a handprint as their mark at the end of the week). That's soooo sad to me that they painted over them. She said they wanted it to look professional again. I thought it'd be cool to to keep the handprints as a reminder of the people who came from all over the world to help out, but maybe they're just ready to not think about that anymore. They haven't yet painted over the Habitat side, but they probably will. Habitat is totally moved out of it and it's now being used for storage. So sad. They're building a new athletic complex/community center there through the Salvation Army, but they're going to keep the stadium a stadium. Seems to me they could leave the under the bleachers as like a mini-museum, but again I can see why they wouldn't want to do that. Would probably be in the way. I just don't want our awesome mark erased. But I have pictures of it so it's all good. :)

The second part of my plan for the day was to meet for lunch with my friend Mariel who (I thought) lives in Jackson, MS. Turns out she's from Jackson, but lives in Oxford, which is way farther north. No big deal though, I thought. But of course the world came out to prove me wrong. Though the rain very nicely let up long enough for me to enjoy Biloxi and walk on the beach, it came back with a vengence as I started driving. It was CRAZY! By far the most rain I've ever seen in one place....except for the insta-flood in Denver that Rosalba and I ended up in on our way to Noodles, but at least that didn't last long. (We drove to get dinner and in the 5-10 minutes of driving it went from mostly dry to the streets being a raging river. We had to cross a street of almost knee deep moving water to get to the restaurant, and once there they gave us free cookies because they were so amazed we'd braved the storm to come in). Anyway, the sheets of rain just kept coming, and visibility was awful. I considered just stopping, but I really wanted to make some more progress. I just took it slow and carefully and figured some distance at slow speeds was better than nothing. It was so cloudy it was almost like driving at night, even in the middle of the day. And some idiots were driving without their lights on so you'd go to change lanes and notice there was some idiot right behind you that was totally invisible until he's right there with you. Very scary!

And of course there was a constant flow of people more comfortable driving in the rain than I was (though I had a suspicion they were really just idiots in too big of a hurry) flying past me and pushing even more water into my windshield making it even harder to see. Turns out they were rushing ahead to dive off the side of the road, into the median, or into the guard rail. By the time I made it to Jackson I had lost count of wrecked cars waiting for tow trucks. They were EVERYWHERE! There were only a few multi-car wrecks...everything else people had managed all on their own.

At that point I decided it just wasn't worth it to be out with the crappy visability and the obvious morons on the road with me. As much as I really wanted to see Mariel (the Oxford friend), it just wasn't worth it. So I called her and we have a lunch date for 12:30 tomorrow instead. That means I get to sleep in tomorrow. Yay! Though knowing my luck with planning, I should probably get up at 5:00 just in case, because something is bound to get in the way of things!

But before I go, I gotta tell ya'll my favorite part about driving in Mississippi. On many signs, Mississippi is abbreviated as Miss. To me, Miss immediately reminds me of pageants. So when I see a sign I start picturing the pageant that would go with it. My personal favorite was "Miss Juvenile Correction Facility." Now that'd be quite a pageant! The second best, though not nearly as exciting was the "Miss Highway Patrol".