Back to Day 38

Day off reflections…

About what I said yesterday, about how I’ve failed at this. I suppose that wasn’t quite fair. I mean, I’ve already ridden to freakin’ South Carolina, and I’m not done yet. And I did offer to Dana that we do no touring, no stopping, just ride so he can say he did this. But he said no. And I was very relieved. Fact is, this is boring! I mean, even he thinks it’s boring, and he loves this sport.

We realized we were bored when bar-sitting stopped being fun. When we started out, I wanted to sit in bars in the evenings, and Dana didn’t. He went along with it for my sake, but it wasn’t his thing. But then he started having fun with it, because we were talking to people, telling them about our adventure, and they got excited, and conversation flowed. But now, it’s getting old … most days just seem like a repeat of the same routine – pack up the bikes, ride 50 miles through nowhere, find a motel, hope it isn’t disgusting, sit at a bar, eat a boring meal.

What? Me call a meal boring? I love food. All food. But now we’re even bored with food. Ice cream, pasta, barbeque, seafood, steak. Boring, boring, boring, boring, boring. So sad. Last night I started googling recipes. The only food that sounds good to me now is food that I can cook. I’m craving corn-on-the-cob. Sigh.

4 PM

Not much to say today…

Dana wanted to bring his bike in this morning to get the squeak fixed, and as we were moving mine, Dana realized that I had a broken spoke. I said something yesterday about my bike being wobbly, but he thought I was being silly.

Hah!

Sadly, I cannot get my cleats fixed. I really need new bike shoes, but that will have to wait until we get home. I am seriously bummed, because I love my ruby slippers. 😦

So both bikes spent the day in the shop, and we did the tourist thing. The Museum of Charleston, and the Provost Dungeon. We had lunch at S.N.O.B. – Slightly North of Broad Street. I actually had a cocktail with my lunch, which I never do. But I was told to try Firefly Vodka mixed with lemonade, and since I wasn’t driving or riding, I figured Why Not?

And they served their cornbread in a Sweet Grass Basket.

I told you I didn’t have much today.

And now, a little creative exercise for everyone… Make Your Own Historic Marker!

6 PM

This is why you shouldn’t wear a dress when you go/pick up your bike. Even if it’s the cheap light dress from the schlocky beach store in Myrtle Beach.

And I don’t know what this flower is, but I really wish I could grow it at home.

 On to Day 40

Back to Day 37

Before I begin… if you understand the meaning of this title, you are a geek. If you don’t, congratulations! You are not a geek. It was Dana’s idea, and a reference to an old computer game called Adventure (although some people called it Colossal Cave). We used to play it at Wang, in the late 70’s and early 80’s. You can Google it if you want, although I’m thinking that’s not gonna happen.

11 AM

We had a lovely breakfast at the B&B with the other couple staying there. We discussed kids, grandkids, retirement, and why you really should never bike in South Carolina. After our fresh blueberry pancakes, fresh orange juice, and multiple cups of coffee, I watched the cat eat his breakfast, then we hit the road.
Our destination for the day was Myrtle Beach. On the way, we crossed the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway AGAIN

but mostly we were on fairly ugly roads with no shoulders. Here’s what I was saying yesterday about the rumble strips obliterating the shoulders:

So, our true destination today was the Myrtle Beach Airport, because… drum roll please… we are RENTING A CAR!!! A beautiful, fast, modern car that is not afraid of shoulderless bridges and roads in SC.

I have mixed feelings about this. Fact is, I have failed. We are not riding every hot, terrifying mile between Westford and Key West, primarily because I don’t ride fast enough. Bottom line: your bottom can only spend so many hours a day on a bike seat. And that number is about 5 or 6. More than that, day after day, and everything hurts – knees, backs, shoulders, quads, etc. So while it is clear that I could make it to Florida in 57 days, we would have no time left for anything else.

Meanwhile, everyone is saying we should go to Charleston and Savannah. And what takes a day on the bike takes an hour in the car. So we will drive for a while, see what we want to see, relax and vacation, and get back on the bikes in St Augustine, FL.

Here’s our new mode of bike touring. Isn’t it awesome?

6:30 PM

After we got the car, we figured we’d drive around Myrtle Beach. We were both really excited, like little kids on a big ride. Our first stop was the post office, where we mailed this home:

[No, we didn’t bring a re-chargeable 18V battery and a utility flashlight on our trip. We found it on the side if the road yesterday, and when I saw it I screamed “Hey, that matches our set!” And to my surprise, Dana said “Yeah, I want that.” And now it’s on it’s way home.] [Turns out that the bulb was dead, but that was fixed for $1.00 and it now works just fine!]

Then we went to a schlocky beach store and bought some new clothes. We didn’t have much in the way of non-biking clothes. For about $100, we doubled our wardrobes. Then we drove through miles and miles of mini-golf places, ice cream stands, seafood shacks, trailer parks, sports bars, etc. Then through about 20 miles of shacks and closed stores and abandoned houses – and a surprising number of people on the side of the road selling sweet grass baskets.

Someone, somewhere, told Dana that there is a hotel in Charleston with birds in the lobby. We found it.

When we checked into our hotel we couldn’t decide what to do, so we went out to explore the city on our bikes. But look how much better and lighter they look without the panniers!

We rode down Meeting St. to the old section of the city, then we asked a pair of cyclists what we should do. They told us to follow them across a 3 mile bridge to Mt. Pleasant. And the bridge has a fairly steep incline, so once again I got to totally suck on hills. The bridge crosses the Cooper River:

(that’s the USS Yorktown, if you care)

The bridge looks like the Zakim Brdge, and everyone calls it the Cooper River Bridge, but it’s actually named for this guy:

So even without riding, we had more than a 30-mile day.

We have determined that it is lame to take pictures from the car. Lucky for you, we saw this while we were riding:

Tomorrow we will find a bike shop, since Dana’s bike is squeaky. And I need new cleats for my shoes, as my right foot keeps slipping out. While the bike is in the shop, we will go to the Charleston Museum.

On to Day 39

Back to Day 36

11 AM

In a deli in Calabash, NC, sharing a ham/sandwich and guzzling mango Snapple. Calabash is the last town in NC.

We had a lovely motel breakfast at the Day’s Inn this morning. All of our motel favorites: fake eggs, sausage patties, watery coffee, and cold cereal in cool turn-y dispensers. And it’s been a pleasant morning. We crossed Sauce Pan Creek, which is cool because it’s called Sauce Pan Creek.

We saw our first alligator in the wild

and we did not feed it.

We crossed the Little River.

… and here we are in Calabash.

5 PM

Everyone had warned us about the roads in South Carolina, and it was amazing. The second we crossed the state line

the shoulders just disappeared. The drivers weren’t any nastier than those in North Carolina, it’s just that the roads made it difficult for everyone.

We had to ride on rte. 17 for a while, which is just a big nasty almost-interstate. Then when we got on a side road, we were back to no shoulder. And to make it worse, they put a rumble strip directly into the white line. Like every foot or so, there is a cement mound the size of a small hamburger. So we couldn’t ride on the line, it was dangerous riding to the left of the line, and if we rode on the right, we had to rumble over the line to avoid debris, road kill, etc. On the next road, rte. 90, there was a nice wide shoulder, but the entire width of it was pressed into a rumble strip. Back into the road for us.

We stopped into a supermarket in Wampee on State Road 57. We bought strawberries and ice cream, and we sat on bags of bark mulch watching people grocery shop. Church had just let out, and everyone was dressed in their Sunday best. They were all nice to us, smiling, asking about our trip, etc. It was a lovely butt break.

The most exciting part of our day was when we found a closed bridge on our route. We had seen the “Road Closed” sign a few miles back, but we though “Well, maybe it isn’t really closed. We can probably take a bike over it, right?”

Wrong.

The bridge was out. In it’s place was a giant back hoe. But we didn’t want to go back, so we took the bikes apart and carried them, and the packs, through the sand and the mud and over little fences and basically through the entire construction site. Then we reassembled the bikes, rode about 50 yards, and did it again at the second bridge that was out. It was actually a nice break from riding, certainly a change of pace, and not the least bit boring. However, we had mud caked into our shoes for the rest of the day.

After a 54 mile day, we are at the Cypress Inn in Conway, SC. We’re about 10 miles west of Myrtle Beach, but this was on route. We will probably ride through Myrtle Beach tomorrow, just to check it out.

On to Day 38