July 4, 2008 - Friday - Day 4
USA/MEXICO/CANADA
DOUBLE CROSS COUNTRY
& THE TRANSCANADA HIGHWAY
-- OR BUST - SUMMER 2008
Miles Today - 228 - Total Miles - 1547
Hickory, NC to Athens, GA
(-staying at cousin Janet and Roy Martin's -)
(NC-SC-GA)
- MUCH MORE THAN JUST AN ORDINARY TRAFFIC STOP - A CONVERSATION WITH AN OFFICER - A BIT OF RAIN -
It was a shameful late leaving this morning. Wasn't on the road until noon! The two main reasons for this were preventable.
First, I had uploaded all the pictures to the site where folks can view them. But two of the vertical images were horizontal. So I had to go into the system and correct this - and that took awhile to figure out. It got pretty frustrating as the minutes ticked by, and I just could not for the life of me get the right buttons to push…. finally succeeded.
The other reason has to do with memory. I was reminded of Mary's t-shirt which you may have noted read, “I know I came into this room for a reason….”
So I'm gathering all the things to pack up. And this is always a methodical process when leaving a place on a trip like this. One doesn't want to forget ANYthing… And it would be so easy to do - a charger in a wall outlet, something in the shower stall, maybe something put in the little fridge in the room…. So, as I wrote, it has to be a methodical thing. I take one section of the room at a time and make damn SURE it's clear of my stuff, then the next section, and finally everything is in its bag where it's suppose to be.
Well, I had cleared the bathroom counter but then decided I needed to rinse out my contacts again. I went to the place where I always keep the plastic bag of contact lens stuff. (It's just vital to keep everything in the same place all the time or one could go nuts looking for something what with all the pockets!) Well, the lens bag wasn't there. And I looked and searched and looked again. And I worried about the missing or damaged synapses that kept me from remembering those few seconds when I put it somewhere….
I ruffled through all the pockets, and the damn bag of solution and case was nowhere to be found! Like it had slipped into another dimension or something. It was at first amusing (because it HAD to be there somewhere!), then frustrating as the clock was ticking, and then very very irritating. Never did find that little bag until later in the day when I was unpacking - squirreled way down in the bottom of one of my side bags. Ugh!
Enjoyed typing out the notes and thoughts for yesterday's journal entry and got everything sent off and then had a nice little run around the motel area.
It was a sunny clear morning when I finally took off down the big highway.
At around 12:20pm I hit my 100mph for the first time this trip. If possible, and well within safety margins, I like to just dab at that 100 on the odometer. It was a nice clear, level, and well-paved stretch. There was no engine shake whatsoever from the Nomad. I backed it down right after touching the century mark, of course. Most of the day I rolled with the traffic while cruising somewhere between 80 and 90mph. Occasionally I would loll around in the 70's… I've never gotten a speeding ticket. I like to think I'm smart about it - when someone going faster than I am goes by, I tuck in right behind and just follow them, thinking that if anyone gets the ticket, it will be the vehicle ahead of me!!
Rolled into South Carolina a little before one as a couple on a Goldwing buzzed past me. The guy had a cigarette in his mouth - I don't know how they do that what with the ashes and smoke flying back in the face.
It IS tobacco country here, and there is billboard after billboard proclaiming this outlet or that outlet having the cheapest price per carton. Unbelievable in this day and age.
At about 1:20pm I stopped in Duncan for my first shot this trip at a Waffle House. The pecan waffle was wonderful, and I sat with the computer as usual. Also chatted with the waitresses. I was the only one in the place, and it was cool, and the water slaked my thirst. The camelbak pouch in the front bag with the tube is working better than I expected, but there is nothing like that tall glass of ice-filled water in the middle of a hot day.
Another good thing with the computer is that I can check out the directions ahead easily and quickly by going to Google Maps. This has been helpful with distances and directions. It was a wi-fi spot in a Waffle House. What a world!
Many of the thoughts for these journal notes bubble up from my mind while riding. Sorry to say that some of the best thoughts - the ones where I just cannot safely reach for the tiny tape recorder are lost to the winds.
While moving along I think about all kinds of things. And I recite the long poems that I have memorized. Some of my very best and most dramatic recitations of poems like Poe's The Raven, or Casey at the Bat, go swirling around inside that helmet and will sadly never be heard by the general population.
After gassing up and getting back on the road I experienced a memorable scene… Now, today on this Fourth of July holiday, there were many many more police on the highway than usual. I must have seen almost two score of cars pulled over. And so it was no surprise when, up on the right under a bridge area a mile or so away I spied the bubblegum lights of a couple police cruisers. It became increasingly clear that was MORE than just an ordinary traffic stop.
The one officer, facing the highway, had his gun drawn, and was in a dramatic shooting stance, and it looked pretty serious. I was afraid if the guy had fired, the bullet could have hit us on the roadway. A fellow was getting slowly out of the pulled over car with a number of other guns pointed at him…. No telling what happened after that as I was safely past and there was no looking back.
I had to take a state road #29. Before coming out of South Carolina there was a state road with that designation. I thought and thought when passing the sign, and then took it. A mistake. I only rode a bit of the way, then thinking it was a mistake, backtracked - but had do so north on I-85 before I could turn around. Coming back south and seeing the same signs filled me with doubt again. So when I saw a policeman giving a ticket, I pulled up beside him to ask and make sure.
The officer looked and sounded like a southern caricature of a southern officer. “How kin I hep yew,boy?” I explained my dilemma. And he said I had to go a purty fur distance to Georgia, about thirty miles. I told him how I'd likely be doing over 10,000 before the trip was over, so thirty miles was nuttin. He smiled.
I asked him if he had heard about the officers with the guns drawn down the road a piece. But he said it must have been in a different county because he hadn't heard of it. As he got back on his motorcycle, I mentioned, “A lot of you guys out today, eh?” and he laughed saying, “EVERYone is out today, boy!!!!”
After pulling off the big highway there was a stretch of back rural riding into Athens, GA, where my cousins Janet and Roy live. Haven't seen them for more than ten years. I had stayed with Roy's mom and dad on a ranch in New Mexico back in 1980 on my cross country bicycle ride. I have many warm memories of that stay that range from Curly the cow to the grand sunsets on the cozy porch! And Janet is a cousin I know from growing up and the family visits and get-togethers. I recall her dad, a dentist, taking out and chipping away at my wisdom teeth when I was about 16 - splinters of tooth splattering around the room.
On the rural road the winds started kicking up. There were little torrents and mini-tornados of wind, and the smell of the air changed to rain. And the skies turned mostly dark. And the air got cool to cold. About five Goldwings were following me, and I was hoping I wasn't holding them up. At a traffic light, after about twenty miles of this, the lead Goldwing guy came up to me and asked they could pass me by. And I, of course, agreed. He was a friendly mustachioed fellow. I asked if he knew the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid. And he said he did. I said I felt like Butch and Sundance looking back over their shoulders as they were being followed relentlessly toward the end of the movie, and I could hear Paul Newman's great understated line, “Who ARE those guys??”… I mentioned this to Mr. Goldwing, and he got a big laugh….
So I followed THEM for awhile and kept up pretty well. We all pulled over about ten minutes later as the rain began to spatter on our windshields. I was only about six miles or so from the Martins, but decided to go into rain mode. I covered up the Kuryakin bag in it's rain cover, and put a plastic bag over the tank bag, and then pulled over the big yellow rain slicker over my jacket.
It was just about that point that the rain stopped.
I kept the stuff on for a few miles and then stopped at a CVS for a few things then took it all off. A very skinny guy with a ponderous wife and a few kids were stuffing themselves into an old ratty car in the parking lot there, and he saw what I was doing. With a nasally southern tone, he allowed with a smile that, “As soon as you git that off, it'll start agaiiin!”
Janet and Roy live not only at the end of the little hard to find road, but also at the origin of the Oconee River which is just down the hill from their place.
It was so good seeing them again. Their one son, David, was there and it was good becoming acquainted again. A bright-eyed guy, he currently works at a nearby radio station, but is hoping for some kind of job in DC.
I got a rag from Roy and went out and cleaned off the bike to its shiny newness. (One of my hopes is that I get back from the 10,000 or so miles, or whatever it ends up, and roll into town, and someone says, “Man, that bike is way too clean to have just finished a 10,000-mile trip!!!!” Anyway, one of my thoughts is that if I take care of the bike, it will take care of me!)
Heading into the shower here I again realized that we take a lot of things for granted at home. And there are things on the road that we don't realize we miss - like the great fluffy thick towel that Janet put out for me. On the road one gets used to the camp towels or the skinny thin motel towels. The reasonable thick bath towel tonight seemed luxurious by comparison.
One of my prized streaks came to an end today. I knew it would sometime on this trip. 756! That's the number of days in a row I've bicycled. So I will change it to a Two-Wheel Streak…. My current run streak continues well at 1357 days in a row without missing at least a mile. (Seems kinda puny to me next to the former streak which was over 9,000 days - which is 25 years, plus.) Janet prepared a just wonderful meal! A crispy salad with parts of it coming from their own garden followed by a noodle dish with veggies and a wonderful surprise of sweet potato pieces. It was delicious. And the sorbet with the frozen blueberries really hit the spot.
We sat and chatted about old times and new, about relatives living and passed on about health problems current or past. About the aging process and the various tolls it takes on us. Roy, I noted, had the same characteristic as I do when chatting, a slight finger air jab when we want to express that the other person has made a good point.
It was delightful conversation and continued until about 10pm when Roy thoughtfully allowed that I better get working on my journal notes. I was sure that had we lived closer the three of us, and most especially Roy and me, because of what appeared to be so much in common, would have been tight friends.
Note:
(To view many of the photos associated with the trip, check out
http://www.photostockplus.com/home.php?tmpl=45&user_id=42473&event=196141. Some folks have reported trouble with this link, but most find that it works. Sometimes it takes two tries… Also, you can check out the past day's journal entries by going to joelperlish.com, and clicking on the appropriate trip on the left hand corner.)
