April 20, 2021
Day Two: Baxley, Georgia to Fitzgerald, Georgia
I slept better, but still woke up a few times, and then somehow slept through the alarm clock on my phone, which I had optimistically set last night for 4:40 AM . A 5:30 wake-up was early enough, though, to allow me to get some chores done: Writing yesterday's journal entry, checking email, and most importantly, lubing my chain, the dry raspy sound of which had annoyed the shit out of me all day yesterday.
Breakfast at the motel was not very enticing, so I just ate an egg on a burned biscuit and grabbed several pastries for the road.
I was out at 8:15, found that it was chilly, but not chilly enough to put on arm warmers, and explored the town very briefly before following my route into the countryside.
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I left town on Zoar Road. Scenery was more pleasant today - not all-Pines-all-the-time like yesterday.
It was ever so slightly hillier than yesterday, although hilly seems too strong to describe these little undulations. Still, I shifted a couple of times to the small chain ring, and then once when shifting back to the big ring, I dropped the chain, and spent a longer than usual time getting it back on. This process was aided by the presence in the ditch of a surprisingly clean-looking shop rag, which I used to help keep the chain grease off my hands. (I did make a cursory examination of the rag to make sure it wasn't soiled with anything more objectionable than my greasy chain.)
I've often told my wife that the rules are different on bike tours, and in my perhaps overly fastidious regular life, I most certainly would not pick up a rag in a ditch and handle it, and then a few minutes later eat a pastry from my handlebar bag after forgetting to wash my hands.
I turned onto Bell Telephone Road and was assaulted with what is surely one of the worst odors I occasionally encounter in my travels: Chicken manure. I was puzzled at first because I couldn't locate its source, until I realized that a farmer was spreading the dried manure on his fields. Once I saw the tractor and the clouds of the stuff emanating from it, I accelerated from 12mph to a brisk 17 mph extremely quickly and got away.
There were several churches on the route today, and I stopped at most of them to sit, look at my map, and eat snacks. While at one of them, I used my "Click-Stand" for the first time on the trip.
Roads continued to be very, very empty, and the scenery more pleasant than yesterday. After I escaped the chicken manure zone, I started smelling something much more pleasant - Honeysuckle, maybe?
Skies darkened a little, and approximately ten drops of rain fell on me in the next 45 minutes. Then the sun came back out.
A bullet-riddled stop sign welcomed to Broxton, population 1,189. Broxton, or at least the portion of it I rode through, looked like its best days were in the past.
I continued to make my way toward Fitzgerald. There were a few dog incidents, but nothing major. So far, Georgia bicycle-chasing dogs have not impressed me with their ferocity, unlike the ones in my home state of Kentucky.
The smallest dog that chased me today was miniscule - perhaps six inches tall - but it followed me, yapping, an impressively long time.
When I reached the outskirts of Fitzgerald, population 9,053, I pulled into a nice cemetery and assessed the lodging possibilities. As I Googled Fitzgerald, the internet offered up the factoid that Fitzgerald had a high crime rate. And it appeared that all of the several motels in town were horrible in various ways. There was a B&B in town, so I called it, but the fancy-sounding lady there informed me that they were booked tonight. "So, which of these cheap motels in the south part of town is the least terrible?" I asked.
She hesitated for a while, and then basically refused to offer an opinion, instead suggesting I get an Airbnb. I was more amused than annoyed by her response, thanked her, hung up, and then rode a mile and a half on a busy highway, then through the parking lot of a strip shopping center, and then a Tractor Supply parking lot, and then got a room at the Garden Inn, which, while terrible, is not the worst placed I've stayed on a bicycle tour. Not by a long, long, long shot.
Today's ride: 71 miles (114 km)
Total: 154 miles (248 km)
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