Tag Archives: travel diary

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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.

 

My Georgian World

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Georgia winds.
Oh! Georgia winds.

Oh, to be a cow
up there on that hill
Stolid, strong and stout.
Immovable.

Or, to be,
a lank, slender blade of grass,
tall and supple,
bendable and flexible.

Or, maybe a tree,
roots deep in the earth,
Wide, wide branches spread so, waving
Madly,
gladly,
in the wind.

To be something other than a cyclist
Who yet must contain
all those qualities—of the cow, grass & tree—
Within a single skin,

A framework of nerve, muscle, bone and blood.

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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.

27

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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.

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“When you come to Savannah you going to have a good time,” sings the man in the park, as he folds his palm fronds, on a bench, beneath a tree.

I have concluded that he is correct.

Spent the day strolling around rather aimlessly. As perfect a day as there could be for it: sunny, cloudless sky, warm, dry, a bit windy, though pleasantly so for walking. I stop to read a sign in the square where the man is singing and folding his palm fronds. It is a plaque to commemorate the life of Tomo Chi-Chi, a member of the Creek Indian Nation. According to the sign post, he helped the English in the founding and settlement of Georgia, and was an “indispensable friend” to them. In return he received a thirty foot tall burial marker and an historical signpost recognizing this “indispensable friendship.” Since then, the Natives have been massacred, had their land stolen from them, and been pushed onto reservations. To borrow a well used cliché, he would be rolling over in his grave if he knew the atrocities committed against his people since his death.

I’m sitting on the cathedral steps writing these words and thinking of the atrocities the church has committed in its time—from The Crusades, to the KKK, and to certain discriminatory legislative measures passed in some states very recently. I’m thinking of the atrocities that continue around the world in the name of whatever religion, or by whatever government. The whole past of humanity is steeped in violence and bloodshed. Thousands of years of it, and thousands more to come, unless we blow ourselves to ashes before then.

Just now a couple walks up the steps and the husband curses reading the sign, “NO TOURING. WORSHIP IN PROGRESS.” Yes, you ignorant halfwit, the cathedral, while being quite old, is still a cathedral, which means that services may still be held there despite its status as historical landmark. It is something more than just a name to cross off your list of “Things To Do In Savannah.” It has a life of its own. There is a community that circulates in and around and through it, like blood beating in a heart, surging through vein and artery. Just because you are not a part of it, that you are a particle foreign to the stream of bodies regular to it, does not mean that it does not exist, or not take place. Come back tomorrow, or don’t come back at all. The cathedral will still stand, indifferent, unyielding, its people still coming and going, and, likely, other tourists coming and going as well, AT THE ASSIGNED TIMES. But, the cathedral, the cathedral sees you and laughs. A knowing chuckle.

Cycling back to Alex’s, I stop at Forsyth Park to stretch out in the grass, read a bit, watch the people there—some tanning, some napping, some reading, most conversing in groups, some playing frisbee, one girl playing with a bubble wand, many sitting on benches, many more in the grass, and the consistent traversal of so many more along the central artery that bisects the park and connects Gaston Street and Park Avenue at either end. A jovial scene, with the sun shining, the grass green, the temperature fine. A fitting way to end the day’s wanders, by not wandering at all, but just sitting still, reveling in the atmosphere around me. Peace can be easy to find, when you stop looking.

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In Savannah, enjoying a waffle—lemon curd & raspberries—at Mirabelle, where a friend works part-time. Outside, at a very French table, the sun blazes in and out behind clouds. I would like more clouds. Sidewalk palm tree drooping a bit. Listless. Can’t imagine summers here. Enormous double-spire cathedral across the street—St. John the Baptist. Tourists sitting on its steps looking at maps, looking at phones, thinking about where to next, what next to do, pointing in one direction then another. Tourists on this side of the street taking pictures of the cathedral and the people on its steps with phone and camera-phone. Crowds flowing into and out of it like breath. The cathedral breathing them in, breathing them out changed. Another memory to be forgotten, pictures taken to keep the memory vaguely fresh, mildly stale, preferably not molded or forgotten completely (but what harm in forgetting?). A woman stands by a wrought-iron gate in a wall surrounding a compound next to the cathedral, looking lost and impatient. A couple of vagabonds walk by: he, smoking a cigarette, and she, carrying a gallon of water, backpack on, walking her—their?—dog. Horse-drawn carriages moseying along the streets. Tourists. Larger trolleys—the people inside, heads turning one way and then the other, curious, confused—doing the same thing, a disembodied voice pointing out something or another, garbled, nebulous, impossible to make out, emanating from its general vicinity. Tourists, tourists everywhere. The streets and sidewalks are saturated with them. They’ve been swept in by the late March tides and who knows when they’ll be swept out again. I talk like I am a local, yet I am anything but. I am a ghost. I go by unnoticed, unremarked. I am that stone bench which nobody sits on. When I leave there will be no trace, because I was never there. Nor am I here. The stone bench will turn to dust, and the cathedral will crumble, but I will remain.

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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.

22 (or 5b)

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Breakfasting at the very pricey Quality Inn at Georgetown. I’m making sure to get my money’s worth, except I’m not because there is no way I could eat enough of this rubbish they call food to possibly put a dent in the extortionist rates I was charged yesterday evening. The only reason I stayed here to begin with was because it was the only decent lodging in town, and I was too exhausted after putting in the bunch of miles I did, and it was getting on near dark, and I really wanted a shower, and I figured I won’t be in another inn, motel, or hotel for a long time, and so it was justifiable. Unfortunately I expected the rates to be about half what they were.

Getting butter on my copy of Tropic of Cancer. I don’t know why I have it with me; can’t read and eat breakfast anyway, especially if the book won’t lie open. On television a man is proposing to his girlfriend—the first ever deaf person to receive cochlear implants. What a thing to hear so suddenly. How overwhelmed she must have been. Though you could see it coming from a mile away, the way he kept asking if she could hear okay, and if she was listening to him. It was like watching a pitcher coming set before delivering the pitch. My legs are still sore. I want to go back to bed.

 

Cycling through a neighborhood here I’m struck by the prehistoric beauty of those large trees, live oaks I’ve learned they’re called, or, Quercus virginiana, which line the streets of this town, and are so indicative of The South. How I love them so. Their branches sprawl out wide like a fishing net thrown from the prow of a small boat on a river in a country exotic and far, far away; and that’s a little bit how I feel when I cross that invisible, wavering line that separates The North from The South, even though that line doesn’t really exist and there’s really just a gradual shift which most people are unaware of unless they’re walking or traveling by bicycle, but I draw that line anyhow because even though I know it’s not real I love the drama and the excitement that unfolds because of it. And watching the palm trees blow in the wind when I rode into town. It’s almost like I’m on a vacation… I’ve become nostalgic: about scenes in Florida where I would go on business trips when I used to sell sunglasses at a small shop in Annapolis; about the Dominican Republic whose palm trees were massive—long, tall, solid things so much larger than those seen here; and, about the last time I was in Charleston only nearly three months ago.

Then there are the buildings: an old church in particular, Prince George’s Parish Winyah, erected 1745-50, encircled by its ancient, brick wall, cemetery out back, bell tower with clock and cross standing staunchly over the neighborhood in the bright sun; the antebellum houses, some with their wrap-around porches, other, larger ones with their Romanesque columns, are icons of the south, immortalized in novel and poem alike. When seen together with those gnarled trees in yards and along the streets, their limbs askew and asunder, some with Spanish moss draping from their wild branches, like scarves on a coatrack, so intermingled, so indeterminate in their parts, and the moss, lichens and other vegetation growing up and around and over these structures so that they always appear to be in some state of decay, like at any moment they might collapse into themselves to be reclaimed by the green verdure of the earth, they all appear to be one and the same entity, inseparable, like that colossal network of mycelium in the Pacific Northwest that stretches itself out for over two thousand acres. Altogether, this neighborhood as a whole, so halcyon, so serenely calm looks as though it has been here since the dawn of civilization. It is as old as the Aztecs and the Mayans, no younger than the Egyptians.

21 (or 4b)

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Camped behind a church again. Knocked on all the doors when I arrived, about 6:30—no answer. Actually, the first thing I did was gratefully refill my water bottles at the drinking fountain on the property, and sent up a little prayer on a wee birdie for that. Somehow or another, and for reasons I will perhaps never fathom, I am always provided for, whatever the  circumstances.

I setup my tent and began to organize my things after poking around looking for a reasonably concealed spot from the road. I hear a car pull up. A man gets out, maybe my age, maybe slightly older. Turns out he’s the pastor. Doesn’t really seem to know what to make of me and my gear—the tent being setup as it was, and my bicycle and trailer leaning against the church—but we chat for a bit. I explain what I’m doing, why I’m there and the like. He seemed okay with it and said things should be fine unless I hear from him later. He then invited me to take part in the prayer meeting that he was there to preside over.

After he went inside I continued the organization of my living space, and rather dawdled over it, to be honest, while considering his invitation. On the one hand I was curious to meet the people of the community, but on the other I hadn’t participated in anything church related in some years, and was rather nervous about that being as it was a group of people gathering at a rural, baptist church. How might they react to my interpretations, or the fact that I haven’t been to a church function in years, or that I find Taoist and Zen “philosophy” more relatable currently, or that most religions seem to me to be at heart essentially the same, that we are all one people, one planet, one universe together? Perhaps a more secular gathering would have been more to my liking—something not involving scripture reading and interpretation, but, instead, simply, “Hello. How are you? Isn’t life marvelous? I think it is. It is just so marvelous that one can even pedal a heavily loaded bicycle around, and around, and around for no particular reason at all but just to do it. It is completely meaningless, and yet, so meaningful that a person has no words to put that meaning in! It is just like a thunderclap.” Anyway, by the time I was nearing a decision, and had finally organized all my things the meeting had already been going on for twenty or thirty minutes, and so I really thought it best not to intrude. Here now I sit in my humble tent, writing down what has just transpired over these last sixty minutes or so.

 

Today was another day of headwinds. Despite the relatively flat ground I was only able to accomplish forty-five miles.

I’ve been thinking much these three days (there’s little else to do besides that and curse the wind) and I’ve come to the conclusion that perhaps my temperament is not suited to this activity, this way of cycling, this way of traveling. Yes, I want speed, but I also am considering that I am much to ADD, to not be at all PC. Two hours and I’m done. I want to do something else. I want to go to sleep. I want to throw a frisbee. I want to take a leisurely walk down to the park. I want to sit at the end of a pier, my legs dangling over, toes just barely brushing the surface of the water, and watch the gulls glide overhead, and the ducks paddle about, quacking at each other in their endearing way, and be happy when the wind comes and throws my hair, and watch the sun set beyond the trees in such satisfaction that I could die at that moment with the knowledge that I have seen all that this world has to offer and if there is something more compelling, something else that existence has hidden up its proverbial sleeve that I can’t for the life of me imagine would that could posbily be. But there remains three, four, five more hours to go….

I love the talking to people, the shortest of conversations, sometimes, yet the most joyful moments to break up the routine of revolution after revolution: the two black girls at the Subway in Bladenboro with there effusive excitement that was like little children with their sparklers spinning round and round in the dark, asking me questions and the amazement at my replies, and ogling my bike with its bags and trailer; the waitress at Ivy’s Cafe, in Whiteville (really!?); the two boys I just talked to from the previously mentioned prayer meeting, packing their lips with tobacco, who told me an interesting story, two vignettes of the history of this area of The South, how blacks sixty or seventy years ago here, just outside Tabor City, and in Clarendon where I had passed through just two or three hours ago, if they were to cross the tracks that ran north and south just twenty yards from here after dark would be shot dead by white men with shotguns just sitting in chairs watching and waiting; how Tabor City once had the nickname “Razor City,” due to all the knife fights and brawls that would occur outside many a bar; and how could I forget Larry from Tar Heel who, when I stopped to chat with him while he was picking up litter on his property, told me how there once was a race that would come along this very road—thousands of cyclists, and sometimes you’d see a hundred at a time swarm past, but that that hasn’t occurred in a good long while—and he warned me about the drivers in the area, about how reckless they are, and sometimes when he would be out mowing his lawn on his tractor these crazy, mad drivers would go speeding past so closely that “it felt like the wind just brushing up against ya.” Amazing! How can a man put such a simple sentiment in such a poetic way, I wonder? How?

All these people, sometimes I think they are as sustaining to me as the dinner I cook in the evening and the breakfast I make in the morning, that’s not to mention all the snacks in between. Perhaps they are.