Yew Have Got to Be Lost

January 24, 2016

We wake up to a beautiful morning: clear, windless, the sky going from deep blue to lighter blue and then to a burning orange as we scan the sky from west to east. It's beautiful but still so cold: twenty-six degrees, even at ten minutes to eight. And so seven a.m. becomes eight and nine and then ten before we build up the will to leave our warm motel room behind. It's all of thirty-two by then.

But our bodies are covered everywhere except for the space between the bottom of the eyebrows and the tip of the chin and the cheeks on either side. This keeps the cold from crushing our spirits and also has the effect of making the good people of Waycross look confused, amused, or some mix of both as they drive by in their trucks on the way to or home from Sunday morning church.

"Did you see that?!" Kristen asks while we're stopped to rest a few miles outside of town.

"See what?"

"I think something just fell out of the sky. I think it was a meteor! It shot across the sky and then it looked like it burned up."

But I don't see any of it. I'm too busy looking at the details of the mobile homes across the street and talking about the burritos we might have for dinner.

[Added later: It was in fact a meteorite.]

We ride next to uncountable rows of skinny pine trees planted close together in precise lines that some forestry company's algorithm says will maximize their lumber yield. In the rare open fields we see little tufts of cotton stuck on branches left behind after last year's harvest. All of the cars that pass us appear a few miles down the road in the packed parking lot of the Swamp Road Baptist Church. We've arrived in the Bible Belt.

Beyond the church we ride alone with the far northern reaches of the Okefenokee Swamp to our left. I'm struck by how good I feel. The sore neck and shoulders and wrists are gone. My legs are strong, my ass cheeks healed, the general state of tired I felt for the last two days gone. When I started doing this kind of riding seven years ago there's no way I would have taken most of a day off only two days after setting out. I would have told myself to toughen up, to not be such a candy-ass, to go for a week and a half and then rest. That's what everyone else does. But I've learned enough since then to trust myself, to know that chasing fatigue with more hard riding would just make me dread the miles and days to come. If Georgia were to throw a bunch of rolling hills at me right now I'd still crumble, even with yesterday's rest. I'm far from strong. But the rest means right now I'm the happiest dude on two wheels and that's enough.

The correlation between flying the Confederate flag and living in a mobile home is high out here. The correlation between having a giant gold-plated Buddha statue on your front porch and living in a monastery is even higher. We can't help but say over and over again how good it feels to be out here. Our lives today are all fresh air and warm sun and roads that make riding easy. The wind isn't our enemy. When we stop to rest in front of the church for which Suwannee Chapel Road is named we're offered water and use of the bathroom.

In the little town of Manor we sit out in front of the gas station and experience for the first time the warm, salty delciousness of boiled peanuts. Waves of steam rise up and away from them in the cool afternoon air and soon the shells form a tall mound at the table's edge.

The next few hours pass along quiet side roads that let us avoid U.S. Highway 82. Most of the roads are dirt and sand, but they've dried out in the last two days. We go twice as fast. Away from the howl of tires and semi-truck engines the world is peaceful and uncomplicated. Or at least it is for us. For the dead wild boar we find laying near the roadside, not so much. We watch more than one truck stop next to it while the driver decides if the carcass is worth throwing in the back and turning into dinner. Farther on, Kristen explains to me how argyle is one of the most satisfying words to say with a heavy Southern accent, and so we start making up argyle-related stories, each more ridiculous and with a heavier accent than the one that came before.

Heading down a long, straight stretch of road we see a pair of dogs charge away from a house and shoot toward us at a dead run, barking and focused. We grab a handful of brakes, stop in our tracks, and wait to see what happens next. We expect the worst. But as they draw close they stop. We reach out our hands. And the dogs both walk over, give them a sniff, and then drop their heads, which we rub a few times before scratching behind their ears. They love it. In an instant we become the best friends they never knew they had and it's all wagging tails and bright eyes. When we start to ride they don't bark or chase but walk along between us, heads held high and so excited about these strange new visitors that every few feet the one closest to me jumps into the air with all four feet off the ground in excitement.

When their owner calls for the dogs to come our group of four returns to two. We push on, smiling, riding beneath the outstretched arms of old trees where long fingers of pale green-gray moss hanging down from leafless branches sway just so slightly on the lightest breeze. The dog shapes grow smaller and smaller in my mirror but I can still see the thin outlines of furiously moving tails as they watch us go.

It's the Georgia we could never experience unless we were on bikes. It's why we'll take the slow and winding road over the highway any day.

A four-laner takes us out of Homerville, but beyond it's another back road. These roads are narrow enough that it's hard for two cars to pass at the same time, so when we see a silver Ford truck coming toward us we pull over to let it pass. But it doesn't. It approaches slow with the driver's window rolled down. We notice the word Sheriff printed down the side.

"Yew have got to be lost," he says with a thick, unrushed accent that makes it sound like he was born here in Clinch County, Georgia, has lived here in Clinch County, Georgia his entire life, and will die and be buried here in Clinch County, Georgia. His gut rests half an inch short of the steering wheel. He's got one hand on the wheel and the other's holding a cigarette.

"I think we're alright," I tell him. "This road goes through to Highway 168, right?"

We have no plans of making it there tonight. We're only going a few miles farther, then rolling the bikes into the woods and settling in. But there's no point in saying that, so I don't. He pauses a moment.

"Yeah, it'll get ya there – eventchally," he says like we're a couple of dumb-asses for trying.

"Alright, thanks."

"Where ya come from on those thangs?" he asks.

"From Waycross today," Kristen tells him.

When I mention how far we hope to go he does that thing people do sometimes when they can't believe what they're hearing, where they puff some air out through their lips and then make a little huh sound.

"Well – alright then," he says after another long pause, then he rolls away as slow as he came, as slow as his Southern drawl.

In fact we do only go a few miles farther, then roll the bikes into the woods and settle in.

"Did you just burp into your sleeping pad?" Kristen asks while I'm blowing up my air mattress.

"Yeah. What's it to ya?"

Then I lean a little to my left and fall over on my side with a great crash because it turns out the ground beneath our tent isn't entirely flat.

The humor helps distract us from the sounds of shotgun blasts that echo through the forest from somewhere not at all far away.

Today's ride: 52 miles (84 km)
Total: 163 miles (262 km)

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