Hot, Hot, Hot. The three H's. We began early this morning to beat the heat but it was 95 degrees by 10:30 in the morning. My bicycle thermometer and a bank thermometer both read 109 degrees. It is difficult to maintain an appetite when you consume so much liquid. Our only savior is that the landscape is very flat and there is little climbing to do. Along with cotton fields, we saw some pretty bayou areas with cypress trees growing out of the swampy water. Farm raised Catfish is big business. There were ponds all along the highway with grain silos for fish food. We had planned to ride into Jackson, MS today but the heat dictated our every move. We are in Yazoo City, MS. We had read a month ago that Mississippi was number 48 out of 50 states in being bicycle friendly. Let me just say, I do not want to cycle in #49 or #50!! We both had several close class with cars pushing us to the limit of the shoulder and a few forced us off the road. We did not have an incident with vehicles our first 2700miles and in two days we have had at least 15 close calls. It is very troubling and we looking for remote back roads to get us through the state in the quickest fashion. A couple other facts about Mississippi; Out of 50 states and the District of Columbia, Mississippi came in at No. 51. Yes, even the folks in Washington, thought to have the nation's worst public schools, ranked ahead of Mississippi. Mind you, D.C. came in at No. 50, an embarrassment that doesn't stop its residents from clamoring for statehood. Half of them probably can't even spell statehood. But back to our Mississippi friends and their passion for the Confederate battle flag.
It's fitting that Mississippians chose to keep the emblem. A symbol representing a country, the Confederate States of America, that felt a certain pride in keeping its population ignorant should be on the flag of the country's most ignorant state.
This intrigued me so much, I needed to look at he rest of the Confederate States to see if there was a correlation. The states that formed the old Confederacy did not do much better. None of those 10 states finished in the top 35. The highest was Texas at 35, Florida at 38, North Carolina at 40, Arkansas at 42 and then Nos. 45 through 49 were Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina and Louisiana, respectively. "The more education a person receives, the more they realize that they did not know very much"! (Brandin C. Shost)
O.K. That is off my chest! Here are some less controversial facts
Mississippi was the 20th state in the USA; it became a state on December 10, 1817 .
State Abbreviation - MS
State Capital - Jackson
Largest City - Jackson
Area - 48,434 square miles [Mississippi is the 32nd biggest state in the USA]
Population - 2,844,658 (as of 2010) [Mississippi is the 31st most populous state in the USA]
Name for Residents - Mississippians
Major Industries - farming (cotton, corn, soybeans, rice), oil, textiles, electronic equipment, transprtation equipment, fishing
Major Rivers - Mississippi River, Big Black River, Pearl River, Yazoo River
Highest Point - Woodall Mountain - 806 feet (245 m) above sea level
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