Friends: I am deep into the Karoo, the semi-desert that covers one-third of South Africa with stretches of over 100 miles between towns. In just about any other part of the world the Karoo wouldn't be subjected to that "semi" qualifier, but in a country that also contains the Kalahari, a desert of classic and extreme proportions, it must.
Though it has vegetation and animal life and a few towns, its predominant emptiness and harshness and scorching heat and lack of rain make it as much of a desert as the Mojave or Negev or Atacama or Nullarbor and other significant deserts I've biked. I must carefully plot my day so that I can be at a town or roadhouse in the middle of the day during the worst of the heat. I had to take the long way of 156 miles from Beaufort West to Graaff-Reinet, the two prime towns in the Karoo, because the more direct route of 130 miles had a stretch of nearly 100 miles without water. The longer route had water after 48 miles and then 52 before a final stretch of 56 miles to Graaff-Reinet. People tell me I could get water from a sheep farmer, but the farms are 20 or miles apart and the farmhouses are well away from the road and their driveways are usually barricaded and locked.
I can at least usually count on a rest area every so often with two or three thatched shelters, each over a concrete picnic table, offering a bit of shade, though no other amenities other than garbage cans that might contain an old newspaper. But the shade is most welcome and the only to be found other than against an embankment if the sun is low enough in the sky. The sun is so intense restaurants provide awnings for drivers to park their vehicles under, and locals walk about under umbrellas.
A police car pulled me over a couple nights ago at 7 p.m., an hour before sunset. Just as the officers who pulled me over in the Negev of Israel a year ago, they were dumbfounded to see a cyclist miles from anywhere out in the middle of the desert. They didn't wish to applaud my spirit, but questioned my sanity, thinking I could be a wacko on the loose. The pair of young black women officers approached me very warily. After I established that I was at least halfway sane, I asked if they might have any cold water to spare. The temperature was still in the 90s and though I had five bottles of water bottle, all were full of tepid, not very palatable, water. They pulled out a two liter bottle of water with a still thawing huge ice cube in the middle. I couldn't help but to exclaim "Ice!" Not even my exuberance brought a smile from the officers. They produced a paper cup and poured me a glass. After quickly gulping it, they did the unimaginable and offered me the rest of the bottle. After gulping some more, I realized I needed to show some restraint, as I could feel the middle of my chest along the trail of my esophagus turning frigid.
I bequeathed the officers with a special Obama edition of the "Chicago Tribune" from the day after the inauguration, the day of my departure. I brought along six of them to dole out to people who did me favors. When I handed it to the officers, they were surprised that I didn't want it back. I had previously given away two others, the the first to a young woman at the airport who was willing to store my bike box in her closet. Five other people had declined my request, including the official left-luggage department. I had collapsed it so it took up no space. Having the bike box awaiting me was significant enough that I ought to have given her all six of my papers. If I hadn't been able to find a place to store it, I would have just left it, and then been forced to find a box from some bike store in Cape Town and then have to haul it out to the airport.
I gave the second Obama newspaper to a woman at a tourist office who filled two of my water bottles with cold water and ice. All I asked for was tap water. She said she didn't think I'd want that, as it had chlorine in it and tasted like water from a pool. I told her that was okay, as I had been drinking tap water all along, and was well used to it. She greatly surprised me when she returned with ice cold water from her private stock. It was lucky that one of the bottles I had given her was my thermos water bottle, so it preserved the cold much longer than otherwise.
On the outskirts of Beaufort West was a huge billboard proclaiming "Leave Our Children Alone." It contained the profiles of seven children. Two had xs through them and the explanation, "Two out of seven children in South Africa are sexually abused." Beaufort West, with a population of 36,000, is the largest town in the Karoo. It is on National Highway One that connects Cape Town with Johannesburg. They are 900 miles apart. It is a two-lane highway for most of its distance with shoulders wide enough to make it four lanes wide. People warned me there would be a lot of truck traffic. There was some on the short stretch of it that I biked, but not much compared to what I have experienced elsewhere, especially that 20-mile segment that I forced Waydell to chase after me in Mississippi several months ago. The truckers frequently swung wide of me, even those approaching from the opposite direction, going off onto the far shoulder, to lessen the wall of air they were inflicting upon me.
Beaufort West has a museum devoted to Christian Barnard, the first person to perform a heart transplant. He was born in Beaufort West, the son of a pastor. The operation took place in Cape Town in December of 1967. He transplanted the heart of a 25-year old woman, who died in a traffic accident, into a 53-year old man. A team of 30 surgeons, technicians and nurses had been on 24-hour standby for a month awaiting a suitable heart for the operation. The patient survived less than a month. Barnard performed a second transplant less than a month later. The operations made him an international celebrity. The museum contained hundreds of plaques and medals and citations from around the world congratulating him. There were photos of him with the Pope, Mandela, Sophia Loren, the Shah of Iran, Gina Lollobrigida and many other celebrities. His father's former church, dating from 1870, is part of the three building museum. The toilet offered free condoms.
The two Internet outlets in Graaff-Reinet both close at noon on Saturday. This one is letting me stay a bit beyond closing, as I didn't arrive until 11:45, just another of the many small kindnesses that I have been shown. People have continually been going out of their way to look after me.
Later, George
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Prince Albert, South Africa
Friends: Thanks to my friend Ian, I knew about a secret camping spot in a clump of trees on a side road two miles beyond the summit of Swartberg Pass, one of the the most spectacular and challenging climbs in South Africa. I had been looking forward to a quiet, secluded place to camp after three straight nights huddled against a barbed wire fence barely hidden from the road. There's not much traffic in rural South Africa, especially at night, so being so close to a highway has hardly affected my sleep, but it can be a strain pushing my bike down and then up an embankment through the brush for my nightly nook.
It was a relief knowing this isolated, semi-forested camp site awaited me as ominous, dark clouds began moving in, engulfing the summit of the 5,000 foot pass, as I was in the midst of the 15-mile climb to its summit. Before long, cold gusting winds had me shivering despite my extreme exertion. The grade had been a moderate five to six per cent, but it required extra effort, as seven miles from the summit the pavement turned to dirt, and then two miles from the summit the grade suddenly jumped to ten per cent, just as the air turned misty and the winds grew stronger, threatening to knock me over.
I didn't know the pass was unpaved until an Australian I met at an ostrich farm earlier in the day, who had just driven over it, told me it was the most difficult road he had ever driven and that it would be impossible to bike. He was still shell-shocked. He said the road was barely one-lane wide and had countless blind, hair pin turns. And worst of all, he said, there was hardly any traffic, so there would be no one to rescue me. He had passed only three vehicles in 40 kilometers.
I might have selected an alternate route if I had known the pass was unpaved, but by the time I was at the ostrich farm I was too close to it to turn back. Dirt roads don't necessarily intimidate me. The Sani Pass into Lesotho, also on my itinerary, is dirt, and so was the "World's Most Dangerous Road" in Bolivia that I sought out. If the Swartberg was as horrendous as this guy thought, my friend Ian would have warned me. I've known Ian for years from the Telluride Film Festival. He's a South African who splits his year between Cape Town and Colorado. He works in the film industry as a rigger and hangs all the signs at the film festival, a daunting task. And he's a great outdoors man. He's presently skiing his heart out in Colorado, but will be in Cape Town when I complete my circuit of the country in March. Meeting up with him will no doubt be one of the highlights of this trip.
Ian was the only person who was familiar with South Africa not to warn me of the dangers of the country before I left. One friend, who left South Africa in 1986 and has never been back, said if she ever returned the first thing she would do would be to buy a gun or a big knife. Another friend who left the country advised me to stick to a safe, well-touristed area along the coast called "The Garden Route."
Knowing a clump of sheltering trees over the summit awaited me gave me great solace as the winds increased and the temperature plummeted. The only vegetation on the climb had been low-lying brush of the fynboe (fine bush) family, a type of vegetation with very fine leaves to minimize evaporation, that is unique to the Cape region of South Africa. The fynboes evolved as a response to the region's arid conditions. There are 7,000 varieties of the fynboe, divided into four types--woody shrubs, reed-like resticoes, bulbs and small-leafed bushes.
The road was at least solidly packed gravel and not too badly rutted or wash-boarded. There had been signs on the approach to the pass announcing it was open. I feared it could be a dirt road that could be rendered into mud when it rained, making it undriveable, forcing the closure of the pass. I paused to catch my breath and to eat an energy bar just before the final two-mile 10% grade to the summit. While I rested, just the second car to come by in the hour-and-a-half I had been climbing came down the road and stopped to see if I was okay. I was happy to have someone to ask if the road remained solid so I need not be concerned about it turning to muck if it started raining. They assured me the road could withstand rain. I thanked them for stopping. They said they were happy to, as they wanted to express their admiration.
When I reached the summit, I stopped to put on gloves and a wind-breaker for the descent to the trees. There was no picture to take, as I was engulfed in clouds. This was quite a contrast to the day before when I was baked by 90-degree temperatures. It was 6:30 when I reached the side road Ian had told me about. About a quarter mile away was a lone large baobab tree with four or five thick trunks sprouting from its base, not exactly the forest I was looking forward to, but adequate for providing some protection from the strong winds. Since I couldn't see the stand of pines Ian had told me about up ahead and the weather was only growing nastier, I made this my camp site for the night. I learned the next day that Ian's pine forest had been cut down a year ago, as the pine trees were not indigenous to the area.
Though the tree trunk was as wide as my tent, it couldn't fully block the gusting, swirling wind. It rocked my tent well into the night. I had to put on my sweater and vest and wool cap to stay warm, as the temperature fell into the low 40s. I'm not sure when I finally fell asleep. It was just 50 degrees when I resumed my descent at 7:30 this morning. It was slow going. It took nearly two hours to descend the remaining nine miles of dirt, having to pause frequently to rest my wrists from the hard braking on the rough road. But it was a truly spectacular ride through a rough and rugged canyon. If I hadn't known about Ian's campsite I would have pushed on last night and not have been able to enjoy it in the limited visibility and frigid cold. I would have been nervously finishing off the descent in the dark and groping for a place to camp.
Ian wasn't the only person I could express great thanks to yesterday. I will be feeling unbounded gratitude for days to a young man who worked at the Ostrich Museum in Outshoorn. He nabbed a thief making off with my saddle bag full of all my bicycle tools and spare parts from my parked bike in front of the Ostrich Museum in downtown Outshoorn. He was suspicious of the thief, as he had followed me in to the museum after attaching himself to me several minutes before when I left the local grocery store. He wanted to show me around town and accompany me on his bike. I knew he was a sleazy sort, but didn't fully discourage him. He said he'd wait for me while I perused the museum.
After that incident I brought my bike into the museum and left it there while I went over to the library just around the corner. I was surprised to see the thief join up with me as I entered the library. I told him the guy at the museum said he tried to steal a bag off my bike. He denied it. He said the bag was falling off my bike and he just rescued it. That was impossible. Even though this was a significant town of 80,000 with a large library, the library did not have Internet. I read the daily paper while the thief sat beside me. He didn't follow me back to the museum though. When I returned to the museum, the young man there said someone called to say the thief had followed me to the library, so he called the police. They were there before I had filled my four bottles. They said they would drive along with me as far as I wanted to protect me from this young man. I didn't feel any great alarm, knowing he'd have a hard time keeping up with me. I told them if they just followed me for a few blocks that would be adequate.
There are nearly half a million ostriches scattered on some 600 ostrich farms in the Outdshoorn vicinity. The herds of ostriches provide quite a unique site. They are friendly and curious. When I stopped to take a picture, the birds came swarming towards me. Several of the farms offer tours. I stopped at one on the way to the Swartberg Pass. I learned even more how friendly ostriches can be. Our guide invited people to pet and feed and ride the birds. One ostrich wrapped his long neck around a young woman's head to pluck grain out of her hand. The guide invited us to stand on a cluster of eggs. The ostrich egg is the largest egg in the bird kingdom, though the smallest in proportion to the size of the bird. The egg is so large it takes two to three hours to hard boil. A bird normally lays 14 to 16 eggs a year, but the farms can induce a bird to lay as many as 120 eggs per season by snatching the eggs from them after they've been laid, placing them in incubators. They live 40 to 50 years and are the fastest of the two-legged animals, capable of speeds over forty miles per hour
The Outshoorn area provides over 80% of the world's ostrich products. At one time they were among South Africa's leading exports, ranking fourth behind gold, diamonds and wool. Up until the 1960s feathers were their most important product. Now it is 70% leather, 20% meat and 10% feathers. The region still exports over 200,000 pounds of feathers a year, used mostly for dusters.There is only one leather stronger than ostrich, kangaroo. The ostrich leather lasts sixty years. It is smooth on one side and rough on the other. Ostriches are native to the Sahara. They thrive in hot, arid climates. The ostrich was first domesticated in Algeria in 1857 and was introduced to South Africa six years later. There was tremendous demand for feathers up until after WWI. The market collapsed with the decline of the world's economy and the introduction of the automobile. Ostrich feather hats were impractical in the close confines of the car and in the fast speeds of the open deck cars.
Though Prince Albert is a town of just a few thousand people, it too has a museum tracing its history. One exhibit was devoted to the construction of the Swartsberg Pass. It was built with convict labor from 1881-1887. The first car crossed it in 1904. It was designed by a well known engineer--Thomas Bain. It was the 17th and last of the passes he built.
Later, George
It was a relief knowing this isolated, semi-forested camp site awaited me as ominous, dark clouds began moving in, engulfing the summit of the 5,000 foot pass, as I was in the midst of the 15-mile climb to its summit. Before long, cold gusting winds had me shivering despite my extreme exertion. The grade had been a moderate five to six per cent, but it required extra effort, as seven miles from the summit the pavement turned to dirt, and then two miles from the summit the grade suddenly jumped to ten per cent, just as the air turned misty and the winds grew stronger, threatening to knock me over.
I didn't know the pass was unpaved until an Australian I met at an ostrich farm earlier in the day, who had just driven over it, told me it was the most difficult road he had ever driven and that it would be impossible to bike. He was still shell-shocked. He said the road was barely one-lane wide and had countless blind, hair pin turns. And worst of all, he said, there was hardly any traffic, so there would be no one to rescue me. He had passed only three vehicles in 40 kilometers.
I might have selected an alternate route if I had known the pass was unpaved, but by the time I was at the ostrich farm I was too close to it to turn back. Dirt roads don't necessarily intimidate me. The Sani Pass into Lesotho, also on my itinerary, is dirt, and so was the "World's Most Dangerous Road" in Bolivia that I sought out. If the Swartberg was as horrendous as this guy thought, my friend Ian would have warned me. I've known Ian for years from the Telluride Film Festival. He's a South African who splits his year between Cape Town and Colorado. He works in the film industry as a rigger and hangs all the signs at the film festival, a daunting task. And he's a great outdoors man. He's presently skiing his heart out in Colorado, but will be in Cape Town when I complete my circuit of the country in March. Meeting up with him will no doubt be one of the highlights of this trip.
Ian was the only person who was familiar with South Africa not to warn me of the dangers of the country before I left. One friend, who left South Africa in 1986 and has never been back, said if she ever returned the first thing she would do would be to buy a gun or a big knife. Another friend who left the country advised me to stick to a safe, well-touristed area along the coast called "The Garden Route."
Knowing a clump of sheltering trees over the summit awaited me gave me great solace as the winds increased and the temperature plummeted. The only vegetation on the climb had been low-lying brush of the fynboe (fine bush) family, a type of vegetation with very fine leaves to minimize evaporation, that is unique to the Cape region of South Africa. The fynboes evolved as a response to the region's arid conditions. There are 7,000 varieties of the fynboe, divided into four types--woody shrubs, reed-like resticoes, bulbs and small-leafed bushes.
The road was at least solidly packed gravel and not too badly rutted or wash-boarded. There had been signs on the approach to the pass announcing it was open. I feared it could be a dirt road that could be rendered into mud when it rained, making it undriveable, forcing the closure of the pass. I paused to catch my breath and to eat an energy bar just before the final two-mile 10% grade to the summit. While I rested, just the second car to come by in the hour-and-a-half I had been climbing came down the road and stopped to see if I was okay. I was happy to have someone to ask if the road remained solid so I need not be concerned about it turning to muck if it started raining. They assured me the road could withstand rain. I thanked them for stopping. They said they were happy to, as they wanted to express their admiration.
When I reached the summit, I stopped to put on gloves and a wind-breaker for the descent to the trees. There was no picture to take, as I was engulfed in clouds. This was quite a contrast to the day before when I was baked by 90-degree temperatures. It was 6:30 when I reached the side road Ian had told me about. About a quarter mile away was a lone large baobab tree with four or five thick trunks sprouting from its base, not exactly the forest I was looking forward to, but adequate for providing some protection from the strong winds. Since I couldn't see the stand of pines Ian had told me about up ahead and the weather was only growing nastier, I made this my camp site for the night. I learned the next day that Ian's pine forest had been cut down a year ago, as the pine trees were not indigenous to the area.
Though the tree trunk was as wide as my tent, it couldn't fully block the gusting, swirling wind. It rocked my tent well into the night. I had to put on my sweater and vest and wool cap to stay warm, as the temperature fell into the low 40s. I'm not sure when I finally fell asleep. It was just 50 degrees when I resumed my descent at 7:30 this morning. It was slow going. It took nearly two hours to descend the remaining nine miles of dirt, having to pause frequently to rest my wrists from the hard braking on the rough road. But it was a truly spectacular ride through a rough and rugged canyon. If I hadn't known about Ian's campsite I would have pushed on last night and not have been able to enjoy it in the limited visibility and frigid cold. I would have been nervously finishing off the descent in the dark and groping for a place to camp.
Ian wasn't the only person I could express great thanks to yesterday. I will be feeling unbounded gratitude for days to a young man who worked at the Ostrich Museum in Outshoorn. He nabbed a thief making off with my saddle bag full of all my bicycle tools and spare parts from my parked bike in front of the Ostrich Museum in downtown Outshoorn. He was suspicious of the thief, as he had followed me in to the museum after attaching himself to me several minutes before when I left the local grocery store. He wanted to show me around town and accompany me on his bike. I knew he was a sleazy sort, but didn't fully discourage him. He said he'd wait for me while I perused the museum.
After that incident I brought my bike into the museum and left it there while I went over to the library just around the corner. I was surprised to see the thief join up with me as I entered the library. I told him the guy at the museum said he tried to steal a bag off my bike. He denied it. He said the bag was falling off my bike and he just rescued it. That was impossible. Even though this was a significant town of 80,000 with a large library, the library did not have Internet. I read the daily paper while the thief sat beside me. He didn't follow me back to the museum though. When I returned to the museum, the young man there said someone called to say the thief had followed me to the library, so he called the police. They were there before I had filled my four bottles. They said they would drive along with me as far as I wanted to protect me from this young man. I didn't feel any great alarm, knowing he'd have a hard time keeping up with me. I told them if they just followed me for a few blocks that would be adequate.
There are nearly half a million ostriches scattered on some 600 ostrich farms in the Outdshoorn vicinity. The herds of ostriches provide quite a unique site. They are friendly and curious. When I stopped to take a picture, the birds came swarming towards me. Several of the farms offer tours. I stopped at one on the way to the Swartberg Pass. I learned even more how friendly ostriches can be. Our guide invited people to pet and feed and ride the birds. One ostrich wrapped his long neck around a young woman's head to pluck grain out of her hand. The guide invited us to stand on a cluster of eggs. The ostrich egg is the largest egg in the bird kingdom, though the smallest in proportion to the size of the bird. The egg is so large it takes two to three hours to hard boil. A bird normally lays 14 to 16 eggs a year, but the farms can induce a bird to lay as many as 120 eggs per season by snatching the eggs from them after they've been laid, placing them in incubators. They live 40 to 50 years and are the fastest of the two-legged animals, capable of speeds over forty miles per hour
The Outshoorn area provides over 80% of the world's ostrich products. At one time they were among South Africa's leading exports, ranking fourth behind gold, diamonds and wool. Up until the 1960s feathers were their most important product. Now it is 70% leather, 20% meat and 10% feathers. The region still exports over 200,000 pounds of feathers a year, used mostly for dusters.There is only one leather stronger than ostrich, kangaroo. The ostrich leather lasts sixty years. It is smooth on one side and rough on the other. Ostriches are native to the Sahara. They thrive in hot, arid climates. The ostrich was first domesticated in Algeria in 1857 and was introduced to South Africa six years later. There was tremendous demand for feathers up until after WWI. The market collapsed with the decline of the world's economy and the introduction of the automobile. Ostrich feather hats were impractical in the close confines of the car and in the fast speeds of the open deck cars.
Though Prince Albert is a town of just a few thousand people, it too has a museum tracing its history. One exhibit was devoted to the construction of the Swartsberg Pass. It was built with convict labor from 1881-1887. The first car crossed it in 1904. It was designed by a well known engineer--Thomas Bain. It was the 17th and last of the passes he built.
Later, George
Monday, January 26, 2009
Ladistown, South Africa
Friends: Four days in South Africa and I've hardly met a person, at least among the whites, who hasn't told me to be careful or to "watch yourself." Several have offered to guard my bike when I've gone into a grocery store, because "someone is liable to snatch it," or "someone might be naughty."
When I asked the two black women at the Cape Town airport information desk how to bike out of the airport towards the coast, they told me the only way was on the national highway and that bicycles weren't allowed on it. Looking at the map taped to their counter I noticed a lesser road paralleling the national highway and asked about it. "No, no, you don't want to take that road," they said. "It goes through the neighborhoods." They knew no more explanation was necessary, nor did I ask for one.
I didn't think I had reason to fear riding a major thoroughfare through the "neighborhoods," especially at nine in the bright light of early morning, so I choose to ignore their advice. There wasn't much traffic on the four-lane highways through the shanty-towns, nor a great many people out and about. As I slowed for a traffic light, Known as "robots" here, an occasional pedestrian greeted me with a respectful "Hello Sir." I felt no cause for alarm. It might have been too early for the dangerous sorts to be up and about.
I suspected the women at the information desk were more concerned about protecting me from a sordid first impression of their country than for my safety. For ten miles or so I biked past a huge sprawl of one-room, mostly rusty, corrugated tin shacks, snuggled wall-to-wall with only narrow paths between them. Every couple of blocks I passed a water spigot with a line of people waiting their turn to fill an assortment of plastic buckets. About the only thing that made it less appalling than the slums of Bombay were occasional clusters of standard issue bright blue porta potties. It was unsettling to imagine the lives of the tens of thousands of people living in such cramped conditions without electricity or indoor plumbing.
It has been hard to shake the image of such squalor, especially in contrast to the palatial white neighborhoods, mostly fenced in, often with barbed wire. Of the 50 million inhabitants of this country, only five million are white. They have it well off, but they know their wealth is resented. In the last days of apartheid, hardly a white went to sleep at night without the fear of being stabbed in the night. The fear of those days lingers. Though the blacks were welcoming through the neighborhoods, recognizing me as visitor, out in the countryside, when I pass a black along the road, hardly a one speaks, just looking right pass me, even when I greet them with a hello. I am accustomed to brightening people's faces with delight at the site of my overloaded bicycle. Here they remain passive, if not antagonistic. I am more disdained, than welcomed.
When I asked the white owner of a small grocery store in a small town if there was a town park where I might go eat my lunch, he advised me that it was not a safe place. The most prominent sign in the towns I pass through is directions to the police department. Most of the ATM machines have shelters built around them for privacy to prevent ne'er-do-wells from spying on one's transaction, getting a pin number or seeing how much one might have withdrawn.
Reading the newspapers further emphasizes that this is a very unsettled country marked by violent behavior of an extreme, aberrant sort. There were side-by-side stories on page two in the Port Elizabeth Herald of youths gone amok. One was of five boys aged ten to 14 who sodomized and murdered a 19-month old. The other was of four 14-year olds who raped a nine year old boy. On the next page a headline read "Bouncer turns himself in after club death." Another story told of a father still in distress over the disappearance of his 18-year old daughter three years ago, fearing she'd been abducted and forced into prostitution. None of these were sensationalized "National Enquirer" attention-grabbing stories, just simple straight reporting. The same with a story about a worker suing his boss for calling him a "baboon."
The only positive news in the entire paper was the promise of "A New Dawn for Africa" with Obama in the White House. Among the many stories on Obama spread over three pages was one quoting an astrologer from Burma predicting Obama would win another term and survive three attempts on his life, though he couldn't be certain without reading Obama's palm.
As always, it is fascinating to immerse myself in a new country, learning its history and its character. Its like having an affair, initially being enamored by its quirks and unique qualities. First impressions don't always hold true. It does seem that the further I get from the big city of Cape Town and out into rural South Africa, the less alarmed people seem. The biking has been first-rate with excellent roads and not much traffic. I followed the coast for over 50 miles to Hermanus, one of the premier whale-watching spots in the world, though not this time of the year. The town has a large bay with a sandy bottom that the whales seem to thrive upon. There are enough penguins in the vicinity to warrant a penguin road sign.
Besides the incessant warnings to be careful, the only other disagreeable aspect of my trip so far has been the slight difficulty of wild camping, as barbed wire fences line most of the roads. Twice I have had to camp beside a fence less than 30 feet from the road, just barely sheltered from sight by bushes and a dip in the road. One night I was able to go off on a dirt road and find a break in the fence and disappear into a cluster of trees. The other negative has been the lack of Internet in libraries. The only library I have come upon with the Internet was in the larger town of Strand, though one had to pay for it. As of January first, Internet use required the purchase of a 50 rand card. At ten rands to the dollar, that wasn't totally unreasonable, but since it was on my first day in South Africa, Internet was not of great urgency.
I am still conditioning my skin to the sun and my body to the 80-degree heat, holding me to an average of 70 miles a day so far. After I turned inland from Hermanus the countryside has turned very arid. With prominent ridges towering in the distance it is similar to the Basin and Range region of southern Nevada. My legs are still finding themselves, weary from all the climbing over the hills and a handful of named passes. There were a few clearings off the road on a pass late yesterday afternoon that I could have camped at, but signs warning not to feed the baboons made me wary. When I saw one the next morning, about the size of a man, lumbering along the road, I wouldn't want to have tangled with him.
At times I have to remind myself I'm in South Africa and not Australia. All the men in shorts and the ubiquity of meat pies and sausage rolls and biking on the left-hand side of the road hearken me back to the Land Down Under. But it was rare to see an aborigine in Australia, while blacks are a common site here.
Later, George
When I asked the two black women at the Cape Town airport information desk how to bike out of the airport towards the coast, they told me the only way was on the national highway and that bicycles weren't allowed on it. Looking at the map taped to their counter I noticed a lesser road paralleling the national highway and asked about it. "No, no, you don't want to take that road," they said. "It goes through the neighborhoods." They knew no more explanation was necessary, nor did I ask for one.
I didn't think I had reason to fear riding a major thoroughfare through the "neighborhoods," especially at nine in the bright light of early morning, so I choose to ignore their advice. There wasn't much traffic on the four-lane highways through the shanty-towns, nor a great many people out and about. As I slowed for a traffic light, Known as "robots" here, an occasional pedestrian greeted me with a respectful "Hello Sir." I felt no cause for alarm. It might have been too early for the dangerous sorts to be up and about.
I suspected the women at the information desk were more concerned about protecting me from a sordid first impression of their country than for my safety. For ten miles or so I biked past a huge sprawl of one-room, mostly rusty, corrugated tin shacks, snuggled wall-to-wall with only narrow paths between them. Every couple of blocks I passed a water spigot with a line of people waiting their turn to fill an assortment of plastic buckets. About the only thing that made it less appalling than the slums of Bombay were occasional clusters of standard issue bright blue porta potties. It was unsettling to imagine the lives of the tens of thousands of people living in such cramped conditions without electricity or indoor plumbing.
It has been hard to shake the image of such squalor, especially in contrast to the palatial white neighborhoods, mostly fenced in, often with barbed wire. Of the 50 million inhabitants of this country, only five million are white. They have it well off, but they know their wealth is resented. In the last days of apartheid, hardly a white went to sleep at night without the fear of being stabbed in the night. The fear of those days lingers. Though the blacks were welcoming through the neighborhoods, recognizing me as visitor, out in the countryside, when I pass a black along the road, hardly a one speaks, just looking right pass me, even when I greet them with a hello. I am accustomed to brightening people's faces with delight at the site of my overloaded bicycle. Here they remain passive, if not antagonistic. I am more disdained, than welcomed.
When I asked the white owner of a small grocery store in a small town if there was a town park where I might go eat my lunch, he advised me that it was not a safe place. The most prominent sign in the towns I pass through is directions to the police department. Most of the ATM machines have shelters built around them for privacy to prevent ne'er-do-wells from spying on one's transaction, getting a pin number or seeing how much one might have withdrawn.
Reading the newspapers further emphasizes that this is a very unsettled country marked by violent behavior of an extreme, aberrant sort. There were side-by-side stories on page two in the Port Elizabeth Herald of youths gone amok. One was of five boys aged ten to 14 who sodomized and murdered a 19-month old. The other was of four 14-year olds who raped a nine year old boy. On the next page a headline read "Bouncer turns himself in after club death." Another story told of a father still in distress over the disappearance of his 18-year old daughter three years ago, fearing she'd been abducted and forced into prostitution. None of these were sensationalized "National Enquirer" attention-grabbing stories, just simple straight reporting. The same with a story about a worker suing his boss for calling him a "baboon."
The only positive news in the entire paper was the promise of "A New Dawn for Africa" with Obama in the White House. Among the many stories on Obama spread over three pages was one quoting an astrologer from Burma predicting Obama would win another term and survive three attempts on his life, though he couldn't be certain without reading Obama's palm.
As always, it is fascinating to immerse myself in a new country, learning its history and its character. Its like having an affair, initially being enamored by its quirks and unique qualities. First impressions don't always hold true. It does seem that the further I get from the big city of Cape Town and out into rural South Africa, the less alarmed people seem. The biking has been first-rate with excellent roads and not much traffic. I followed the coast for over 50 miles to Hermanus, one of the premier whale-watching spots in the world, though not this time of the year. The town has a large bay with a sandy bottom that the whales seem to thrive upon. There are enough penguins in the vicinity to warrant a penguin road sign.
Besides the incessant warnings to be careful, the only other disagreeable aspect of my trip so far has been the slight difficulty of wild camping, as barbed wire fences line most of the roads. Twice I have had to camp beside a fence less than 30 feet from the road, just barely sheltered from sight by bushes and a dip in the road. One night I was able to go off on a dirt road and find a break in the fence and disappear into a cluster of trees. The other negative has been the lack of Internet in libraries. The only library I have come upon with the Internet was in the larger town of Strand, though one had to pay for it. As of January first, Internet use required the purchase of a 50 rand card. At ten rands to the dollar, that wasn't totally unreasonable, but since it was on my first day in South Africa, Internet was not of great urgency.
I am still conditioning my skin to the sun and my body to the 80-degree heat, holding me to an average of 70 miles a day so far. After I turned inland from Hermanus the countryside has turned very arid. With prominent ridges towering in the distance it is similar to the Basin and Range region of southern Nevada. My legs are still finding themselves, weary from all the climbing over the hills and a handful of named passes. There were a few clearings off the road on a pass late yesterday afternoon that I could have camped at, but signs warning not to feed the baboons made me wary. When I saw one the next morning, about the size of a man, lumbering along the road, I wouldn't want to have tangled with him.
At times I have to remind myself I'm in South Africa and not Australia. All the men in shorts and the ubiquity of meat pies and sausage rolls and biking on the left-hand side of the road hearken me back to the Land Down Under. But it was rare to see an aborigine in Australia, while blacks are a common site here.
Later, George
Saturday, November 1, 2008
Jackson, Miss.
Friends: Even though the Natchez Trace Parkway is accompanied by nothing more than a bare sliver of a shoulder, hardly worth mentioning, it is a designated bikeway. Commercial traffic is barred, though there were occasional RVs the size of Greyhound buses. There were hardly any smaller RVs, as the price of gas has no doubt grounded most of the traveling retirees in the modest-sized campers. Only those who can afford the half-million dollar monstrosities can afford to fuel them.
The traffic was so minimal, that Waydell and I were able to ride side by side. We had ample time for one of us to drop back when we heard the approach of a vehicle coming from behind us. We'd been on the Parkway for over an hour, chatting and reveling in the thick forest flanking both sides of the road, when I pulled back as a car was about to catch up to us. It paused before passing and announced, "Ride single file at all times on the Parkway." It was a Ranger. Evidently it isn't enough of an issue to post signs with such a warning. At more sane gas prices there is no doubt enough traffic on the Parkway to keep the cyclists in single file.
We joined up with "The Trace," as the locals call it, in French Camp, 181 miles from its finish at Natchez on the Mississippi River, about 150 miles up river from New Orleans. It was a little over 80 miles to Jackson, where we would catch a train back to Chicago. French Camp is home to the French Camp Academy, established in 1885 as a home for five to eighteen year olds whose parents can't care for them. It is going stronger than ever, presently home to 186 children. We stopped in at a welcome center/bakery and had three lengthy conversations with people who work there who were interested in our travels. In the South it seems impossible to have a quick, passing chat. No one is in a hurry and is happy to talk and talk.
One woman's husband was in charge of the school's bicycle program. They have a car but rarely use it. Kids regularly ask her husband if he has a car, as they always see him on his bike. He introduced his son to the bike at an early age. He did 80 miles as an eight year old on The Trace and by his early teens had done a metric double century (125 miles). As many have, she asked us if we had much touring experience. Waydell immediately piped up and said, "This is my first tour."
"How many miles are you doing a day," she asked.
"We're averaging about 75 a day, but we did 112 miles two days ago," I said.
"That's pretty good," she said, then proved her cycling acumen posing a question no one had yet asked us, "Do you take turns drafting?"
When Waydell answered, "Yes," she gave her a quick look of heightened respect and approval and said, "That's impressive."
We turned off The Trace after twenty miles for food and to check out the Visitor Center at Kosciusko, named for a Polish immigrant who came to the U.S. in 1776 at the age of 30 to fight for the Revolution. He was an engineer and helped design West Point. He eventually settled in this town. He is no longer the town's most famous person. That honor now belongs to Oprah. The Visitor Center had a large portrait of her and brochures showing the way to her home. It was a slow day at the Visitor Center. Waydell and I talked to the chatty retired couple who volunteer there on a part-time basis for over an hour before the next visitor came in. We talked about everything but politics. I made several allusions to the election, but like just about everyone else we've met, they chose to steer clear of the topic.
They were in their late 70s and had been together 56 years. They met at Mississippi State University. The husband was on the basketball team. He played on Jasper, Indiana's state high school championship team in 1949. He will be attending its 60th anniversary reunion in January. Cotton, known as "white gold," used to be the area's main crop. It is now grains. The wife could remember when The Trace was being surveyed in the 1930s back in the last Depression. Even as a child she was excited that this new road would pass near her home. I asked them if there was any possibility that Kosciusko might be renamed Oprah- or Winfreyville. They simultaneously blurted, "I hope not." Earlier when I mentioned we were from Chicago, "Oprah's present home town," the husband commented, "You can keep her." They said that there is a prevailing opinion that Oprah hasn't been as loyal to her home town as they would wish, even though she contributed to an "Oprah House" there in Koscuisko, a house built in conjunction with Habitat for Humanity.
They weren't the first people I've encountered in Koscuisko who were less than enthusiastic about Oprah. Two years ago I stopped at this same Visitor Center on the way back to Chicago after driving to New Orleans with Tim Herlihey, founder of the Urban Bikes shop in Chicago, after delivering a van load of bike parts to a Bike Co-op ravaged by Katrina. A couple of older blue-haired ladies working at the Visitor Center then dispensed similar anti-Oprah comments. It seemed as if these older white folks couldn't accept the success of someone not their same color.
Even though there are only three designated campgrounds the entire length of the 444-mile long Natchez Trace National Park, we on our bicycles could find a place to camp just about anywhere. We turned off on a side dirt road that had a locked gate, but an open path around it. We continued about a quarter mile down the road and had our final campsite of the trip. It was another cold night, though not our coldest, just 39 degrees.
We arrived in Jackson (Mississippi's capital and largest city with 200,000 people) by early afternoon and found a Best Western less than a mile from the capitol and not much further to the Amtrak station. I searched the Yellow Pages for bicycle shops. There were only four. I called each asking if they knew if there was a Critical Mass that night, the last Friday of the month, as there would be in cities all over the world. The first guy I called said, "I may be the only person in Mississippi who's heard of the Critical Mass. I moved here from Chicago five years ago, so I know all about it. There's never been one here. There's no point for a Critical Mass, as there's no traffic in the downtown area after work. And there's simply no people energy in Jackson, no gatherings. Its not a very good place to bicycle. People are more interested in running you off the road than giving you some space." I told him that we had biked nearly 200 miles in Mississippi and that hadn't been our experience. He said we'd been lucky. I asked him if he'd like to join Waydell and I and have our own Critical Mass tonight. He said he had plans to attend a Halloween party.
He wasn't the only one in Jackson to know about Critical Mass, but almost. I struck out at two of the other shops, but a guy at the fourth shop, who had recently moved to Jackson from Washington D.C., knew all about it. He pretty much echoed the Chicagoan's sentiments on biking in Jackson. I also called a bicycle advocacy organization, Bikewalk Mississippi. It was a one-person operation working out of a bike shop not listed in the Yellow Pages. The person I talked to had never heard of Critical Mass, but recommended another bike shop not listed in the Yellow Pages. She didn't tell me it was in Hattiesburg, 90 miles away. The person there likewise knew nothing of Critical Mass.
I had a second question for every bike shop I called. I asked if they knew a Marc Ford, a bicycling friend from Chicago who had moved to Jackson ten years ago. He rode a red Masi, a high-quality Italian bike. He had been one of my favorite dispatchers in all my years as a bicycle messenger. No one had heard of him nor could any find him in their data base of customers. The only phone number of a Marc Ford in the phone book had been disconnected. I was still hoping I might come across him as we biked around the city. Anyone we talked to, I asked if they knew any local bicyclists, and then mentioned Marc. As Waydell and I biked around the city, I kept my ears alert for a shout of "567," my messenger number.
Even though Jackson had no Critical Mass, and we couldn't find anyone to join us, there was nothing to prevent us from having our own. We set out at five p.m. from the Amtrak Station. We biked five miles to Jackson's largest movie multiplex, the eleven-year old 17-screen Tinseltown, matinees $5.75, regular features $7.75. Then we swung back downtown past Jackson's public library named for Eudora Welty, presently closed indefinitely due to a fire. We circled the magnificent domed Capital and rode past the nearby Governor's mansion, a mini-White House. At a corner facing the capital was a giant windowed box full of 50 million pennies (a half million dollars worth). It was called "A Memorial to the Missing." Each penny represented a child who had been aborted since the Supreme Court decision Roe vs. Wade in 1973. It is sponsored by christianaction.com.
Then we headed out to Jackson State University, Walter Payton's former school. We bicycled up Terry Road then turned onto Walter Payton Drive to the sparkling new Walter Payton Recreation and Wellness Center. There were banners advertising a 5K Sweetness run the next day. We obeyed all the traffic signals, not needing to cork any intersections. We didn't receive a single horn toot or query of "What's the occasion." There was hardly anyone to shout a "Happy Friday" to. We finished up at a Whataburger and celebrated Jackson's inaugural Critical Mass with chocolate milkshakes.
And that about wraps it up. Waydell has fulfilled her long time dream of a bike tour and goal of a century, things she wanted to do even before she met me. She is a natural. She is strong, has endurance and recovers well from day to day. She's an early riser, up with the sun, and roaring to go. And she's capable of roughing it. Our first night dinner of cold baked beans out of a can in our tent, she downed with a grimace. But the next time we had it, she ate it with gusto. Hopefully, there will be many more such trips in the future. She was loving it so much at one point she sighed, "If only I could get up the nerve to quit my job and follow my bliss."
Later, George
Then we headed out to Jackson State University, Walter Payton's former school. We bicycled up Terry Road then turned onto Walter Payton Drive to the sparkling new Walter Payton Recreation and Wellness Center. There were banners advertising a 5K Sweetness run the next day. We obeyed all the traffic signals, not needing to cork any intersections. We didn't receive a single horn toot or query of "What's the occasion." There was hardly anyone to shout a "Happy Friday" to. We finished up at a Whataburger and celebrated Jackson's inaugural Critical Mass with chocolate milkshakes.
And that about wraps it up. Waydell has fulfilled her long time dream of a bike tour and goal of a century, things she wanted to do even before she met me. She is a natural. She is strong, has endurance and recovers well from day to day. She's an early riser, up with the sun, and roaring to go. And she's capable of roughing it. Our first night dinner of cold baked beans out of a can in our tent, she downed with a grimace. But the next time we had it, she ate it with gusto. Hopefully, there will be many more such trips in the future. She was loving it so much at one point she sighed, "If only I could get up the nerve to quit my job and follow my bliss."
Later, George
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Kosciusko, Miss.
Friends: The two main streets through the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa are University Boulevard and Paul W. Bryant Drive. Bryant was Alabama's football coach from 1958 to his death of a heart attack in 1983 at the age of 69. He won six national championships and is considered by many to be the greatest college football coach of all time. His 323 victories in 38 seasons as a head coach at four universities were the most ever until 80-year old Joe Paterno of Penn State recently surpassed him.
A few blocks east of the 93,000-seat Bryant-Denny football stadium is the Paul W. Bryant Museum, opened in 1988. It is one of the most popular attractions in the state. Though it primarily focuses on the career of Bryant complete with a recreation of his office, it is also a tribute to Alabama football. The school has won 12 national championships, more than any other college. Its 40 bowl appearances are more than any other school. Only Michigan and Notre Dame have a higher winning percentage.
Alabama first fielded a team in 1892. The team's first national championship came in 1925 culminating with a 20-19 win over Washington in the Rose Bowl. All of the South took pride in Alabama's success. A newspaper headline screamed, "Alabama splatters myth of Western Football Supremacy." Three years before Alabama suffered a woeful loss in a bowl game. One reporter wrote that Alabama didn't have much of a football team, but that it had "A Million Dollar Band." The band has adopted that as its nickname ever since. Waydell sent out a couple of "Million Dollar Band" post cards.
Alabama last won a national championship in 1992 under Gene Stallings. He is one of four coaches to lead Alabama to a national championship. Each is immortalized with a statue along a walkway approaching the football stadium. Each game day the football team walks past them all on their way into the stadium to their locker room through a vast plaza thronged with fans lining a walk of honor. Present coach Nick Saban hopes to join their ranks this year. He has already won one national championship at LSU several years ago before he left the college ranks to coach the Miami Dolphins. His team is presently undefeated and ranked second in the nation.
The 60-year old woman who oversees an historic, antebellum mansion on the fringe of the campus that we stopped at, said she thinks Saban is so great he could surpass Bryant's record of six national championships even though he has yet to win his first here at Alabama. The state is full of such believers. Saban was recently the cover story of "Forbes" magazine. There were stacks on sale at the museum. Every head coach in Alabama's history is profiled in the museum, even those in the recent past with barely .500 records. The coaches receive much more prominence than any of the players. Frank Howard, one of Bryant's predecessors, who also won a couple of national championships, was the Gipper's roommate at Notre Dame.
So many great quarterbacks have played at Alabama it is known as Quarterback U. Among the greatest are Bart Starr, Ken Stabler and Joe Namath. Oddly, none of them won the Heisman Trophy. The only Heisman trophy winner Bryant coached was John David Crowe at Texas A. & M. in 1957, the year before Bryant came to Alabama. He also coached at Maryland and Kentucky.
No mention was made of the first African-American to play for Alabama. When I asked the receptionist if she knew who it might have been, she said, "Someone just asked me that last week. I'll have to go get our curator to find out." She returned with a 40-year old husky guy wearing an Alabama polo shirt. Wilbur Jackson was the first to play in 1971. The first black athlete to compete for any Alabama team was a basketball player in 1969. He is presently the coach of Alabama's woman's basketball team.
The curator, like so many people we've met in the state, was ecstatic about the return to greatest of Alabama football after a prolonged dry spell. They've lost the last six games to their interstate rival Auburn. "That's a sore point," the curator said. He also mentioned that Alabama hasn't won a game in November the past two years. This Saturday's game should break that streak, but he wasn't being too cocky about it. It is homecoming weekend. The day we were on campus was election day for homecoming queen. All the sororities had large signs out front promoting their candidate. Pairs of young woman stood around the quad holding bed-sheets with a candidate's name. Cars everywhere had candidate's names written in white paint on their windows. A crew was stacking wooden pallets about 30-feet high for Friday night's bonfire in the center of a huge quad. Most of the school's 25,000 students will be there along with the football team and the band and a free musical act. In the past they've had Willie Nelson and "Alabama." Alabama may be as football-mad as Indiana is basketball-mad. For a state with a population of only four-and-a-half million people it has had an extraordinary history of athletic success and producing exceptional athletes. Five of the top fifteen athletes on ESPN's list of the 100 greatest athletes of the century are from Alabama and none of them are football players--Jesse Owens, Hank Aaron, Joe Louis, Willie Mays and Carl Lewis.
The Bryant museum had stacks of programs left over from the last home game free for the taking. It provided appropriate reading material in the tent that night. Our campsite was down a logging road in a clearing just beyond an enclosed deer hunter's blind on stilts with slots for rifles on three sides. It was full of spider webs, indicating it hadn't been used in a while, sparing us the concern of being someone's target. An hour earlier as we snacked in a meadow along the road, a pick-up pulled up alongside us. The driver asked, "Didn't I just see you folks back at Fosters?" Its not the first time someone has told us they'd seen us miles or even days before. We told him we planned to camp down the road and wondered if it was hunting season yet. He said, "Its hunting season all year here, but you don't have to worry about being bothered."
In the morning when we left our campsite I left the football program in the hunting blind. Waydell commented, "Too bad we don't have any porno to leave too." I had been telling her I often find discarded porno along the road and that I like to redistribute it leaving it in unlikely places. We've only seen one porn magazine so far, as we were approaching Cairo, and didn't stop for it. It could well have been jettisoned by someone who had attended a symposium on pornography at Southern Illinois University in nearby Carbondale the night before. It was a debate between porn star Ron Jeremy and anti-porn crusader Craig Gross, founder of XXX Church.It attracted such a huge crowd that the police had to be called in to control gate-crashers. The two previous biggest draws at SIU were Maya Angelou in 2007 and a forum on marijuana a few years earlier.
The visitor center in the first town we came to in Mississippi (Columbus) was the former home of Tennessee Williams. He's just one of several authors on a poster that called Mississippi
"The State of Authors." Faulkner of course is another, along with Richard Wright and Eudora Welty and a few others. Two of the rooms in the visitor center were devoted to Williams' career. There was a photo of Williams as a young man with a friend, each holding a bike with a bedroll and clothes lashed to the rear rack. They were headed on a bike trip to Mexico. Columbus is also the birth place of Memorial Day. Following the Civil War locals honored both Union and Confederate graves in the local cemetery, leading to the establishment of Memorial Day.
Out of Columbus we suffered the worst 25 miles of our trip, riding the shoulder of a four-lane divided highway to Starkville, home of Mississippi State University, with a non-stop din of trucks and cars flying past at 70 miles per hour. The traffic provided a bit of a tail wind, so I put my head down and pedaled hard trying to get this stretch over with as fast as possible. We stopped after three miles in the shade of an underpass to shed a layer of clothes. Waydell commented, "This isn't fun at all." When we finally turned off nearly an hour-and-a-half later, Waydell came up alongside me and said, "Can we take a break here. I feel like I've been riding for my life trying to keep up the last twenty miles." I had given a periodic look back to make sure she was still on my wheel or nearby and she had been. For all the 700 miles we have come I have ridden at my usual pace and she was there. But these were unusual circumstances. She said she felt like the racers in the Tour de France suffering with all their might to keep up. And she did with another exceptional effort. When we stopped at Starkville at 3:30 we had come 71 miles.
There were four Triple-A approved hotels in this college town. The next town with a hotel, Asherton, was 25 miles away and it was not in our Triple-A book. We were in no rush to be anywhere. We could stay here if we wished. Waydell said, "Let's take a break and then decide." Thirty minutes later after a lemonade and some nuts she voted to push on. We arrived in Asherton at dark, four miles short of her second century in three days, and were relieved to discover the Asherton Inn was still in business and had a vacancy. When we checked in the Indian proprietor asked if we wanted the weekly rate, as did the bulk of his clientele. We asked if he had no-smoking rooms. He did not. Our room was saturated with tobacco, but it didn't reek as badly as the one in Florence. We figured we could endure it. We were just happy to have a warm place, as the night before the temperature fell below freezing. There have been record low temperatures all over the South the past two days. We didn't even object that the heater didn't work in the room or that the TV only received eight stations, all cable, denying Waydell a network show she likes, "Pushing Daisies." When we awoke in the morning the temperature in our room was 60, quite balmy compared to our tent the morning before.
Mississippi is the sixth and final state we will pass through on this trip. It brings to twelve the number of states that Waydell has bicycled in, as many states as Alabama has won national championships in football. Her twelve includes Alaska--a short day ride in Skagway when she was on a cruise up the Inside Passage. She'll add number 13 this January, maybe keeping up with Alabama's football team, when she takes a real vacation in Hawaii and bikes down a volcano.
We are closing in on the Natchez Trace Parkway, the nation's longest national park. Over dinner at a nearby diner, the proprietor recommended we enter at the small town of French Camp. He said he used to ride the road all the time on his Huffy, but not any longer. He too enthusiastically assured us we were in for a wonderful ride on The Trace.
Later, George
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Tuscaloosa, Alabama
Friends: One of the bonuses of staying in a hotel is the weather channel. Saturday night in Florence we learned a switch in the weather was due Monday with a strong wind from the northwest bringing colder temperatures. The cold didn't much matter to us, but we were thrilled to learn about the direction of the wind. We were headed south and that wind might be just what we needed for Waydell's century.
We intended to make Sunday a semi-rest day. Our plan was to leisurely explore Florence a bit before heading south to the Helen Keller House and Shrine in nearby Tuscumbia, only open from one to four on Sundays. We were due for a rest after six straight days spent largely on the bike, something Waydell had never experienced. Though she spends her work-week sitting in an office, her twelve-mile daily commute and long weekend rides had so far adequately conditioned her for this ride. Her only complaint has been some soreness in her glutes and the mystery bruises that have splotched her legs. Popping a Tylenol along with her morning vitamin pill has kept her going.
We didn't sleep as late as we might have Sunday morning, as our next door neighbors were up before seven loading their van for the weekend Renaissance Fair in the park in front of the library. But we probably got a better night's sleep than if we had stayed at the first hotel we tried in downtown Florence. It offered weekly rates and had the seedy look of a place that might attract some late night altercations. A couple of semi-homeless looking guys had a small barbecue going by the stairs we had to haul our bikes and gear up. We tried three different rooms before asking for our money back. The first reeked of tobacco, the second the faucets in the sink didn't work and the third the TV didn't work. A janitor, who had failed to get the sink to work, tried to connect a second TV. When that failed, we said enough. Henceforth, we'll try to stay at hotels recommended by Triple A.
We began our Sunday morning wandering about Florence in search of a grocery store. We were told the only one in the area was at the Wal-Mart. It was two miles up the road from our hotel. We missed it and had to ask directions. It was a bit obscured up on a hill. But once we were pointed in the right direction, all we had to do was follow the traffic, as that is where everyone was headed on a Sunday morning before church. People just get friendlier and friendlier the further south we go. We couldn't even walk the aisles of the Wal-Mart without someone asking about our trip.
From the Wal-Mart we headed two miles north to the Wilson Dam, built from 1918 to 1924. It is 137 feet high and nearly a mile long blocking the Tennessee River. It creates more electricity than any other dam under the Tennessee Valley Authority. Nearby is a huge Marriot and the 30-story Renaissance Tower, the highest building in Florence. A park overlooking the dam includes the Florence Walk of Honor recognizing noteworthy locals. There were several generals, the chief engineer of the Panama Canal, a Pulitzer Winner (Thomas Stribling) and Sam Phillips, "Father of Rock and Roll," founder of Sun Records and discoverer of Elvis Presley. If this were France, Jonathon Rosenbaum would have been amongst them.
Biking around the neighborhoods we saw many "I heart Sarah" signs, but not a one for Obama. The lone mention of Obama was a "Pray for Obama for President" bumper sticker on a painter's van driven by an African American. No dogs bothered us in town, though many have given us chase out in rural areas. Waydell was happy to discover that so far they have all focused on the person in the lead, which is usually me, rather than trying to pick off the one behind. But that doesn't prevent her from speeding up, sometimes coming up alongside me, letting me provide further interference. The dogs to worry about are those that don't bark, concentrating all their efforts on catching us. Once when Waydell was in the lead and she saw such a dog come a chasing she muttered, "Oh God," before going into sprint mode. They certainly enliven our day, as we do theirs, but aren't really anything to be much concerned about.
It was homecoming weekend for the local university, but the campus was very quiet. The only activity was a trickle of people visiting the school's mascots--a pair of lions. They reside in a large fenced-in enclosure with a waterfall and a pool and a handful of toys. They were slumbering this morning, perhaps exhausted from being hauled over to the football stadium for the previous day's game. They are only on display during the daylight hours, then are sequestered in their night-time dens. There were several different brochures describing them and answering the most asked questions, some a bit contrived. One of the questions was, "What is the color of their eyes at birth?" The answer--"They are born with blue eyes. They eventually turn green, then amber."
We arrived at the vast grounds of where Helen Keller was born and grew up just as a bus load of 50 Canadians from Saskatoon on a 30-day tour of the US was arriving. We were able to join their tour after we paid the five dollar admission. We were given green stickers with a water pump verifying we had paid. The water pump is significant, as it was at the water pump on the property that Helen learned her first word--"water." She was born in 1880 and suffered an illness 19 months later that left her blind and mute. She had an IQ of 160 and an equally extraordinary will to learn. One of her axioms was, "Life is either a daring adventure or nothing." She was the first deaf and blind person to graduate from college (Radcliffe) in 1905. It was 50 years before the next. She wrote books and was a strong advocate for the deaf and blind. She was friends of ten presidents and countless noteworthy figures. She died in 1968.
The milk shakes of the Palace Ice Cream Parlor, just a few blocks from Helen Keller's home, are on the list of "100 Things to Eat in Alabama Before You Die." That was a must for Waydell. But it is no longer open on Sunday. The hours for Sunday in the window had recently been whited out. Its not the first business we've encountered that has cut back on its hours. While we sat outside on a bench munching energy bars, a father and his small daughter strolled up looking forward to an ice cream cone and a banana split. They were locals and were as disappointed as we were that the Palace was closed.
The father was wearing a T-shirt that read "Bama is Back." "Is that a new T-shirt," I asked, knowing that Alabama is having its best season in several years, and is currently ranked number 2 in the nation. "No this is an Auburn shirt from a few years ago," he said, "Referring to how badly Alabama had been doing." The Alabama-Auburn rivalry greatly divides the state. An easy way to start a conversation is to ask someone who they root for. We talked for about 15 minutes. He told us there was a Sunday night fireworks display in the park. This was a camping night, so we had no time for that. He gave us directions out of town on back roads towards the small town of Crooked Oak, warning us of a hill just before a fork in the road. Waydell is experienced enough now to laugh at the hill when we came to it, as it hardly compared to many we had already climbed.
We biked for about an hour until dark, finally encountering a hill that forced Waydell off her bike, but only because she waited until it was too late to get into her lowest gear. That's not likely to happen again. We camped in a thick forest of oaks. All night long acorns plopped around us until about two a.m. when a northerly wind came blasting through shaking the trees and bombarding us with acorns. It continued for about an hour. When the wind slackened, all the acorns had fallen and we had no more interruptions. The cold north wind plunged the temperature from the low 60s to the low 40s.
The 200 feet from our campsite to the road was the most treacherous stretch we had encountered in our entire trip, pushing our bikes through low-lying strands of thorns. I hadn't initially seen them when I plunged into the forest before a motorist came along. They had lacerated my calves before I realized how thick they. Waydell was much more careful, though she did scratch herself as well during the night getting up to relieve herself.
It was another tights day, so our legs didn't have a chance to attract anybody's suspicions that we might be escapees or refugees of some sort. A little after we passed the tiny town of Crooked Oak and were approaching the larger town of Russellville, a town that people had been telling us had been taken over by Hispanics, a 20-year old in a Corvette pulled up alongside us and shouted through the open passenger window that he'd like to have a word with us. He had seen us pass as we was having breakfast and chased after us. He said he and his dad did a little touring and wondered what we were doing passing through their small town. That is a question we've been asked before. His dad had ridden the 444-mile Natchez Trace trail from Nashville, Tenn. to Natchez, Miss. with his wife as a support vehicle. He, as many others, highly recommended it. Since it passes through Jackson, Mississippi, where we'll catch the train back to Chicago, we'll ride at least a little of it. The young man said he hadn't ridden his bike in several months. He biked to school once and everybody made fun of him for it, so he hasn't since. We were looking for a place for breakfast. He knew of only one possible place, Dot's, other than several fast food franchises. When it wasn't on our way, we had to settle for Jack's, crammed with people having sausage and biscuits.
We had biked 12 miles when we stopped for breakfast. We hoped we were within 90 miles of Tuscaloosa, our intended destination for the night, but a closer look at our map showed it was 105 miles away. That was going to make for an extra challenging century, unless the tail winds were direct and exceptional, and the terrain not too hilly. We were due for a motel, so we had to push all the way to Tuscaloosa, a good incentive for Waydell. We had 11 hours of light. If we could average 14 miles per hour, we'd spend 8 hours pedaling.
We had a long climb, what the locals call "the mountain," out of Russellville. The terrain leveled off as we followed a train track. Waydell commented that she could now appreciate the flat riding around Chicago. One of the biggest surprises of the trip for her is how smooth the country roads have been, in contrast to the rough, bumpy, pot-holed roads of Chicago. We were able to fly at 20 miles per hour for a couple miles before coming up against another series of hills dropping our average speed to less than 13.5 miles per hour. For the next 60 miles we'd inch our average speed back to 14 miles and then be set back. This wasn't going to be as easy as we hoped it might have been.
We stopped at a one-person rural grocery store at noon that had no milk or juice, just a lot of cardboard box bins of items at extremely reduced prices, some boxes with all items priced at a quarter or a dime. We picked up a handful of 220 calorie energy bars for a dime and a grapefruit energy drink for 49 cents. A car out front had a bumper sticker, "No Obama-Nation" with a photo of Obama and a slash through it. I asked if they had any for sale. "I wish I did. I can't keep them in stock," I was told. The woman ahead of us in the check out line asked the cashier, "Did you hear Junior got saved? He doesn't watch TV or movies no more. All he wants to do is read the Bible." "You got a good Christian family," the cashier replied. "Maybe he'll become a preacher."
We had come 50 miles. We thought we'd take our next break 30 miles later. A few miles before, we came to a service station. Waydell suggested we take advantage of its bathroom. In the hallway leading to the bathroom was a large portrait of General Lee. Underneath was the caption, "If I had foreseen what would happen, I never would have surrendered at Appomattox. I would have fought to the death." Among the many Dixie bumper stickers on sale was, "American by birth, Southern by the Grace of God."
I had been leading out Waydell since breakfast and we were both doing fine. When we saw a 32 miles to go sign to Tuscaloosa at four o'clock after we had come 80 miles we felt confident we were going to make it. As we neared our 100 mile marker, I peeled off and let Waydell break the barrier. She raised a fist and gave a "whoopee," but didn't care to stop for a photo. It was another 12 miles before we found the Best Western we had been looking for. There wasn't a worthy nearby restaurant to celebrate at and it was best for Waydell just to lay back. I went in search of pizza. It was another momentous day on the bikes.
Later, George
We intended to make Sunday a semi-rest day. Our plan was to leisurely explore Florence a bit before heading south to the Helen Keller House and Shrine in nearby Tuscumbia, only open from one to four on Sundays. We were due for a rest after six straight days spent largely on the bike, something Waydell had never experienced. Though she spends her work-week sitting in an office, her twelve-mile daily commute and long weekend rides had so far adequately conditioned her for this ride. Her only complaint has been some soreness in her glutes and the mystery bruises that have splotched her legs. Popping a Tylenol along with her morning vitamin pill has kept her going.
We didn't sleep as late as we might have Sunday morning, as our next door neighbors were up before seven loading their van for the weekend Renaissance Fair in the park in front of the library. But we probably got a better night's sleep than if we had stayed at the first hotel we tried in downtown Florence. It offered weekly rates and had the seedy look of a place that might attract some late night altercations. A couple of semi-homeless looking guys had a small barbecue going by the stairs we had to haul our bikes and gear up. We tried three different rooms before asking for our money back. The first reeked of tobacco, the second the faucets in the sink didn't work and the third the TV didn't work. A janitor, who had failed to get the sink to work, tried to connect a second TV. When that failed, we said enough. Henceforth, we'll try to stay at hotels recommended by Triple A.
We began our Sunday morning wandering about Florence in search of a grocery store. We were told the only one in the area was at the Wal-Mart. It was two miles up the road from our hotel. We missed it and had to ask directions. It was a bit obscured up on a hill. But once we were pointed in the right direction, all we had to do was follow the traffic, as that is where everyone was headed on a Sunday morning before church. People just get friendlier and friendlier the further south we go. We couldn't even walk the aisles of the Wal-Mart without someone asking about our trip.
From the Wal-Mart we headed two miles north to the Wilson Dam, built from 1918 to 1924. It is 137 feet high and nearly a mile long blocking the Tennessee River. It creates more electricity than any other dam under the Tennessee Valley Authority. Nearby is a huge Marriot and the 30-story Renaissance Tower, the highest building in Florence. A park overlooking the dam includes the Florence Walk of Honor recognizing noteworthy locals. There were several generals, the chief engineer of the Panama Canal, a Pulitzer Winner (Thomas Stribling) and Sam Phillips, "Father of Rock and Roll," founder of Sun Records and discoverer of Elvis Presley. If this were France, Jonathon Rosenbaum would have been amongst them.
Biking around the neighborhoods we saw many "I heart Sarah" signs, but not a one for Obama. The lone mention of Obama was a "Pray for Obama for President" bumper sticker on a painter's van driven by an African American. No dogs bothered us in town, though many have given us chase out in rural areas. Waydell was happy to discover that so far they have all focused on the person in the lead, which is usually me, rather than trying to pick off the one behind. But that doesn't prevent her from speeding up, sometimes coming up alongside me, letting me provide further interference. The dogs to worry about are those that don't bark, concentrating all their efforts on catching us. Once when Waydell was in the lead and she saw such a dog come a chasing she muttered, "Oh God," before going into sprint mode. They certainly enliven our day, as we do theirs, but aren't really anything to be much concerned about.
It was homecoming weekend for the local university, but the campus was very quiet. The only activity was a trickle of people visiting the school's mascots--a pair of lions. They reside in a large fenced-in enclosure with a waterfall and a pool and a handful of toys. They were slumbering this morning, perhaps exhausted from being hauled over to the football stadium for the previous day's game. They are only on display during the daylight hours, then are sequestered in their night-time dens. There were several different brochures describing them and answering the most asked questions, some a bit contrived. One of the questions was, "What is the color of their eyes at birth?" The answer--"They are born with blue eyes. They eventually turn green, then amber."
We arrived at the vast grounds of where Helen Keller was born and grew up just as a bus load of 50 Canadians from Saskatoon on a 30-day tour of the US was arriving. We were able to join their tour after we paid the five dollar admission. We were given green stickers with a water pump verifying we had paid. The water pump is significant, as it was at the water pump on the property that Helen learned her first word--"water." She was born in 1880 and suffered an illness 19 months later that left her blind and mute. She had an IQ of 160 and an equally extraordinary will to learn. One of her axioms was, "Life is either a daring adventure or nothing." She was the first deaf and blind person to graduate from college (Radcliffe) in 1905. It was 50 years before the next. She wrote books and was a strong advocate for the deaf and blind. She was friends of ten presidents and countless noteworthy figures. She died in 1968.
Wydell and I with our green stickers on the grounds of Helen Keller's childhood home.
The milk shakes of the Palace Ice Cream Parlor, just a few blocks from Helen Keller's home, are on the list of "100 Things to Eat in Alabama Before You Die." That was a must for Waydell. But it is no longer open on Sunday. The hours for Sunday in the window had recently been whited out. Its not the first business we've encountered that has cut back on its hours. While we sat outside on a bench munching energy bars, a father and his small daughter strolled up looking forward to an ice cream cone and a banana split. They were locals and were as disappointed as we were that the Palace was closed.
The father was wearing a T-shirt that read "Bama is Back." "Is that a new T-shirt," I asked, knowing that Alabama is having its best season in several years, and is currently ranked number 2 in the nation. "No this is an Auburn shirt from a few years ago," he said, "Referring to how badly Alabama had been doing." The Alabama-Auburn rivalry greatly divides the state. An easy way to start a conversation is to ask someone who they root for. We talked for about 15 minutes. He told us there was a Sunday night fireworks display in the park. This was a camping night, so we had no time for that. He gave us directions out of town on back roads towards the small town of Crooked Oak, warning us of a hill just before a fork in the road. Waydell is experienced enough now to laugh at the hill when we came to it, as it hardly compared to many we had already climbed.
We biked for about an hour until dark, finally encountering a hill that forced Waydell off her bike, but only because she waited until it was too late to get into her lowest gear. That's not likely to happen again. We camped in a thick forest of oaks. All night long acorns plopped around us until about two a.m. when a northerly wind came blasting through shaking the trees and bombarding us with acorns. It continued for about an hour. When the wind slackened, all the acorns had fallen and we had no more interruptions. The cold north wind plunged the temperature from the low 60s to the low 40s.
The 200 feet from our campsite to the road was the most treacherous stretch we had encountered in our entire trip, pushing our bikes through low-lying strands of thorns. I hadn't initially seen them when I plunged into the forest before a motorist came along. They had lacerated my calves before I realized how thick they. Waydell was much more careful, though she did scratch herself as well during the night getting up to relieve herself.
It was another tights day, so our legs didn't have a chance to attract anybody's suspicions that we might be escapees or refugees of some sort. A little after we passed the tiny town of Crooked Oak and were approaching the larger town of Russellville, a town that people had been telling us had been taken over by Hispanics, a 20-year old in a Corvette pulled up alongside us and shouted through the open passenger window that he'd like to have a word with us. He had seen us pass as we was having breakfast and chased after us. He said he and his dad did a little touring and wondered what we were doing passing through their small town. That is a question we've been asked before. His dad had ridden the 444-mile Natchez Trace trail from Nashville, Tenn. to Natchez, Miss. with his wife as a support vehicle. He, as many others, highly recommended it. Since it passes through Jackson, Mississippi, where we'll catch the train back to Chicago, we'll ride at least a little of it. The young man said he hadn't ridden his bike in several months. He biked to school once and everybody made fun of him for it, so he hasn't since. We were looking for a place for breakfast. He knew of only one possible place, Dot's, other than several fast food franchises. When it wasn't on our way, we had to settle for Jack's, crammed with people having sausage and biscuits.
We had biked 12 miles when we stopped for breakfast. We hoped we were within 90 miles of Tuscaloosa, our intended destination for the night, but a closer look at our map showed it was 105 miles away. That was going to make for an extra challenging century, unless the tail winds were direct and exceptional, and the terrain not too hilly. We were due for a motel, so we had to push all the way to Tuscaloosa, a good incentive for Waydell. We had 11 hours of light. If we could average 14 miles per hour, we'd spend 8 hours pedaling.
We had a long climb, what the locals call "the mountain," out of Russellville. The terrain leveled off as we followed a train track. Waydell commented that she could now appreciate the flat riding around Chicago. One of the biggest surprises of the trip for her is how smooth the country roads have been, in contrast to the rough, bumpy, pot-holed roads of Chicago. We were able to fly at 20 miles per hour for a couple miles before coming up against another series of hills dropping our average speed to less than 13.5 miles per hour. For the next 60 miles we'd inch our average speed back to 14 miles and then be set back. This wasn't going to be as easy as we hoped it might have been.
We stopped at a one-person rural grocery store at noon that had no milk or juice, just a lot of cardboard box bins of items at extremely reduced prices, some boxes with all items priced at a quarter or a dime. We picked up a handful of 220 calorie energy bars for a dime and a grapefruit energy drink for 49 cents. A car out front had a bumper sticker, "No Obama-Nation" with a photo of Obama and a slash through it. I asked if they had any for sale. "I wish I did. I can't keep them in stock," I was told. The woman ahead of us in the check out line asked the cashier, "Did you hear Junior got saved? He doesn't watch TV or movies no more. All he wants to do is read the Bible." "You got a good Christian family," the cashier replied. "Maybe he'll become a preacher."
We had come 50 miles. We thought we'd take our next break 30 miles later. A few miles before, we came to a service station. Waydell suggested we take advantage of its bathroom. In the hallway leading to the bathroom was a large portrait of General Lee. Underneath was the caption, "If I had foreseen what would happen, I never would have surrendered at Appomattox. I would have fought to the death." Among the many Dixie bumper stickers on sale was, "American by birth, Southern by the Grace of God."
I had been leading out Waydell since breakfast and we were both doing fine. When we saw a 32 miles to go sign to Tuscaloosa at four o'clock after we had come 80 miles we felt confident we were going to make it. As we neared our 100 mile marker, I peeled off and let Waydell break the barrier. She raised a fist and gave a "whoopee," but didn't care to stop for a photo. It was another 12 miles before we found the Best Western we had been looking for. There wasn't a worthy nearby restaurant to celebrate at and it was best for Waydell just to lay back. I went in search of pizza. It was another momentous day on the bikes.
Later, George
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Florence, Alabama
Friends: As we were closing in on Florence, Alabama it suddenly dawned on us that we might have crossed into the Eastern time zone. Waydell could have checked the local time on her cell phone, as its satellite GPS feature keeps precise track of her location and could have let us know what time zone we were in. But the phone was buried deep in her handlebar bag. She tried rummaging for it as we rode, but couldn't easily dig it out or extract it from its case. We could have stopped, but if we'd lost that hour, we couldn't spare a moment in our race to reach the only Frank Lloyd Wright house in Alabama before its last tour of the day this Saturday afternoon at three p.m. If we missed it, the next one wouldn't be until Tuesday, two days away.
It was a little before two Central time and we were seven miles away. We were having a great day, our best yet, having come 63 miles already. We had been riding since 7:20 that morning after camping behind a Pentecostal church three miles north of Mildgeville, TN. It had been our coldest night of the trip--47 degrees in the tent when we arose at 6:40 and 41 degrees outside the tent. We were forced to put on tights for the first time. It wasn't a bad thing for Waydell, as she has been developing mysterious bruises on her legs. We didn't want to raise anyone's suspicions that I might be urging her on with extra force.
We whipped off a quick 20 miles to Savannah, TN, where we stopped for a hearty breakfast--Waydell an omelet and biscuits and gravy and I a three-stack of pancakes so huge and thick I could only eat half of them and could barely stuff the rest in my Tupperware bowl. It was fuel enough to get me to Florence. It looked as if it was going to be our first meal in two days since Cairo without someone coming over for a friendly chat. The waitress hadn't even expressed any extra cordiality or curiosity in our biking to insure a tip. I learned why when I went to pay our bill--a 20% gratuity was included in the bill, a sign of tough times that even on small bills people couldn't be trusted to leave a worthy tip.
The morning before in Dresden we spent half our breakfast in conversation with a local retired couple. Even before we were served, a woman from a nearby table came over to talk, at first standing over us and then pulling up a chair. She told us about a cyclist on a recumbent they had met two years before who had been traveling from Flagstaff, Arizona to New Hampshire. "He had a pony tail and looked like a hippie, though he said he taught at a small university," she said. She called over to her husband to ask if he could remember his blog. He said he couldn't, but mentioned that the guy had written about meeting them on his blog. "He told us he had been a lawyer in San Francisco," he said. "I couldn't believe it, but there it was on his blog. We bought him lunch and we're going to buy your breakfast. And we'll take care of the tip as well. We only ask that you pass the kindness on to someone else. That's what the other cyclist said he was going to do."
The morning before in Dresden we spent half our breakfast in conversation with a local retired couple. Even before we were served, a woman from a nearby table came over to talk, at first standing over us and then pulling up a chair. She told us about a cyclist on a recumbent they had met two years before who had been traveling from Flagstaff, Arizona to New Hampshire. "He had a pony tail and looked like a hippie, though he said he taught at a small university," she said. She called over to her husband to ask if he could remember his blog. He said he couldn't, but mentioned that the guy had written about meeting them on his blog. "He told us he had been a lawyer in San Francisco," he said. "I couldn't believe it, but there it was on his blog. We bought him lunch and we're going to buy your breakfast. And we'll take care of the tip as well. We only ask that you pass the kindness on to someone else. That's what the other cyclist said he was going to do."
That has been the most extreme case of southern hospitality we have encountered so far, but there have been plenty of other examples. We've had several people offer us accommodations, but it has always been too early in the day for us to stop. Just as we were finishing our interruption-free breakfast in Savannah, we heard a guy, who had just entered the restaurant, tell a waitress, "No we don't want to eat, we just want to talk with those two over there." We looked up as two guys, one elderly and the other much younger, approached us. "We saw your bikes outside and we wanted to talk to you," the younger began. "I ride a bike too. I'm about the only cyclist in this town, but I'm trying to get others to bike too. I once rode from New Jersey to here." He asked what direction we were headed. We told him we were going to Alabama on route 69. He warned us to be careful. "There are so many accidents on that road it is known as Bloody 69," he said. "It has lots of bends and its narrow and there's no shoulder. I live along it and I hate to bike it."
"We've heard about it, " I said, "but we were hoping there wouldn't be too much commercial traffic on a Saturday morning." "Maybe not, but it's still dangerous. If you can survive this road, you can survive any road in the United States." He said he wished he could ride along with us for added protection, but that he and his dad were headed to the local flea market in Crump to look for bikes. We had passed it on the way into town, and were sorry ourselves that we couldn't give it a look. It was huge, strung out for over half a mile along the road. The guy we were talking to said he recently bought ten mountain bikes that were on sale in the Nashbar catalog to sell in town. The only bike shop in town had been driven out of business by Wal-Mart. Now there was no one to repair bikes except for him. It was just a side business, as his main occupation was trimming trees. He tried to be a bicycling ambassador, riding his bike as much as he could, even with a trailer hauling up to 200 pounds. He was another who said he would have offered us a place to stay if it had been later in the day.
It was 22 miles to Alabama and they were 22 of the most enjoyable miles we have ridden on this trip. "Bloody 69" gave us not a single fright or pause. There was hardly any traffic and the road was accompanied by a very ample 12-inch shoulder most of the way. Waydell even set a record for her fastest descent of the trip, nearly 40 miles per hour. She flew past me, as she is much more aerodynamic without front panniers. Aerodynamics trumps weight, as I weigh at least 20 pounds more than Waydell and am carrying perhaps 30 pounds more gear--our tent, tools, food, maps, books and other sundries.
We also had a tail wind for the first time since our first day out of St. Louis. We were having a glorious, rollicking, rural ride, until we were struck by the fear that we might have lost an hour thanks to the time zones. As we reached Florence, Waydell called out that we should have turned left rather than following the road towards the Tennessee River. We stopped to study our map. Before we could pull it out, a police officer on a motorcycle materialized. He gave us directions to the Frank Lloyd Wright House, less than half a mile away, and also the great news that it was 2:30, not 3:30.
We arrived shortly with twenty minutes to spare before the day's last tour. There was a note on the door saying "Tour in progress" and another that read, "Next tour at three p.m." We sat and munched on nuts and dried apricots, figuring we might have a private tour. But we were soon joined by two other couples and a young Asian man with a big camera around his neck who prowled the grounds taking pictures of this modest, one-story, L-shaped house and its spacious grounds .
Our tour guide, an older well-dressed and heavily made-up woman, a SWAG (Southern Woman Aging Gracefully), asked if any of us had visited any other Wright houses. All of us had. She said this was one of the first examples of Wright's Usonian houses, a more affordable version of his prairie homes. It was built in 1940 and was occupied by the original owners, the Rosenbaums, for 59 years, the last 16 years by the widow. When she needed to move into an assisted care facility in 1998 she sold the house to Florence for $75,000. The city spent $750,000 repairing it. As with most of Wright's flat-roofed homes, there had been extreme water leakage. Rather than repairing the leaks, Mrs. Rosenbaum simply put out another pail or bucket to catch the water. The house has averaged 5,000 visitors a year since it was opened to the public six years ago.
On a piano in the living room was a photo of the Rosenbaums, husband and wife and four young sons. When I asked the guide what had become of the sons, she said, "One is a social worker in Europe, another works for the Frank Lloyd Wright Conservatory Society touring the country giving lectures and wrote a book, another son is a movie critic in Chicago for some newspaper and the fourth passed away. He was an important lawyer. He really made something of himself." After the tour was over I told her we were from Chicago and read the movie reviews of the son there and wondered if she could identify him in the family photo. She couldn't. I also told her that he had recently turned 65 and had retired from the newspaper he worked for and that he was quite well known and had written several books. She said, "I didn't know that. I always learn something new on every tour I give. But its usually about Frank Lloyd Wright, as there are lots of people who come who have been to many of his houses."
The house cost $14,000 to build. Wright never visited the site, but sent one of his chief young assistants, a Mr. Goodrich, to oversee its construction. He was there for all eight months of the job. It was such an event, it drew crowds as it was built. The parents of Mr. Rosenbaum owned a handful of movie theaters throughout the South. He graduated from Harvard with honors and wished to become an English professor at the local college, Florence State Teacher College, but it didn't hire Jews, so he worked in the family business until 1960 when the university reversed its policy of not hiring Jews. The College was renamed the University of North Alabama in 1974.
In 1938 Mr. Rosenbaum married a model from New York City who had appeared in Vogue and brought her to Florence. By 1948 their three-bedroom house was too small for a family of six. They expanded it at a cost of $48,000, also designed by Wright. The chief improvements were a large kitchen and a bunk room for the boys called The Dorm. A single bunk bed was built into the wall and was of a double length so two boys could sleep at each level feet to feet. Wright didn't like ladders, so the two boys on top had to climb up the side. They each had their own storage locker which also served as a long bench under a window looking out on a courtyard. The house had four fire places and much of the original furniture, including eleven Ames chairs. Most of the furniture was constructed of plywood, a favorite material of Wright's. There were extensive bookshelves with many of the original books, some in Hebrew. Many had been lost due to water and flea damage. One of the three original bedrooms was Mrs. Rosenbaum's weaving room. It still contained her loom, strung with thread. On the wall was a glamorous photo of her from 1935, the year she met her husband-to-be.
In Mrs. Rosenbaum's later years before she moved out many visitors would drop by and ring her bell asking to see the house. She welcomed them all. She wouldn't show them around, but would plop them down in the living room and answer any of their questions. When she ushered them out, she would stick out her hand and say, "Five dollars please."
In 1938 Mr. Rosenbaum married a model from New York City who had appeared in Vogue and brought her to Florence. By 1948 their three-bedroom house was too small for a family of six. They expanded it at a cost of $48,000, also designed by Wright. The chief improvements were a large kitchen and a bunk room for the boys called The Dorm. A single bunk bed was built into the wall and was of a double length so two boys could sleep at each level feet to feet. Wright didn't like ladders, so the two boys on top had to climb up the side. They each had their own storage locker which also served as a long bench under a window looking out on a courtyard. The house had four fire places and much of the original furniture, including eleven Ames chairs. Most of the furniture was constructed of plywood, a favorite material of Wright's. There were extensive bookshelves with many of the original books, some in Hebrew. Many had been lost due to water and flea damage. One of the three original bedrooms was Mrs. Rosenbaum's weaving room. It still contained her loom, strung with thread. On the wall was a glamorous photo of her from 1935, the year she met her husband-to-be.
In Mrs. Rosenbaum's later years before she moved out many visitors would drop by and ring her bell asking to see the house. She welcomed them all. She wouldn't show them around, but would plop them down in the living room and answer any of their questions. When she ushered them out, she would stick out her hand and say, "Five dollars please."
Later, George
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