The Awkward Pose

August 18, 2016 – Sunny, 95 degrees

Miles Today: 97

Miles to Date: 14,750

States to Date: 41

Some long riding days are so satisfying. Get up early and on the road before the heat sets in, stay focused on progress but take breaks to meet interesting folks and stay fresh. I logged a lot of miles, climbed over 2,000 feet into the Georgia foothills, and had several local adventures.

I savored my first Waffle House experience in Thomson. The entire staff called out, “welcome!’ when I walked in, though my waitress was surprised I asked for a menu. Waffle House is all about repeat customers and pretty much everyone orders the All-Star breakfast: two eggs any style, two sausage patties, two slices of toast, grits, plus a large waffle. Next time, I won’t bother with a menu. For seven bucks, the All-Star breakfast rocks.

I needed all those carbs along the Whitesboro Road, a scenic country road to an early Quaker settlement. Just past the few remaining structures the pavement turned into a dirt logging road. Fortunately, Georgia red clay makes a pretty sound road surface.

Washington is a town with many beautiful historic houses, but I didn’t linger at any of them as thunderclouds threatened in early afternoon. For the rest of the day I dodged storms that raged all around me.

 But I did stop to visit with local farmer Libby who grows and sells Muscadines and Scuppernongs, two delicious local grapes, from a farm stand with a welcome breeze. These plump fruits are certainly healthier than Waffle House fare.

I was already in Athens by the time a thunderstorm finally caught me. I ducked into in a car wash stall until the skies cleared and I pedaled to my host’s on time.

Jon Pierson is very gregarious guy and regular couchsurfing host who recently moved to Athens. He organized a couchsurfing meet-up at the HiLo bar in Normaltown. Eight other people showed up, commandeered a corner table, drank great local drafts, and talked about all things couchsurfing, Athens, University of Georgia, and tomorrow.

August 17, 2016 – Sunny, 95 degrees

Miles Today: 30

Miles to Date: 14,653

States to Date: 41

 Welcome to Georgia! I took an easy day and got my bike a 2,000 mile check-up at Andy Jordan’s Bike Shop in Augusta. Tom got a new pair of shiny red pedals after the factory standard plastic ones cracked and the shop was out of any subtle colors. Just another way for me to stand out on the road!

I rode along the Augusta canal system and then took a long afternoon break in McDonald’s. About 2:00 I realized the dining room was full of young people. Turned out to be interview afternoon. I overheard the manager give a dozen or more personal interviews – the exact same questions to all applicants. A few candidates spoke right up, but most slumped through the ordeal. With so many applicants, shy folks won’t make the cut.

On my way to Hearth Table catfish buffet I came upon a confused elderly man in an electric wheelchair. He showed me his nametag: Sylvester Dawson, Richmond Summit House. I goggled his apartment, discovered it was more than a mile away, and asked him what he was doing out on such a hot day. “Getting lost.” So, I walked him sixteen blocks through Augusta’s eviscerated inner city. Many streets had no sidewalks, but his low-boy wheelchair navigated the blacktop better than concrete anyway. We made quite a pair. I let my bright shirt and saddlebags stand between Sylvester and what little traffic there was.

A husky back woman, his wife Linda, waited at the lobby of a questionably respectable apartment house on Augusta’s aging Broad Street. Despite his Alzheimer, I could tell the poor man was in for a good scold.

I finally got to my buffet, famished, just before a torrential downpour flooded the city and barely lowered the thermostat a notch. No worry. The catfish was excellent.

August 16, 2016 – Sunny, 95 degrees

Miles Today: 83

Miles to Date: 14,623

States to Date: 40

A great day of cycling out of the Low Country and into the gentle hills of upland Carolina. The pines got taller along my route and provided a good deal of shade, except in areas where recent harvests were replaced with saplings.

South Carolina has the highest per capita population of people in mobile homes. However, there are few of the large mobile home parks we have in the northeast. Instead, there are many compounds of mobile homes grouped together. Apparently, a family group often shares them.

Finally – a shoulder in South Carolina! US 278 west of Barnwell was one of the best road s of my trip; smooth pavement, a wide shoulder, and a groove strip to keep the passing cars at bay. I sailed into New Ellenton with ease.

August 15, 2016 – Sunny, 95 degrees

Miles Today: 51

Miles to Date: 14,541

States to Date: 40

Monday morning! First day of school! Traffic galore heading east into Charleston! But I am pedaling the other direction, turning the fourth corner of my odd-shaped box around the United States.

I took at big left turn in Belfast ME to head west, another at Seattle to go south, a third in San Diego to return east. After recalibrating my rehab my layover in Boston, I cycled south. Today I turned west again to commence what I call the ‘inner loop’: Georgia, Tennessee and Kentucky, Missouri and Kansas, Oklahoma and Arkansas, with a few ‘revisits’ to states I’ve already touched along the way.

Wait a minute; that leaves me one state short. True. I have yet to cycle in Florida. I hope to complete Arkansas in November and peddle back through Dixie to the Florida Panhandle in December when the weather should be fine. My odd shape box has a fifth corner, when I stop going west and turn south and east once last time.

In the short term, today was a good day to go against the flow. No shoulders anywhere. For the most part, drivers were patient with me. A few times vehicles lined behind me so I pulled onto the grass to let folks by. Big trucks are never a problem; they are professional drivers. It’s the pick-up drivers and clueless min-vans that give me angina.

When I could savor the scenery, I appreciated Ashley River Road’s canopy of trees and stately plantations. The land began to rise, the forest turned to tall pine, and the scent of pinesap filled the air whenever a logging truck passed by.

Walterboro is a lovely, if sleepy, burg. All of its commerce has been sucked dry by I-95, four miles to the west, where I stayed under a Red Roof for the night.

August 14, 2016 – Sunny, 95 degrees

Miles Today: 25

Miles to Date: 14,490

States to Date: 40

My rotogravure of an elegant city of the South that endures revolution and civil war, earthquake and hurricane, flood and famine, mass shootings and racist killing; a World Heritage Site that manifests all that is noble and tragic in the human condition: Charleston is resilient.

The wall of doves stretches two blocks; a unity effort after the 2015 Charleston Church shooting

The Eastside is the only remaining African-American community within the old part of the city. It boasts African-American monuments and cranes of encroaching development.

On second Sunday, King Street becomes a pedestrian mall with many musical performers. I particularly like the narrow facades between actual buildings. Some are false fronts, others very narrow structures.

The Copper and Ashley Rivers come together at the Battery to form the Atlantic Ocean.

Gullah weavers command the corner of Meeting and Broad.

Historical Preservation in this country began in Charleston, in 1931. The Preservation Society runs a boutique of local crafts.

The city is littered with horse drawn carriage tours. On a bicycle, I get to hear multiple guides’ stories.

The city has an assortment of prominent public buildings.

But the private homes are most memorable.

August 13, 2016 – Sunny, 95 degrees

Miles Today: 36

Miles to Date: 14,465

States to Date: 40

Nine months ago I spent a night in the original Sun City, AZ, the first US community exclusively for people over age 55 where, in 1960 an 800 square foot house cost $10,000; air conditioning was optional. People snapped them up as much for the community centers and golf courses as the concrete block cottages. Del Webb, Sun City’s developer, is long dead, but there are over fifty Del Webb communities in twenty states that reflect the evolution of active retirement, an evolution that parallels our national trend toward less community.

Del Webb Charleston has a community center and swimming pool, organized parties and tennis courts, but no golf courses. Instead it features lagoons – fourteen of them – created by bulldozers shaping the swamp into buildable lots. The focus of development is densely packed individual homes. Garages dominate front yards. My hosts live in a 3-bedroom 2400 square foot house that is as unrelated to its Sun City predecessor as a McMansion is to Levittown.

The ride to Charleston was not pretty. North Charleston is a poor city. Vehicles funnel through the neck of highways and dashed commerce, racing to Charleston’s charming tourist center. I circled The Citadel campus where new plebes were being indoctrinated. Such a loud place. Yelling is an integral component of military education.

Google maps showed that my host’s home bordered the Ashley River, but the reality was much more impressive. Deb lives in the last of a modest row of townhouses; the sunset views of the marsh from every room are spectacular. I asked whether her house flooded during the massive rains last year; rains that left much of the Del Webb community thirty miles upstream under water. Though barely two feet above high tide, her house had stayed dry. The difference between a natural marsh and a swamp dredged into lagoons.

August 12, 2016 – Sunny, 95 degrees

Miles Today: 92

Miles to Date: 14,429

States to Date: 40

 It was impossible to get turned around today – US 52 South for 75 miles, bear right on Alt US 17. I was looking forward to riding through the Francis Marion National Forest, but the tall trees and shady road I imagined was a far cry from the wide highway and mowed shoulders that kept me in full sunshine all day.

I love when a place shifts expectations, and so far, South Carolina is striking in one omission and one addition. South Carolinians appear to be as flag waving as any other Americans, but I have yet to see even one Confederate flag here. That may be one culture war we’ve left behind.

What I have seen instead are unexpected signs of recognition. Towns often cite favorite sons on their ‘welcome to’ signs; often sports stars or media celebrities. Along highway 52 I passed four small towns in a row that heralded their connection to more cerebral pursuits: an astronaut, the first African-American female college president, another college president, and a Nobel Prize winner.

Google Maps for bicycles has a penchant for mapping me on dirt roads. An intriguingly twisty line is not always good as it looks. My hosts for the night live in Del Webb Charleston, an active adult community of serpentine streets, one of multiple developments called Cane Bay that all share one vehicle access, on the far side of my approach. Google offered a route that carved seven miles off the highway. I was skeptical, until it turned out to be the best dirt road of my trip, firm sand reinforced with mesh. It circled the major retention lake of this swamp reshaped into dry land and lagoons. I could have been miles from any human being. Until I came upon a paved bike path that brought me smack into close-packed houses and direct to their street. Sometimes, traveling by bike can be faster than car!

August 11, 2016 – Sunny, 95 degrees

Miles Today: 119

Miles to Date: 14,337

States to Date: 40

My internal compass went kerflooey today: missed turns; detours; backtracking all over the countryside. Maybe it was the scent of the open fires and pine sap that permeates the sand hills of North Carolina, maybe it was the miles of parched corn begging to be harvested, maybe it was the snap hale storm that bore down on me hard and then stopped within five minutes. What promised to be a long day got completely out of control and turned into the longest single leg of my trip.

Thankfully, the terrain was flat, the wind benign, and logging 119 miles was not as exhausting as many other days I’ve done. (Loveland Pass holds the record on that). Still, I’m not looking to repeat this century+ again any time soon.

I arrived in Florence just after seven. The miles washed off me in the shower and I was ready for a beer and a great night of front porch talk with a dozen or so locals who would rather live in this former railroad hub with a tight sense of community than any other place on earth.

August 10, 2016 – Partly sunny, 90 degrees

Miles Today: 68

Miles to Date: 14,218

States to Date: 39

A perfect day of bicycle touring. Cotton candy clouds provided dramatic skies all day. A light breeze diminished the high temperature and steamy humidity. The first twenty-five miles out of Raleigh had good shoulders and even a few bike paths. Beyond that, there was so little traffic the lack of shoulder hardly mattered.

North Carolina has the most beautiful specimen trees I’ve seen. They don’t rival the majesty of California’s Redwoods or Washington’s rain forests, but in many places the woods have been thinned so one or two or three specimens can fill out in grand, symmetrical glory. They are stunning. I particularly liked this one that shelters a small cemetery marked by a flag. It’s all there: ancestors, nature, god, and country.

The Battle of Averasboro (March 15 & 16, 1865) took place all along Highway 82. There are dozens of markers as well as several notable structures, a visitor center and cemetery strung along the highway. In classic Confederate spin, the fact that the Rebels pulled their front back three times and eventually retreated is considered a ‘victory’ in slowing the Union advance long enough to decipher Sherman’s intended route of destruction. History may be written by the victors, but the losers come up with more creative interpretations.

August 9, 2016 – Partly sunny, 85 degrees

Miles Today: 32

Miles to Date: 14,150

States to Date: 39

Our political and economic system is full of policies established with good intent that, over time, become tools that reinforce power and status quo. Consider zoning. Before the industrial revolution, the idea that work, commerce, and living were separate activities didn’t exist. Zoning was a noble idea to reduce urban density, bring light and air to dwellings, and separate people’s homes from noxious industry. Early zoning codes were a key element of the dramatic increase in public health we witnessed a century ago.

However, by the time Charles Erwin Wilson, Eisenhower’s Defense Secretary, announced, “What is good for GM is good for the country,” zoning had become a tool to reinforce economic stratification and promote an automobile-based economy. Compartmentalizing our lives became the norm. Daily transportation, most often by private car, became the link between segregated activities; a link that can consume an hour or more each way from home to office.

Today I pedaled through Research Triangle Park, perhaps the world’s largest parcel of single use zoning. RTP’s 7,000 acres contain nothing but wide roads connecting over 200 corporate office buildings and parking lots hidden behind trees, trees, and more trees. RTP started in 1959 to create business and research opportunities tied to the area’s three main universities: Duke, UNC, and NC State. It became famous during the 1960’s, when segregating our environment and promoting car travel was king. RTP gained cache when IBM transferred a large part of their operations there, though if you are true David Sedaris fan, you know his spin on a North Carolina youth with an IBM dad is not all perfection. At ten a.m. on a weekday morning, I encountered little traffic and no sign of the 50,000 people who work here. After driving a minimum of ten miles to their offices, they were snug indoors.

I don’t buy the idea that great ideas take place in a pastoral environment. Innovation comes from constant contact with problems, not in escaping them. The technology start up I visited yesterday is in bustling downtown Durham. Corporations at Research Triangle Park are big guns, long past nimble.

Perhaps the best thing that can be said of sixty years of ultra-low density, monoculture development is that there is plenty of room in RTP for infill. They recently carved out 100 acres, a pittance, to create ‘Center Park’, a new urbanism collection of upscale houses and stores. The first effort at a finer scale of zoning, to create a place rather then simply space. It isn’t much, but it’s a start.