Day 22, Sunday, September 29

The lunch crowd. From left to right, that's Manfred, Jeff contemplating the route sheet, James, Alan, and Troy contemplating the coming evening's "entertainment" in Gainesville.

I started enjoying myself again today, which was a nice change. The traffic was still bad for the last several miles getting into the hotel, but I'm beginning to expect that now and overall the day was good. Burnt Mountain wasn't nearly as steep or hard as I thought it would be, after hearing people talk about it since Arizona, and we were done with it in the first half of the ride. The descent off the mountain was really fun -- not too steep, twisty, or traffic-y -- even though it didn't last long enough. On the way up the sky was sunny, but on the other side of the mountain, on the way down, it was cloudy and looked like it might rain. I liked the cloudiness, though. It was fairly humid so I never got cold and being out of the sun kept me from getting overheated like yesterday.

When I say the traffic has been getting bad, what I mean is that we've spent about 100 miles in the last five days or so riding on relatively busy, two-lane, shoulder-less roads where the speed limit is fifty-five miles per hour and some of the drivers are less than courteous. Without a shoulder to cycle on, drivers have to cross the center yellow line to pass us and I can't blame them for being a little annoyed.

The vast majority of drivers have been very conscientious, but all it takes is one or two drivers a day to pass too close and I stop having fun pretty quickly. Riding on roads like that takes the concentration of riding rollers for twenty to thirty miles at a stretch. I don't eat, drink from my water bottles, stand out of the saddle to stretch, or look at the route sheet. I hug the white line as closely as possible and pray that drivers will give me room when they pass in an almost continuous stream. I was thinking of getting a "Bush/Cheney" bumper sticker or something to paste across my butt so the drivers will think I'm one of them and be more considerate. Or, of getting a jersey with giant letters on the back, "Thank You for Not Killing Me." Or something that combines the two: "I promise to vote Republican for the rest of my life if you help me make it a long one and please pass with care." That's probably too long to read at fifty-five miles per hour, though. Unless we got a pace line together and did a Burma-Shave-type thing. Something like that.

Some drivers have been down right friendly. Ever since Arkansas, cyclists have talked about people who slowed down in cars and drove along side them for several minutes while they asked detailed questions about where we've been, where we're going, and why. Today, I pulled over to look at the route sheet because I wasn't sure I was on the right road. A pickup truck that was making a left turn in front of me stopped and a young teenage girl, skinny with brown pig tails, pretty face, and broad grin said, "You want to be going that way" and pointed up the road. I looked at her suspiciously and said, "How do you know?" She said that they had just passed a bunch of cyclists heading that way and then verified that I was on Route 136. I gave her a thumbs up and yelled my thanks. That was nice of them to stop, they didn't have to go out of their way to help me like that. Of course it means, however, that I have to be more open-minded and admit that there's more to this part of the country than churches, cemeteries, and stray dogs.

Richard

Phil

Reed is a great guy and a tremendous athlete. He's a retired biologist who owned his own company selling wasps to farmers to fight fungi as alternatives to using chemical sprays. He and his wife also run their own unoffical humane society, taking in stray animals, getting them fixed, and finding them homes.

Doreen

Josh

Once at the hotel I invited myself to dinner with Josh, Doreen, Reed, Phil, and Richard. We ate at the Waffle House, which is a chain here. I ate grits, hash browns, grits, two scrambled eggs, toast, orange juice, and orange juice. My grand total? $8.55. I almost feel guilty, getting that many calories for so cheap. Everything was drowned in butter and yummy. Afterwards we stopped at a gas station and I got a pint of Ben and Jerry's, some chocolatey flavor. I must have really needed all of the food because the ice cream alone had eighty grams of fat, not to mention all of the butter in my "dinner,"and I don't even feel stuffed. I couldn't eat like that every night, but that's going to help me get down the road for the next few days.

It was nice to have a short day, too (ninety-one miles and about 4,800' of climbing) so I could relax more in the evening. Some nights all I want is to grab fast-food or groceries to-go and eat in my room. It was nice talking with everyone tonight, though. Doreen, Josh, Phil, and Reed all have a ton of long-distance cycling experience and it was interesting to listen to them. Reed has done Race Across America before and was saying that, after accomplishing that, it's hard to find ways to challenge himself now. He says that his dream is to climb Everest, but he would want to do it alone and without oxygen. I started laughing involuntarily it sounded so crazy. Tom L. calls that "ride inflation", where you have to keep doing harder and harder rides just to feel like you're trying new things, until you burn out and out-do yourself. If anyone could climb Everest, though Reed could. He's a very accomplished and determined athlete.

At the gas station I was first at the register and handed the cashier a couple of soggy bills. I keep my money inside my CamelBak all day and, even though it's in a zip-lock bag, it still gets wet. I apologized that my money was damp but she said, "Doesn't matter, it's still money." A few minutes later, Josh paid for his goods and complained that his change felt like it had gone through the wash. That made me and the cashier have laughing fits, that Josh ended up with my soggy money. I didn't have anything else to offer him, though, because all the bills I had were wet.

Josh cools off in the pool while Phil supervises.

Speaking of things that are wet, my system of washing my clothes in my hotel room every night has broken down. It worked in the arid Western states, but now that it's really humid here in the East, my clothes feel like they're even wetter in the morning after hanging up all night than after I first take them out of the sink. Some hotels don't have laundry facilities, and those that do are usually pretty busy, so overall it's been easier to not rely on using a real clothes dryer. Phil has conducted extensive clinical trials and developed a very detailed and precise system for drying clothes on the room heater. He knows exactly how long each article of cycling clothing takes to dry. My experience is that shorts dry the fastest, in just a few minutes, then jerseys, at maybe ten minutes, then socks, which I've now had baking over my heater for the last hour or so. Actually, considering how humid it is out, by the time I had dried my shorts and jerseys I had started to feel like I was sitting in a sauna, so I started switching between the heat and the air conditioner. That's probably extended the sock drying time by a bit.

In honor of my improved mood for the day, here's a list of things that I'm grateful for:

• I've made it to the hotel safely each night and the majority of drivers pass carefully.

• I haven't been throwing up from food poisoning for the last several days like about a fifth of the cyclists on the trip.

• The numbness in my toes is more evenly distributed now among all ten instead of only two.

• I found extra powdered drink mix in my stash box two days ago, along with the pair of tights that had gone missing. I guess I had forgotten that I put them there.

• We entered our final time zone of the trip yesterday, and our second-to-last state -- Georgia. We'll be entering our final state tomorrow.

I know I'm getting close to the end of the trip. I another half-week I'll be home. I'm not quite ready to feel a sense of accomplishment, though. I guess I've learned the hard way that there are no easy days out here, just some that are less difficult than others, so I don't want to let my guard down or become complacent about these last three days. The three days we had around Amarillo with a twenty- to thirty-mile-per-hour tail wind were a complete anomaly, and it gave me false expectations about having "rest days" for the rest of the trip. Still, as long as I stay safe, there should be nothing in the days coming up that I can't handle.