Key West or Bust, Day 11

Oh, Sweet Vidalia
Wednesday May 21, 2008

My alarm clock technology has improved considerably with this trip. I have now successfully figured out how to turn the thing off when we don’t want it. And so as planned, we sleep until we wake up and it’s after 10:30 this morning when we finish loading the trailer and roll out of the “90’s” Disney parking lot. First order of business is to find fuel, as I rather expected (but didn’t check the GPS) to find fuel near the Pop Century hotel. The nearest fuel in the direction we are heading is about 10 miles.

After fueling up, it’s nearly 11:00 AM and we head northward while talking about how we might want to order our day. Our original destination of Vidalia, Georgia, is about 330 miles, almost all on two-lane roads. This seemed a tall order last night, tired as we were. We talk about the options, of getting home on Memorial Day instead of Sunday as planned, of cutting out parts of the trip, of staying on the Interstates. In the final analysis, Kitty just can’t bring herself to vote for an Interstate ride, and thus we commit to two-lane riding as planned but the stopover points might be modified as necessary. If we get home a day later, it’s ok. We’ll ride today until we feel like stopping.

Thus we take Rt. 429 Toll north to Florida’s Turnpike, where the tolls once again annoy me in that our little Escapade trailer constitutes an extra axle, so we are charged the same toll as a truck with three axles. We have four wheels and gross probably 1,400 pounds. A three-axle truck has 10 wheels and weighs somewhere around 60,000 pounds or more. Where’s the justice in that? We get off the Interstate as soon as possible and work our way past Leesburg to Ocala on US 27. I wish we’d stayed on the Turnpike to Ocala to avoid this densely populated area. Nevertheless, in Ocala we pick up US 301 north to Starke where we stay with Rt. 121, which we hold into Georgia.

“The palm trees are gone,” Kitty comments. She’s right. My WOTI friend Grumpy (he’s actually not grumpy at all, it’s just a Disney thing, so he’s Grumpy and his wife is Happy) who lives in Mount Dora near here calls this the “hill country.” Compared to the vast flatlands of southern Florida, I guess it’s a little hilly, or at least with hints of hills, with lots of lakes and lots of beef cattle ranches. And there are bugs on the windshield. In southern Florida, we’ve ridden for days with virtually no bugs on the windshield, but this morning, 30 minutes of riding results in a bug-riddled wind screen that has to be cleaned at every stop.

Running into Georgia, our straight and flat two-lane road keeps its route number, so we follow Rt. 121 through the Georgia pines and into the afternoon Georgia heat. The temperature is 90F but Kitty and I are both doing well. We’re both surprised how good we feel after being so tired last night. The Georgia speed… uh… shall we say “guideline” on this road is 55 mph. It’s straight and flat, miles of nothing but pine trees, no cross traffic. In west Texas this road would have a Texas speed limit of 75 mph. I don’t ride Texas-fast today, but the urgency of making miles is strongly upon my shoulders, so I, well, create my own speed guideline that I think all concerned parties could live with. It seems to work, as I neither run up behind traffic nor get run over from behind.

And thus to the little village of Folkston, where we take a break and top off the fuel tank. This is actually a remote rural area with very few services, and I don’t like riding with a near-empty tank in these environs.

“I see a lot of pine trees, lots of logging trucks in these parts,” I say to a tiny blond teenaged girl fueling up a giant Ford 4 x 4 diesel pickup truck. “Anything else happening around here? Any other crops? Any industry?”

“No sir.”

“Just logging?

“Yes sir.”

“Nothing else?”

“No sir. This town is too small for anything else. We have only four stoplights.”

Well, I guess that just about sums it up.

For the last 50 miles or so, it’s been increasingly cloudy, and before leaving Folkston we hang out for 10 or 15 minutes waiting for a passing storm off in the north to clear the area. But I can see another front approaching, and decide to see if we can split the difference. We head north on US 1/Rt. 121 toward the dark heart of the storm. On the GPS, I can see our route bearing off to the right, away from the storm, and I think we might miss it but it will be close. A little too close, as it turns out. This time we don’t escape, and within five miles we are in the middle of a small but intense local downpour. By now it is far too late to do the Dance of the Rainsuit, so we keep riding in the heavy rain. With the Tulsa windshield, as long as we can keep moving at about 50 mph, we don’t get too wet, as the still-air bubble from the fairing and windshield surrounds us and keeps most of the raindrops from penetrating. But there’s a period where traffic causes us to slow to about 35 mph, and that’s not fast enough to stay dry.

“Go, road!” I keep urging, trying to inch our way to the east, out of the storm. I’m hoping this isn’t one of my spectacular miscalculations (there have been two, including one with Kitty) where I think we can keep on riding but in fact the visibility is so poor that we have to slow to a crawl or even stop. This time it works out ok, because after about 10 miles of this, we clear the storm and leave the rain behind. In my mirrors, the sky looks black and ominous, but for us, sunshine rules!

The temperature has dropped from 90F to 72F. “That was kinda fun without rain gear,” says Kitty. “At least it’s cool.” In another 10 miles the temperature has returned to 90F, and in 30 miles we’re dry. It's great to be wearing those waterproof Cruiserworks motorcycle boots, otherwise we'd be slogging around in wet leather for two days!

We’d thought that Vidalia, Georgia was a destination too far today, but as it turns out, except for the town of Baxley, 30 miles south, there are virtually no other overnight services along the entire route. So it’s a good thing we feel good, and Kitty is up for the whole trip. Since our dietary changes and weight loss, she’s like a different rider with respect to the distances she can ride comfortably. I had to laugh earlier on this trip when someone sent an email congratulating Kitty for “being able to hold her water longer.” Well, that’s never been the problem — tired butt syndrome was the problem. And like magic, now it isn’t a problem! She’s become a super-biker-chick! It is a joy to travel with Kitty, longer rider or not.

So we decide to go for Vidalia, home of the sweet onions of that same name. In this area of south Georgia, the pine trees have given way to huge flat expanses of golden winter wheat in full fruit. It’s just now in harvest season, about six weeks earlier than the Kansas harvest of the same crop. As we near Vidalia, the strong scent of onions pervades the air, and it appears the onion crop is just nearing the end of its harvest season. Like a giant open-faced sandwich, large gray fields are lying open to the sky with freshly upturned earth where onions have recently been harvested. I want to check whether there is more than one annual season for onions.

By 6:30 PM, we make Vidalia, which was our originally-scheduled destination for the day. We find a Holiday Inn Express with the GPS. They have five open rooms. Fortunately, we only need one. So it’s all good. Who knew we would feel so good today after being so tired last night? We’ve ridden over 330 miles, almost all on two-lane roads. Even if the ride isn't what most people would consider greatly scenic, I feel better on two-lane roads because I think I've done a better job of understanding the geography of our great country. I owe it that.

Tomorrow is another day of options, depending on how we feel and what we feel like doing. Only tomorrow knows what tomorrow may bring.