Tag Archives: bicycle touring

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Camping at my first church since I was in North Carolina.

Many miles today. Miles through bleak suburbs choked with strip malls, empty parking lots, bad traffic, bad shoulders, familiarity and despair. Miles through farmland; wide, open spaces; countless cows grazing the lush, green pastures that are everywhere speckled with flowers—purple, waxy-yellow, and chalky-white—like a million smiling faces, and, when the wind blows, a million waving hands like those from the friendly drivers who pass me opposite; the wire fences; copses of trees; the grey clouds bunched, bulging, heavy with rain that never falls, stretching on forever all day. Miles, though fewer, through the cityscape of Selma, her streets and buildings saturated in civil rights history; boarded up houses; nice, clean, proud houses with neat landscaped yards; empty buildings; broken windows; no doors; amicableness; amiableness; junk cars; the criss-cross of railroad tracks; the Edmund Pettus Bridge where the blood flowed one day like the river runs beneath it; marvelous architecture; and damn good ribs. I also saw a banner, on it the word HOPE. More and more large towns and small cities I see today are full of hope, and desire change. Call it “the people.” They are the hope. The people are the ones, the only ones, who have the capability to turn around a city’s fortunes, and they must turn it around, because if not, then what does this word, “hope” mean, what is it for, and what does it represent? It is like a false idol which one worships, makes offerings to on every first and third Sunday, and second and fourth Wednesday. It is a place where the people might get together to sprinkle water, light incense, and talk. Talk, talk, talk; and talk is just masturbation. There is a sprinkling of seed, sure, but no fertile ground for it to settle, fertilize and grow. It brings forth no fruit, bears no children. It merely feels pleasant for a short while. It is a drug. And an addictive one at that because it requires a minimum of effort and no commitment. It is a mouth that talks, yet has no voice.

Where there are people there is hope. But where there are people there is, too, complacency.
 

 
A bug shimmers under my light, wings and carapace glinting. It flies ever so lightly, so gently, into the mesh door of my tent — bounces away into the dark. God, what magic this world contains. Magic on the minutest scale. It is not necessary that there be large explosions and a shower of sparks, though that is fine too. There is magic right under our noses. The real magic is in the looking.

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Larnie’s BBQ, Selma. Massive portion of food in front of me—ribs, fried okra and sweet tea. I’m awed, though concerned about how I might continue cycling after filling my stomach so. The two pieces of white bread with the ribs so that I might make a sandwich are a nice touch.

I did the 90km from Montgomery in about three and a half hours. I am excited, partly because I’m eating delicious BBQ, but also because I will likely be able to put in another twenty or so miles today. I should arrive at Dale and Amanda’s in Gainesville tomorrow evening.
Selma has a rough history, as many southern towns have. I’m referring of course to racial discrimination and Jim Crow law, but Selma has a particularly storied past when it comes to the south and the civil rights movement.

Throughout the early twentieth century, before, during, and after both world wars Selma, as well as many southern cities and towns, enforced Jim Crow laws ruthlessly, and with violence if necessary. During the period after World War II there was a movement towards equal freedoms and rights for blacks (largely because it was due, but also because many fought in the war, so to come back after fighting for one’s country only to be treated as lesser than another because of one’s skin color was a slap in the face and a punch in the gut, and that’s putting it lightly) that only strengthened as the years went by and nothing was done. Essentially, among a number of smaller, though no less important, protests and acts of defiance by blacks across the south, this led to the the Selma to Montgomery marches, led in part by Martin Luther King Jr., and which are most well remembered for, aside from the successful march on the third attempt, the police brutality events of “Bloody Sunday” (the first attempt at the marches when local and county police accosted the marches at the Edmund Pettus Bridge, beating many of them with billy clubs, and throwing tear gas), and the killing of a white minister by members of the KKK the night after the second symbolic “march.” The third and final successful attempt at the march would eventually lead to the passing of the Selma Voting Rights Act of 1965, and laws that would give the same freedoms that whites enjoyed to blacks.

Georgia

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Bellville
There are many pecan plantations all over Georgia and Alabama.
I forget the name of this town. I was merely passing through, but I was told by a Warm Showers host that there is a really awful Statue of Liberty replica here. And so there is.
This was an unexpected site in Abbeville. Really quite beautiful, and contains a certain strength and elegance I think.
Abbeville
Abbeville. I was camped out the previous night under those pines, on the opposite side of the fence.
Abbeville.
One of those no-account towns where there is basically nothing, no culture, no food, and all the buildings are run down. Strangely enough these colors, though.
Outhouses in the middle of a crop field.
This was in Buena Vista, one of my favorite stops in Georgia.
Annie D’s, Buena Vista.
Annie D’s, Buena Vista.
Annie D’s, Buena Vista.
Annie D’s, Buena Vista.
Buena Vista
Columbus
Columbus

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Crazy winds. Crazy, crazy winds all day. Hills for days too. Despite all that, not bad. Columbus, GA. Stayed at a Super 8 last night. $75 after taxes ($5 + 16% city tax). I’m a little sick of this. I’m going to have to endeavor to stay away from cities if I don’t have a host. Columbus, however, was enroute to Auburn, so….
Leaving Columbus now. There is some sort of festival downtown. Streets packed full of pedestrians. Tables setup along the sidewalks selling a whole variety of things: soaps, oils, clothing, jewelry, furniture, antiques, tchotchkes, so on…

I stop at Iron Bank Coffee, named for the fact that the building was once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away a bank, for a shot. It’s bad, despite the roaster being Counter Culture. This is an unfortunate regular occurrence in the so-called “specialty coffee” world. Lack of education and knowledge. Laziness. The space the cafe occupies is marvelous though. Enormous; voluptuous; high, high, ceiling; loads of windows to let in that light that is loved so much; long communal tables, or variously shaped tables pushed together or pulled apart; whatever you can sit on; separate rooms in the old bank vaults (doors still attached) in the back; a glorious array of various chandeliers suspended from the ceiling; original hardwood floors.

Speaking of old things, so much of the city is. It’s not surprising. It was obviously once a hub of industry on the Chattahoochee River. Now many of the buildings are abandoned and falling into ruin. They provoke a certain sadness in me, but there is also something beautiful about these disused, dilapidated churches, factories, houses, apartment buildings, etc. The decay, the negligence, the faded bricks, the worn paint, the broken windows, boarded up windows, the tall weeds, the shattered signs, the signs that now only glow with a dull, attenuated light when the sun is at the correct angle with the Earth are wonders to behold. Is it because they tell a story? Or do they simply provoke questions, wonderings about something that once was but now is not? What were these buildings like during those years when production was at a high? What was the city like? How were the people? It seems to me that these buildings and signs are incapable of telling a story at all, these silent buildings and mute signs. They’re like a blind man with his lips sewn shut, resigned to his fate, unable to control his own destiny. But, it is very easy for one to create a story for himself simply by imagining, and that is something so easy to do if one stops to look, reflect, allow the mind to wander.

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From Americus to Columbus today. Georgia countryside is gorgeous under a pristine blue sky—succulent, green grass; explosion of wild flowers on tall stalks, along the highway—except for the interminable fields of turned over red clay, some pale, ghostly, almost like sand—spirits of what once was before they were stripped of life, poisoned with pesticides and fertilizers—others dark and rich, never, or only very recently, been planted. But where these fields meet an undulating green ridge of trees, and then the blue wall of sky is something quite lovely to behold, and beautiful in its own right, like the greatest flag unfurled, and being wapped in that flag; I can touch it, feel it all around me. In places it is all that is—just a field of color transmitted across the thinnest, most insubstantial vastness of space, like the synaptic gap between neurons. An existence swallowed up by the pupil, focused by the lens on the back of my eye to the forefront of my mind…

These thoughts occurred hours ago, being penned now at Annie D’s, a tiny, Southern as Southern can be restaurant in Buena Vista. It’s all that’s here in town as far as I’m concerned, and that’s perfectly fine. Never had such a good Half ‘n Half, as they’re known in The South. That sweet tea! Hot damn! Charming place even if the walls and floorboards are filthy, even if the blinds are hung crooked and look as though they might fall off their brackets at the slightest touch. No frills. Stripped down. Plate glass windows on every wall yield so much natural light not a speck of dirt goes unnoticed. Ketchup and hot sauce in hand-labeled plastic bottles in the center of every cheap, masonite table. One in every three of these tables covered in a table cloth. Styrofoam cups. Plastic plates. Smiling faces. Happy people.

 

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Dinner. Texting. Red lentils and rice with raisins, tomato, turnip, garlic, and curry powder. Forecasting rain. I would prefer not (always). The most charmingly cheerful birdsong earlier at sundown. Now it’s just distant dogs and the occasional car or truck, and the electric buzz of insects.

I’m camped at a public park in Abbeville, GA. It’s three or four acres, part of which is a little league baseball diamond, another part of which is a playground with maybe an eighth mile walking track around it. The rest is a field that borders a forest, picnic tables clumped together in places like a huddle of ducks in silent observance, or a group of old friends who haven’t seen each other in years.

The grass and dried, fallen leaves I see through my tent screen is unspeakably beautiful. Slender, curving pine needles intertwined and threading through the mat. The leaves themselves are small and slender too—some broken, crippled, others spotted, speckled like an old man’s frail arms. The grass that pokes up through all of those old, brittle, dry, dead things seems generally unhappy about the state of affairs, being as it’s mostly covered over by the old; slightly smothered, held down, but in places it has pierced the mat, the coverlet, the broad arms of the leaves saying, “Down! Down!”

Anyway, today was mostly hills. The last twenty miles I guess were relatively flat in comparison, though. I’m hoping not for a repeat tomorrow.

I mentioned in a previous post staying with Mac in Vidalia, “The Sweet Onion City.” It was a great joy, not only because it was a short day on the bike, and that I was able to catch up my journal outside, in the sun, poolside, but also because I was the guest of a great guy, a generous host, a generous man. Solid, dependable, friendly. It was good.

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Left Savannah late, Monday, about one p.m. Breakie, final conversation with Alex, an espresso at Perc, back to the apartment to finish packing, hungry again, off to Zunzi’s for a last Boerewors, then, finally, the departure. Utterly ridiculous, but it also would have been very easy to stay in the city longer.

Pretty hot, sunny day. Cloudless, mostly windless, bright and blue. Pedaling west I’m on a mild incline as I move away from the coast. Easy hills rolling along effortlessly. About sixty miles to my hosts’ place, unless my GPS is off. If it’s not then Google is off. Or my math is off. A few interesting photo opportunities, but generally a dull ride.

Was thrilled to have stayed the night with Jerry and Shirley. She washed out my water bottles, and now one smells and tastes like soap. The water in it, that is. But if that’s the worst thing one can say about a person’s hospitality that’s not too bad.

They feasted me at dinner, and breakfast the next morning. Strawberry shortcake for dessert after a tour of the grounds. They run a pecan farm, and the land they live on, and many more acres besides, was deeded to the family after the Revolutionary War, so this land has been in the family for a few generations. Jerry and I drove the circumference of his property in a small tractor he uses for getting around the grounds. There are a couple of ponds and a large thicket of woods where one might discover all variety of wild animals. The sun had sunk just below the horizon as we left, just beyond the crepuscular minutes when the sky is faintly aglow, the horizon awash in a veritable rainbow of colors, so the shadows were deep and black as pitch most areas, and the insects that were out, of which they were in incalculable numbers, swarmed the flood light installed on the roof of the tractor and sometimes found their way onto my exposed arms, legs, face… We talked about the harvesting of pecans—these trees are enormous—and inspected a few saplings (if that’s even an appropriate term to use) which looked like mere sticks, about a man’s height, in the damp earth—not a single branch, and barely a bud on these. Very peculiar.

In addition to the pecan farming Jerry makes leaded glass windows, or, more accurately, came glass windows, as a hobby. He’s also an impressive story-teller and master of trivia, particularly if it involves Alaska, or the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

All together they make for an impressive, inspiring partnership—in their hospitality, which is unrivaled, I think; their acceptance immediately of guests; their warm personalities; and the bicycling feats they’ve accomplished together, to say nothing of those by Jerry alone.

I’ve been writing all this at Mac’s, my WarmShowers host for the evening. I’m sitting poolside, the sun stretched taut across my back. Mac’s just come back from picking up his bike at the shop and is moseying about his property cleaning up this, trimming that. His daughter’s wee pup, Buttercup, who he’s watching over while she is in Madrid for the next couple of years, is tip-toeing around the lawn, following after him. The pool water is crystal clear and shaped like a kidney bean. There’s a wide spread palm tree over by the diving board that looks a bit the worse for wear—like it was transported here from a desert in Egypt or Saudi Arabia. Tall, faded green fronds, some looking a bit fried at their tips, spreading out from a central trunk, and then drooping down sort of melancholy-like, as if it was exhausted from standing under the hot sun hour after hour, day after day. There’s some kind of Warbler I can’t identify because I don’t have my binoculars with me, calling from a tree nearby. The only sounds are bird calls, and the distant highway.

Today was an easy, short day—a mere thirty miles—but those few miles are worth it to be staying here, and to be enjoying the comforts of Mac’s home for longer than I would otherwise. Jerry left with me this morning and probably taught me a bit of patience, as he moved at what for me was a glacial pace. The ride was fairly relaxing I found, and a bit refreshing. And we still did the thirty miles by noon. This is something I should learn if I’m to enjoy this trip more. He treated me to an impressively delicious lunch at Hardware Pizza in Lyons, and then turned around to head back home.

South Carolina II

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This and the subsequent three images were taken my first time around in Charleston, but not posted.
Lonely palm tree. Beaufort.
Prince George Winyah Episcopal Chruch, Beaufort.
Generally what the Francis Marion National Forest looked like from my view on the road. It’s a very, very young forest at only about 27 years of age. I wrote about it in a blog post if you’re curious.
Francis Marion National Forest. Would have made a great spot to camp if that’s what I was aiming for on this day.
Sadness.
Outlet to the Atlantic, I’m thinking. I was on a bridge connecting Sullivan’s Island with mainland South Carolina. Only a few miles from Charleston.
I can’t image where this guy was heading to, but he was definitely in for a long walk.
Fort Moultrie in the background.
Entering the ACE Basin on the dirt road leading to their offices housed in the Grove Plantation House which was built in 1828
The area around the Grove Plantation House was breathtaking. Enormous live oaks all over the place. Impossible to capture it all, even with the widest lens (which I didn’t have anyway).
The Grove Plantation House is across the pond there.
I have a little macro extender for my camera that I never use. Thought I might try it out.
You have a nice view if you’re sitting outside at this cafe in Beaufort. Cute little town.
The Church of the Cross. Bluftton. Construction was finished the summer of 1857.
The Secession Tree. Bluffton.

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Currently sitting in a comfortable coffee shop in Beaufort, South Carolina on a fine, rather blustery afternoon. As anticipated I arrived early; earlier even than I expected, thanks to a 31 kph average over the first hour-plus.

Having left Jacksonboro not long ago, I came to a cute little pie shack off the side of the highway near where I was to make the turn eastward, where I would then be crushed and swallowed up a bit by the winds gusting relentlessly westward. The shack was one of those slightly kitschy little places one must stop, where the provender is assumed to be delicious and of local supply. I bought a mini pecan pie and a chocolate chip cookie. They were good—not the best I’ve had, but not the worst either. Everything in the store was tempting. The cider was tempting. The jellies were tempting. The chocolates were tempting. The other snacks and baked goods were tempting. Ultimately, I thought the pie and cookie more than enough, as I am attempting, and failing, to stick to a nebulous budget, and so I left with only them.

Prior to this, as I was pedaling along Highway 17, a splash and a heavy flapping of wings I abruptly and suddenly heard. I looked up in time to see an enormous, grey bird glide swiftly and fluidly off into the forest, weaving between the gaps in the trees with the precision of a hawk or any other bird that would exemplify the gracefulness and nimbleness of flight, rather than the sure-footed, keen-eyed, stately patience of a bird known for wading on long, stilted legs. It was a bit like watching an aerobatics pilot weave his way through an obstacle course in a narrow canyon, or the speeder bike chase in Return of the Jedi. The weaving of a weft in the warp. Of the mind coming to an understanding. The whole experience was mesmerizing; the perfection of symbiosis along the edge of disparate worlds.

 

Leaving Beaufort, and to enter Bluffton it was necessary again to pedal eastward—not something to be looked forward to. And what did I do it for? A picture of a tree. Not just any tree, of course, but the tree that is known as the Secession Oak. Robert Barnwell Rhett gave the first speech encouraging South Carolina’s separation from the Union on July 31, 1844 under this tree, which is estimated to be 350-400 years old, and it looks every bit of it. Ancient, glorious, majestic, colossal. It’s branches create a serpentine labyrinth when gazed upward at from beneath—the sky a bluish-white lightbox against which the twisting, turning limbs of the great tree are silhouetted. The Spanish moss hangs in wide curtains. Broad branches carpeted in resurrection ferns. It’s only unfortunate that this tree is in someone’s yard, down a long private drive—something I didn’t know when I went to take a look. One would naturally think an icon of such historical importance would be on city-owned property to be made more available for public consumption, but, alas.

The day ended with a double flat, and swarming gnats, but as I was on my way to find an appropriate site to setup camp it wasn’t too bothersome when I looked to my right after repairing the punctured tube to see a nicely tucked away spot down a slope just off the highway. It was on the grounds of a funeral home, but I’m not one to quibble over details like that when the evening is getting on and the day had been as long as it was. In actuality I couldn’t have asked for a more convenient spot to catch a flat.