Me, Jen, Mark and Phil before leaving Birmingham

Jen was on call on Sunday and got called into work that morning, so Mark made pancakes and eggs for breakfast.  By the time we had packed and were ready to go, Jen had returned, so she and Mark walked us downstairs.  Mark had to go to work this time, and he rode with us as far as his office, just a few blocks west of their apartment.

The first 15 miles of the ride were actually very depressing to me.  The homes were all run-down, very small and close together, and Garmin kept sending us down narrow alleys that were littered with trash (and sometimes broken glass).  The weather didn’t help.  It was cloudy and misty for most of the day.  We couldn’t pick up any speed because we weren’t on any roads for long enough before being sent onto unpaved, bumpy pathways or turning onto another ally.  Old American cars with pimped out wheels seemed to be in style, and many homes had been patched with random materials for example, the top surface of a small corner desk had been nailed over the bottom corner of a broken window).

Alabama is hilly!

Conditions improved after we stopped for lunch.  We were finally out of the city and the mist had lifted, but it was still cloudy and the roads became hilly.

When we finally reached Tuscaloosa, the last stretch looked like a war zone.  Joe, our host, later explained that an enormous tornado had gone through in April, picking up everything in its path.  Trees, cars, houses – entire neighborhoods – were now completely gone.

For dinner we went to Dreamland BBQ – a place that was rated number one for their dessert (banana pudding) and runner-up for best barbecue, according to the Best of Tuscaloosamagazine.  The ribs were good, but the banana pudding was incredible.  I’m already thinking about how I could get some more of it before we leave Tuscaloosa.

Walkway leading up to the UA Crimson Tide's football stadium

From there, Joe brought us to the University of Alabama campus to walk around and see the Walk of Champions, outside of the Bryant-Denny football stadium, where a bronze statue was erected for every coach who won UA a football national championship.  Ever since we reached North Carolina, it became increasingly apparent that college football is a big deal in the South.  The UA football stadium can seat 104,000 people, and another 50-60,000 usually just tailgate outside.  Joe told us that home games always sell out, and games can generate over $20 million.

Joe’s roommate, Kenny, came home shortly after we returned to Joe’s apartment.  Both Joe and Kenny had to wake up early the next morning, so we had a relaxing evening and watched a movie before going to bed.

Phil’s alarm clock didn’t sound this morning, so when I woke up and saw that it was 7:30, we both jumped up and started packing.  We had told Reverend Chuck that we would be leaving by 8am.  We made it out by 8:05, dropped the key in Chuck’s mailbox, and rode about a mile to Starbucks for breakfast.

Phil and I with some of the Oxford locals at Starbucks

Having a loaded bicycle in a small town in Alabama (or anywhere, I’d imagine) is a great conversation starter.  Several people struck up conversation, asking what we were doing, offering their advice on places to check out around town and when we get to New Orleans, and informing us that there is a pretty high-profile bicycle race just a few miles away in Cheaha State Park, the location of the high point in Alabama.  We were lucky enough to get a photo with a few of the folks who spoke to us at Starbucks.

Back on the road, we backtracked to the church before we were on course with Garmin.  I’m afraid I’ve been spending too much time following the purple line that Garmin lays out for me.  Like any computer game that one gets addicted to, I’ve been seeing the purple line in my dreams and every time I close my eyes.  It’s really quite fascinating, as I thought it could only happen with games like tetris and minesweeper, but a little frightening as well.  I’m glad that New Orleans is only about a week away, so I will be free from Garmin’s trance for a few months.

In the first twenty miles of the day, we passed various attractions such as the Eastaboga Nut House (another pecan facility), the Talladega Super Speedway, and Scuttlebutt Wireless (sorry, Verizon, but I think I would switch to this wireless provider just for the great name if I lived here).  We also had tremendous luck with the winds and terrain, as route 78 was mainly a gradual decline in altitude and we were going downwind the entire time.  This luck changed shortly after we stopped for food in Pell City at the Ark Family Restaurant.  We turned off of 78, and were faced with some serious hills for the second third of the journey.  Heading back towards 78, we turned into the wind.

We stopped at a gas station for our second break of the day about 20 miles outside of Birmingham.  There, we saw all sorts of interesting people, but nobody talked to us except for a cross country coach who was stopping in with the team after they had run a half marathon.  The last ten miles into Birmingham were very industrial.  We played leapfrog with a train heading into the city, and then ended up riding down a road that reminded me of Allens Avenue in Providence, minus the bike lanes and the strip clubs (I know, I know…what other distinguishing characteristics could there be?  It just felt like Allens Ave).

Phil, me, Jen and Mark in Birmingham

We arrived at Jen and Mark’s apartment just before Jen was leaving to go to a movie, so she left shortly after letting us in.  After showering, Mark took Phil and me to a modest, but very delicious French restaurant.  We finished the night off with a beer at Avondale Brewing Company, the local brewery that recently opened.  The beer was very good, and the bartender and brew master were both very friendly.

Me, Jesse and Phil before leaving Carrollton

Jesse stayed in the main house, and didn’t end up getting home from work until 5am.  I can’t imagine how difficult it must have been, but he still managed to wake up at 10 to bring us breakfast from the house.  I felt surprisingly fresh for having danced all night and gotten so little sleep.  My only complaint is that smoking was allowed in the bar after 10pm, and so all of the clothes I wore the night before stunk of cigarette smoke.

The ride was mainly downhill and the wind was generally behind us, but our average speed was slower than I had expected under those conditions.  We stopped at 23 miles for a quick snack, and then continued on to a vineyard where Jesse had recommended we stop.  Along the way, Garmin directed us down a short, nonexistent road that was thickly overgrown with young pine trees and thorny branches.  We struggled to push our bikes and ourselves through to the road up ahead.  Maybe that’s what slowed our average speed for the day.  Once on our bikes again, Phil brought to my attention that it was an hour earlier than I had thought, since we had crossed into another time zone at some point in the last hour.

Southern Oak Vineyards (aka White Oak Vineyards) is located in Anniston, Alabama, and gives free wine tastings.  We stopped in to sample all of their offerings and decided on the Scarlet red muscadine table wine to purchase for one of our lucky future hosts.  The wines were all delicious and mostly on the sweet side.  The owner recommended a restaurant for us to try when we got to Oxford.

When we got to Oxford, we went straight for the restaurant, but it was closed until 5pm.  It was going to get dark soon, and we still needed to find a place to set up our tent, so we went on down the road to seek out a patch of grass somewhere.  We ended up at the First United Methodist Church of Oxford.  The pastor, Chuck, initially told us that we couldn’t stay there because the church would be full of boy scouts that evening, but he agreed to let us pitch our tent on the grass by the church.  Almost as soon as we had finished setting up the tent, he came back outside to tell us that there was a scheduling confusion, and the boy scouts were actually coming next weekend, so we were welcome to stay inside if we wanted.  Since it was going to be in the 30’s overnight and we were already cold, we gladly accepted.  Chuck showed us inside to the youth recreation room, which was full of couches.  He is also a cyclist, and offered us any of his tools if we needed to fix anything on our bikes.

We went back to the restaurant that was recommended to us, but after looking at the menu decided it was too pricey (Chuck had warned us of this, but the reviews online did not seem so bad).  However, just the thought of all the other options around there made me think “heartburn”.  We decided to part ways for dinner and Phil went to Waffle House while I splurged at Garfrerick’s Cafe and enjoyed a heartburn-free meal of tuna ceviche, pan-seared fish and risotto, and cranberry-pear bread pudding for dessert.  Phil and I met up again after dinner and biked back to the church to get some rest.

Thursday was sunny, but much colder and windier.  We got off to a rather late start, first biking 2 or 3 miles to find breakfast and not taking off again until after noon.  Our host for the evening, Jesse, had to work at 5pm, so we had to race to try to get there before he left for work.

In our haste, we somehow got separated when Phil and I turned opposite ways onto route 166.  I stopped to wait for Phil at mile 27 and continued to wait for a suspiciously long time, so I phoned him to see if something was wrong.  He was about 7 miles away from me, heading east instead of west.  After back and forth map checking and some discussion, Phil told me to go ahead at my own pace and he would meet me at the address I gave him.  I went on for the second half of the ride alone, riding as fast as I could.

The hilly terrain and nasty headwinds prevented me from going as fast as I would have liked, and I ended up arriving at Jesse’s house not 5 minutes before he had to leave for work.   Jesse’s dad was outside with their mini Schnauzer puppy, Muffy, and he led me behind the house to the cottage where we were to stay.  Jesse told me to make myself at home and to let him know when we were ready to go out into Carrollton, and then he left for work.  Phil arrived shortly afterwards.  We showered and ate some food that Jesse’s dad brought over to us before texting Jesse, who left some friends in charge of the bar while he came to pick us up and bring us into town.

Jesse tends bar at the Alley Cat (which is nothing at all like the Alley Cat in Providence), one of the four options for food and drink in downtown Carrollton.  We relaxed at the bar with Jess and his friends for a while before going across the street to a restaurant called Plates, where Amber, another couchsurfer we had contacted, was singing that night.  The Cowtown String Band was between sets when we walked in, and Amber sat and talked with us until she had to go on stage.  I hadn’t been to a show since I was living in Newport, and this one was great entertainment.  When they were finished, we all walked back to Alley Cat, where they were having a dub step dance party.  This was my first time experiencing this type of music and dancing.  My ears were still ringing from the loud music the next day (hopefully it won’t be permanent), but it was quite fun.  Although, it still doesn’t beat salsa dancing.

When we were ready to go home, one of Jesse’s friends, Jay, kindly drove us back to Jesse’s house.  I tried to catch up on blogging, but it was already after 2am when we returned, and I ended up falling asleep without finishing.

Me, Phil and Doug before leaving Athens

This morning my legs did not want to work for me.  I don’t know how late I slept, because I didn’t look at a clock until we were leaving the bakery we had biked to for breakfast.  After eating breakfast, Douglas led Phil and I for the first 7 or 8 miles out of Athens.

We stopped at a gas station for a break after 20 miles, and shortly after that we passed a pecan-cracking facility called Granddaddy’s Crack House.  I should have taken a photo of the sign.  For lunch, we stopped at the Publix grocery store in Loganville, where I found the coconut water I had been craving for the last few weeks.  While sitting and eating by our bikes outside, a few people approached to ask us what we were doing.  One of them was a cyclist driving an old VW bus who asked if we needed anything and warned us to beware of the traffic.  A woman, who was also a cyclist, with her daughter, came over to talk, and after going into the market, she came out and gave us a Publix gift card.  Once again, I am so touched by the generosity of strangers.  Everywhere we have been thus far, we have met amazing people, and I am convinced that we will find them all over the world.

We still had more than 30 miles to go from Publix, and it was already after 3pm.  Getting back on the bike after such a long rest is always the most difficult part of the day, but we had to get moving.  We were headed to a park about 16-17 miles away called Stone Mountain, where we would be able to get onto a bike path that would take us all the way into Atlanta.  Garmin wanted us to go through a gated community, and we slipped in before the gate closed after a car exited.  We ran into trouble when we were directed to go through another automated gate, that needed a key to get through from both sides.  I flagged down a woman driving by in a golf cart who informed us that we could not go in there unless we were members of the private golf course.  We had to go back out the way we came in, and find a way around it into Stone Mountain park.

Stone Mountain (not the best view, I know)

As we neared a busy highway, we spotted two cyclists up ahead, and I asked one of them for directions into the park.  We had to ride against traffic on the freeway for a short distance in order to get into the park.  There was very little traffic at this point, but it was approaching dusk, which is the most dangerous time of evening because drivers have the least ability to see at this level of light.

The park was really lovely, and the enormous stone rising out of nowhere clearly explained the origin of its name.  I only wish we had reached it a few hours earlier, as it was getting darker and threatening to rain, although, there were numerous cyclists and runners out and about.  It actually did start to sprinkle a few times during the rest of the ride.  It grew even darker after we hit the bike path, and it became difficult to see, which slowed us down for the last 10 or 12 miles.  At least the warmth didn’t leave with the sun – the temperature remained at a comfortable 70 degrees for the duration of the evening.

Drew, Julie, me and Phil, after eating pizza in Atlanta

We finally made it to Julie and Drew’s apartment at 7pm.  Phil knows Julie from Brown – she graduated at the same time as me, earlier this year.  Julie and Drew offered us snacks and beer while we cleaned up and got ready to go out for dinner.  The pizza place they brought us to was authentic Italian.  We squeezed onto the end of long table shared by other patrons and opened the first bottle of wine.  After nearly two pizzas and two bottles of wine, we all went home content and shared some pumpkin pie before passing out for the night.

Me, Chuck, Grace and Phil (and Churchill) before leaving Anderson

We had a long day ahead of us, so Phil and I woke up relatively early.  In addition to the eggs Grace made for breakfast, I filled up on cake that she had made the day before.  We left Anderson just after 10am, for our longest ride yet.

After about 15 miles, Garmin led us off the road to a path that was marked with a no trespassing sign.  Another quarter-mile down this path were more signs posted, warning trespassers that they would be prosecuted.  Having little choice, we continued down the dirt and grass road for a mile, passing two hunting shelters and a field of cattle and donkeys along the way.  At the end of the trail, we had to push our bikes through some vegetation to get around a fence covered in barbed wire.  We emerged onto a road, directly across from the Shady Lady Saloon,  just a few hundred yards from the Georgia border.

Crossing from South Carolina to Georgia

We stopped to eat lunch in a field, and the sun came out to warm us up.  The ride, while long, was not bad aside from a 9-mile stretch on a main road with fast-moving traffic that seemed to stretch forever in a gradual uphill battle against the wind that made me envious of anyone who might be traveling in the opposite direction.  Athens is much hillier than I expected.  The last 2 or 3 miles consisted of numerous steep hills, and it felt good to finally be done for the day.

Douglass is a couchsurfer who had stayed with me a few years ago during his own bicycle tour up the east coast.  Him and his girlfriend, also named Sarah, were hosting us in Athens at Sarah’s condo.  Sarah left shortly after we arrived to see a show of REM cover bands, but we met up with her and her roommate, Lydia at a frozen yogurt place after biking downtown to a sushi restaurant for dinner with Douglas.  When we got home, we were completely exhausted.  Douglas mapped out the next day’s route to Atlanta, which is as long as the route from Anderson to Athens – and he says it’s hilly too.  At least it will be a warm day, although the wind will be against us again.

On Friday morning, Phil and I woke up and walked to the cafeteria for breakfast. Danielle got us in again for free on her points, and we filled up on waffles, yogurt, granola, bananas, and (at least for me) soft-serve ice-cream. We also grabbed a few slices of bread, peanut butter and jelly to make sandwiches on the road.

Me, Danielle and Phil before leaving Boiling Springs

We ended up getting a rather late start for the distance we had ahead of us. After saying goodbye to Danielle and her friends, we had a hilly course to travel with the wind in our faces.  We ran into two segments where the road had been closed for construction, including one area where we had to walk our bikes over a steel plank to cross a river.  We never would have been able to pass that way had we been driving a car.

The setting sun casts shadows on this field, about ten miles outside of Greenville

Shortly after we started, I got a text message from Brian, who we stayed with in Raleigh, saying that he was driving to Greenville and could meet up with us to carry our panniers if we wanted some relief from the weight we were carrying.  We gladly accepted, and Brian eventually found us about halfway through the journey, a few miles after an ice-cream stop we made at a strawberry farm/peach orchard.  The going was a little easier without our bags, and we made it to our host Bryon’s house in Greenville just before it got too dark.

Bryon brought us to a restaurant called The Velo Fellow for dinner in downtown Greenville, and then he showed us a suspension bridge nearby that was only supported by suspension cables on one side.  Unfortunately, it was too dark to take photos, but the view of the small, rocky river below was gorgeous.  Bryon and Brian (his roommate) were having a gathering around a fire in their backyard that evening, and other couchsurfers were invited.  We spent the rest of the evening standing around the fire, meeting new people and making s’mores with homemade marshmallows and graham crackers that another guest had made.

It was expected to rain all day on Thursday, and Phil and I had biked for five days straight, so we were due for a rest anyway. Boiling Springs was a great place to recuperate.

Phil woke up early and went to class with Danielle, while I slept in until he returned. After eating a bowl of cereal, I planned out a 5.5 mile run around Boiling Springs. I’m getting a little slow from not running regularly, and my legs were still tired from bicycling, but the run felt good and the weather had turned quite lovely for outdoor exercise.

After showering, Phil and I walked to cafeteria to meet Danielle for lunch. A university cafeteria is quite luxurious when you’ve been on the road for a while. When I worked at Brown, I was always opposed to the system of paying a fixed fee for as much food as you could eat, since I think it promotes overeating and wasting of food. People’s eyes tend to be bigger than their stomachs, and if they’re not paying any extra for more food, they will pile on as much as their plates will hold. Inevitably, people will eat more than they should and food will go to waste. However, I could really appreciate this cafeteria now. Danielle used her “points” to grant us access to the cafeteria, and we were released into a room full of any food you could imagine. I particularly enjoyed the limitless supply of ice-cream, both hard and soft-serve, and took advantage of this at breakfast the next day as well.

Danielle had to drive to Raleigh to pick up her sister, Gabrielle, who was visiting for the weekend, so she took off around 5pm. Taylor brought us to the on-campus Chick-fil-A for dinner, but afterwards, Phil and I walked around the town looking for more. We ended up buying ingredients at the supermarket to make pie and cookies. By the time Danielle arrived with her sister, we had made a pumpkin pie, blueberry pie, chocolate chip cookies, and a pumpkin-blueberry custard cake with the leftover ingredients.