It’s Wednesday and Mike is attending to his course with Gulf
Stream and I’m going to find out what this baby really can do. Actually that’s
just a joke, I don’t think I have quite got the cojones to take this Harley to
the limit. Yesterday before I met up with Mike I did a stretch on the I95 and
rode at 90 mph, about 144 km/h, I could feel that there were still plenty of
horses available in the store. Taking my KLR 650 up to the max is a little
scary as well, not because it’s so fast, but because at 140 km/h, which is
about the most one can expect to get from it, it no longer feels terribly
stable, the bike is just not heavy enough. The Harley Davidson Softail Heritage
is plenty heavy enough so stability isn’t an issue, it’s just that it vibrates
like crazy. This seems to be a Harley thing; I have experienced this with
Helena’s 883 Sportster, but thought that it was something that just the
Sportster did at anything over 110 km/h, but even the Softail gets the shakes
at about the same speed. I mean really it shakes, like enough to loosen the
ancient amalgam in my back teeth. Even the single cylinder KLR is a smoother
ride, I’m no mechanic, but I suspect this is because the engine is air cooled,
which is less effective than liquid, hence the design allows for a little more
play in the moving parts than is the case for a liquid cooled machine.
The big Harley parked outside my the hotel
The gal at the Harley dealership – hardly a gal I suppose,
she is at least my age and then a few – that did the rental for me gave me a
few routes that I could try. Just some Google maps printed out, very simple,
probably took someone an hour or so to do, but hey, what a fabulous thing to
do. I’m not from around here and they know the good routes to ride, it’s great
that they thought to do it. That is something that one just has to hand to
Harley Davidson, if I ever bought a Harley it would be less to do with the bike
and more to do with the service. Helena, and even I, always get treated like
long lost buddies or family when we go to Barrie Harley Davidson, the
dealership where she bought her bike. Sure they do it to sell bikes, but it’s
still nice.
I chose the ‘Millen Loop’ route that will take me inland,
I’m keen to see the Deep South, warts, guys in bedsheets and all. Whereas there
may well be many rednecks that are backward, bigoted and inbred, my travels in
the southern states so far have not revealed a great many of this type of
person. On the contrary, the friendliest and nicest Americans, both black and
white that I have come across have been encountered in the southern states.
This may well be because I have so far mostly only visited the more
sophisticated spots, seaside Florida, Hilton Head, Charleston and Savannah
hardly qualify as the deep south. Anyway, from my hotel in mid-town Savannah I
head south on Abercorn Street, which seems to be the road that divides Savannah
into east and west sides. Abercorn Street is also Highway 204, which swings
west as you reach the outskirts of Savannah. Loads of construction on the road
and my progress is a little delayed, I tap into the power of the big Harley and
do some skillful maneuvering to get past the obstruction much faster than my
four wheeled fellow travelers, it is the advantage of this mode of transport, I
feel their chagrin as I sail past and into the sunlit uplands of the open road.
Under the I95 and past the Harley
dealership, zoom do I. There is a smile on my face; it’s March break, I’m free,
it’s warm and I’m riding a great motorcycle on a road I’ve not ridden before –
what more can a chap reasonably ask for?
After going under the I95 the road changes name to Fort
Argyle Road, but keeps the Highway 204 identity there are some nice gentle twistiness
through some pine plantations and natural forests. It’s pleasant, but no real
match for the more beautiful forests of the north where I hale from. One can
just imagine what this continent must have looked like a mere 500 years ago,
before Homo European Destructus had completely tamed and exploited it. It’s not
that I believe in the well debunked ideal of the virtues of the noble savage -
it is reasonably well proved that the arrival of the ancestors of today’s First
Nations in the New World spelt extinction for the mega fauna of two continents
– however the ignoble savage certainly was lighter on the ecology than western
civilization. What I am talking about is a lost world that we only get to
glimpse from the remnants and so imagine the great forests and endless grass
plains that once was this continent.
Sadly, most human beings don’t even think about what we have lost, we
are too busy working to feed our consumerism or concerning ourselves with the
doings and screwings of the rich and famous and other trivial shit.
As I travel further from Savannah I notice that the level of
apparent prosperity declines, not marginally, but rather sharply. It doesn’t
take many miles to be right in the boonies and the quality of the housing drops
like a stone. I have remarked on this disparity in the USA before, but it still
surprises me that the biggest economy and most powerful country on earth has
such a level of wealth inequality. Mike said to me that he thinks that Americans
value personal independence above anything else, hence socialistic ideals of
social equality, redistribution of wealth, universal health care and so on have
never really caught on. Personally I think the poor have bought into the myth
of the American dream and have swapped an acceptable standard of living for a
one in a hundred thousand chance of becoming a George Clooney. The middle class is no less delusional, but
this problem is more universal, we have sold our souls and waking hours to the
capitalists for the dubious privilege of buying and owning what is mostly
unnecessary rubbish. Oh, how I would love to be free, to spend my days riding a
motorcycle and my evenings writing about it, but sadly that is not my life and
these moments are rare and snatched, my soul, like everyone else’s, is forfeit.
There is another phenomenon that I notice. No matter how grubby
and poor the housing in the small settlements I encounter along the way, there
is no shortage of churches. Honestly, I have never seen so many churches for so
few houses before. I’ve discovered that there are more varieties of Baptists
than even Heinz could cope with. Also the churches are always way nicer looking
than the homes, I pass one sign outside a church for some or other flavor of
Baptist, ‘Pastor appreciation week – give generously’. I wonder whose bright
idea that was? It seems to my cynical mind that the only business that’s doing
well out here is the God business. Maybe it makes sense, if you are poor and
living in squalid circumstances, you have limited education and opportunities
out in the boonies are almost non-existent, then the promise that God will see
to it that you have an eternity of good things in the next life must be very
appealing. Of course this is one of the means by which the haves have kept the
have-nots in their place for millennia. Oh well perhaps it’s more pleasant to
live with hope, that may be delusional, than no hope at all.
I take a right where Highway 204 ends with a T-junction with
US Highway 208, which feels like I’m going the wrong way, but I have confidence
in the map I’m following, and indeed it is just a short while before I’m
heading North West again on Eldora Road. A nice quiet, but sadly straight as a
die, road. I pass some scraggly looking cotton fields; I am guessing they look
scraggly because it is the time of year, probably early spring is not the best
time to look at a cotton field. One cannot but think about the history of this
industry in this part of the world, and shake your head in wonder. The American
Civil War officially ended in 1865, so that would be a good date to use as the
definitive end of official slavery in the USA. This is 151 years ago; it is
about two life times past – which means that there are still people alive today
whose grandparents were born into slavery. I know that perceptions of morality
have a lot to do with the prevailing zeitgeist, but I believe that for one
human being to own another is the most immoral thing in relative and absolute
terms. It is difficult to get one’s head around the fact that this practice was
only finally abandoned by this nation, whose foundational values was supposedly
liberation of the individual, a mere 151 years ago. It is also interesting to
note what the the ancient texts, that so many people believe provide our moral
compass, have to say on the subject – the Koran positively endorses and
encourages slavery, and the Bible, both Old and New Testaments makes no
negative moral judgement on the issue, God clearly has no issue with the
practice.
As I turn off Eldora road to Old River Road I’m starting to
get quite hungry. I deliberately didn’t eat breakfast in my hotel room, it has
a bar fridge where I have some ham, cheese and hard boiled eggs, because I
fancied to find a little rustic diner somewhere and have fried eggs, bacon and
maybe try some grits for bnreakfast. I have in my mind the scene from the movie
‘My Cousin Vinny’ where Joe Pesci and Marisa Tomei have breakfast and taste
grits for the first time. To this point I have not passed any place that is
remotely what I have in mind since leaving the city limits of Savannah. Grits,
by the way, for the benefit of my ‘mieliepap’ eating readers in Africa, is just
roughly ground white corn (maize) made into a porridge, it’s ok, but Africans
have more and tastier ways of cooking this staple. Old River Road is a pleasant road to ride, the
blacktop is in pretty decent shape, as is the case with most roads in the USA,
there is not much traffic and the scenery is a nice mix of farmland and forest,
albeit absent of diners and infested with churches. I believe the ‘River’ in ‘Old
River Road’ is a reference to the Ogeechee River which it runs parallel to, but
not close enough to ever actually get a glimpse of it. I’ve crossed this river
a few times earlier in the day and yesterday on my way down to Brunswick, it
meanders across the coastal plains to eventually meet the ocean about twenty
odd miles south of Savannah. Ogeechee must have an American Indian origin, some
cursory research doesn’t reveal exactly what, but it does have a really great
sound when you pronounce it… try it.
Ogeechee River
It’s getting on to noon and the emptiness in my stomach is
now making itself felt and still I haven’t spotted a rustic diner, or anywhere
else that promises a decent meal – I decide to take a detour from the mapped
out route and turn left down Highway 24, a slightly more substantial road in
the hope of finding something. I’m also running a little low on gas, not
dangerously so yet, however I have noticed that the v-twin 103 cubic inch (about
1700 cc) machine is a lot greedier on gas than my KLR’s 650 cc single and when
you reach a certain point on the gauge the remaining gas seems to drop at an
alarming rate. It turns out that my instinct is spot on and at the intersection
of Clito Road there is a gas station and a Zip-n-Foods, not exactly the rustic
diner, but I have dropped my standards due to hunger pangs. Zip-n-Foods is more like a convenience store
with a few Formica covered tables. The breakfast menu is no longer available,
but they have hot trays of battered fried pork chops, Southern fried chicken
pieces and stir fried rice. I opt for three large pieces of Southern fried
chicken, two huge breasts and a generous thigh, served to me in a Styrofoam
container with plastic knife and fork, which I do not bother with. Mm, mm, mm,
the Colonel should retire, I have never tasted fried chicken quite as delicious
as this. Seriously, the batter is just perfect in the balance between crisp and
oily, with a nice little explosion of spiced oil as you bite into it, then the
meat is tender, moist, tasty and cooked just enough. I wash it down with a
bottle of Diet Coke and it feels like I have eaten at the Ritz. The funny thing is
the place is run by Indians, not the North American kind, the Asian variety,
and like all people that I have encountered in the Southern states they are
friendly and helpful, and clearly have figured out fried chicken. I have just
one complaint, the gas station only has 87 octane which is not really suitable
for the motorcycle, my hosts advise that I’ll find a gas station back on the
Old River Road not too far that sells premium grade gas.
And so it turns out, stomach full and gas tank full I
proceed on Old River Road which eventually becomes Old Savannah Road, then
north on US 25 to the small town of Millen, hence the name that Harley Davidson
gave to the route. From Millen it’s Highway 17 to the town of Wadley. Wadley is
the most north-westerly point of the route. The route is basically a right
angled triangle and Wadley is the endpoint of the hypotenuse. As we all learned
in grade 5 math, although the squares of the other two sides together are equal
to the square of the hypotenuse, the sum of actual lengths of the other two
sides is greater than the hypotenuse, hence at Wadley I am less than half way,
even though it’s already 2 in the afternoon. I have arrangements to meet Mike
at 4.30. I text and arrange a later time. We are planning an early dinner in
Savannah – sushi. I actually don’t
expect to be too late, from Wadley it’s motorway and main roads home. US 1
directly south is a dual carriageway motorway and the traffic speed is well
over 80 mph which the Harley does with ease, albeit at the expense of jellied
eyes and loosened dental amalgam. At the town of Lyons, I take US 280 east which
eventually merges with Highway 204 which is, as mentioned earlier, none other
than Abercorn Street, which is pretty much where my hotel is. I’m home in time
for a shower and change before Mike fetches me for dinner.
As I put the finishing touches to this post, it is several
weeks later. I am back in Canada, and sadly back in winter. It has been a very
grey Sunday and I’m looking out of the window to the back garden that is
covered in a light dusting of snow. I really miss the sunny and warm Georgian
spring that I was able to experience for a short time. Frankly I miss Georgia and
South Carolina. Mike and I visited, by
car, Hilton Head, Charleston and Tybee Island. What a fabulous part of the
world, I will definitely like to ride down to the area on my bike sometime, I
suspect that autumn is the time to do it, summer may well be too hot.
I managed one short ride since getting back, but then the
polar vortex paid us a visit. For now, it looks like the riding season is
delayed for a few weeks, it seems that Wiarton Willie, the Ontario groundhog, got
it wrong.
BTW – follow me on Twitter:
Hilton Head - South Carolina
Charleston - South Carolina
Tybee Island - Georgia
