Gulf Coast Getaway, Day 2

Tall Trees in Georgia

Monday May 24, 2010
Copyright(c) 2010, Jim Beachy

“It’s been great to see you, my friend,” I say as I shake Ray’s hand. I’ve just backed my Wing and the trailer out of his long driveway and we’re headed west and south. It’s just a little after 9:00 AM, later than I hoped after a bit of difficulty uploading yesterday’s blog text. We have two days to make Tallahassee, Florida, almost exactly 600 miles away. My GPS route is mostly on two-lane roads, so 300 miles is a nice two-lane ride. In Solo Guy fashion, I have not scoped out the likely intervening stopping points. We will ride until we feel like stopping for the night and find a place we like.

We roll southwest out Goldsboro, North Carolina, and after a brief stint on I-95 start our two-lane trek through North Carolina, across the expanse of South Carolina, and into the heartland of Georgia if we decide to ride that far. In spite of yesterday’s lessons regarding the proper Dance of the Rainsuit, I have once more opted to ride without rain gear. The weather radar display on my BlackBerry makes me think the front has moved out to sea, leaving only heavy cloud cover in its wake.

Almost immediately rain and mist spit down onto the windshield and I wonder if, after almost half a million miles of riding, I will never learn. Undaunted, we roll into the countryside under heavy but “fuzzy” clouds that I’ve learned seldom carry significant rain. At times the clouds are at ground level and produce a mist that mysteriously shrouds the open fields of corn and tobacco, and covers the windshield with tiny droplets. Other times the pelt down enough rain that the droplets form a graceful convex “V” characteristic of the big Tulsa windshield as it clears raindrops. But we never hit wet road or need rain gear.

We try to identify the crops in the expansive fields lying on both sides of the highway. Tobacco is easy because, well, it just looks like “baby tobacco.” Corn, sorghum, wheat, and oats are also relatively easy to identify. There are fields of beans whose green twin-leafed stalks are just pushing through the black soil. And there are fields that appear to have been planted recently, some with a hint of greenery as the plants push through the soil, but some too newly planted to identify any plant. We’re not sure when cotton is planted, but we wonder if it’s cotton: whatever it is, there’s a lot of it, hundreds or thousands of acres of bare fields that later in summer will be vibrant with whatever is germinating now.

I normally associate cypress swamps with more southerly states, but here we are, rolling through miles of cypress swamps with the characteristic black cypress boles that widen dramatically just above the water line.

We hold US 13 for many miles, a route that I call “easy country,” the kind of road that just makes me happy to be here. It’s not spectacular but it’s ever-changing and interesting as we roll at moderate speed through the countryside. We ride for 75 miles and never have a single vehicle in front or behind us, a delightful ride under clouds pregnant with moisture but never dropping their load of water on us. Kitty and I talk, as we have many times before, about how motorcycle riding is so different from the typical car ride. For most drivers, a trip is all about the starting and finishing points, and the “between” is an entity to be tolerated. For us, the “between” is the whole deal, where starting and finishing points have little relevance. It’s the ride that counts. Thus we find ourselves on the Slow Road, not the Short Road, and not the Long Road that Solo Guy loves. It’s just a ride to soak in the geography and the culture.

Riding into South Carolina, we pass through numerous little towns that slow us only briefly, for some don’t have as much as a single traffic light. I ride gently and with a certain reverence, for I become aware this is like riding through a landscape wrecked with the debris of a thousand shattered hopes and broken dreams, the detritus of a generation of lost hope. For every perfectly-maintained antebellum mansion with its perfectly-shuttered windows, set back from the street in a lush green lawn set about by giant magnolia trees that are just past their bloom – for every one of those homes, there are 10 broken-down and abandoned homes, and a dozen businesses that are shuttered and dark and dusty, many with windows broken out by mischievous teenagers. I am saddened as I wonder what stories these hulks, relics of a now-defunct lifestyle, could say to me. I wonder what I could learn if they could teach me. In town after town, we ride through what used to be their little Main Street, and in some towns there appears to be not a single business open. What happened here? And what happened to the people who built these towns with hope and passion, and what keeps the remnant hanging on?

My reverie is interrupted by Jill, my GPS voice, saying in our headsets, “Drive 1.8 miles to three-eight-seven-fifteen-four-oh-one-bypass-west!” It’s one of the waypoints I’ve created near Bennettsville, South Carolina. Kitty and I both laugh and I press the “Speak” button to make Jill repeat this several more times.

We ride nearly 190 miles across the breadth of South Carolina, spending about 130 miles on I-20 even though I’ve billed this as a two-lane day. Without changing the trip parameters, it was difficult to find a way through South Carolina without using the Interstate. By the time we make Columbia, there’s as much sky as cloud cover. By the time we make the Georgia line at the Savannah River near Augusta, we ride under brilliant blue skies and just a few puffy white clouds.

Riding west of Augusta and out of the hilly banks of the Savannah River, we pass through miles and miles of pine trees. At the moment we are on US 1, which is four lanes wide here. “I like looking through the pine trees at the other side of the road,” Kitty comments. The pine trunks in the quarter-mile-wide median flit by like a million strobes as I steal a glance across to the northbound side. Georgia is justifiably noted for its stately pine trees, and I think of a cut from one of my all-time favorite CDs:

Tall trees in Georgia,
They grow so high
They shade me so
And sadly walking
Through the thicket I go

Buffy Sainte-Marie wrote this mournful ballad about turning down suitors in one’s youth, and now, in old age, none come around; but if you’ve never heard Eva Cassidy’s gut-wrenching cover of this tune, run, don’t walk, to your Google machine and find out the quickest way to get the CD “Eva Cassidy: Live at Blues Alley.” It may forever shape the way you think about the tall pine trees of Georgia.

By now it’s about 4:00 PM we have ridden over 300 miles, well into Georgia, and even though it’s early, decide to find a place to spend the night. Now I haven’t scoped out this trip segment at all, so we’re at the mercy of whatever we find. Approaching the town of Wrens, 10 miles distant, the GPS displays two motels and several restaurants. The next town is Louisville, about 12 miles beyond that. After that, it’s another 55 miles to the town of Dublin. We chat about this and decide to take whatever we find. In Wrens, one motel looks ok but we decide to ride on to Louisville where several motels and restaurants are listed. We decide to pass on the first one. Riding off the route to the second one, we find... nothing! No hint of an inn, no sign of a lodging establishment. We do see a Chamber of Commerce building that I suspect may at one time have been an inn.

“This has never happened to us before!” I say to Kitty in the headset. “That’s because I usually plan ahead! But this segment wasn’t scripted at all.”

We have two choices: Backtrack to Wrens, or ride 55 miles to Dublin, which is near I-16 and has plenty of services. “Let’s ride!” says Kitty.

And thus it is, on a day designated as a slow-down two-lane day, in 8.5 hours and with only 1 hour 17 minutes of stopping time, we accidentally ride 404 miles from Goldsboro, North Carolina, to Dublin, Georgia on 19 different route numbers that I can only recall by looking at the GPS route. I’d never try to ride such a convoluted route without a GPS! After checking in to the Hampton Inn we choose to walk a half mile to dinner.

“What was your favorite thing today?” I ask Kitty.

“Not having any rain!” she answers without hesitation.

GPS Track Day 2