Careful What You Wish…

I never set out to do an 83-mile day on Tuesday—in fact I’d planned a 42.5-mile day to Honey Hill Campground in the Marion National Forest. But I arrived at the campground at 12:45pm. It was much too glorious a day to stop so early. Also, the swarms of no-see-ums (tiny biting midges) were so thick and pervasive there was no way I was going to sit or lay inside a tent for 18-hours until the next morning.

Picture hundreds, thousands, of these tiny teeth swarming all about. If one stood still they’d be covered in dozens of moving black dots on one’s face, hands, arms, legs, clothes—and no-see-um bites rival that of mosquitoes or any biting bug, some say worse.

So I moved on.

Even though I’d scheduled out the next five days through Wilmington, NC, I decided on the spot to move on and skip camping and bike well into the afternoon. 

Why ensconce myself inside a tent when there were 7-more hours of beautiful daylight? So I decided to move on without any particular plan where I’d end up. Schedules be damned.

So if you look at the last post’s pictures you see a variety of roads, national forest pics, burnt churches, cemeteries, the strangest Luna Moth sighting (on the wall of a Circle K) outside Georgetown, SC—and that I, indeed, made it to Georgetown, SC.

I found lodging and after 83.1 miles—my longest day biking this trip, and my longest ever—I found  lodging by the water, inside four walls, and mercifully no-see-um free (although I was festooned with the earlier itchy bites).

My plan all along (and the cryptic birthday allusion) was that no matter where I was on the Atlantic Coast Route / East Coast Greenway I would take a break and head back home to Boston for my life-partner / wife’s—Pattie—birthday on April 1st. 

On my day off in Mt. Pleasant, when the bike was being serviced, I worked out Wilmington, NC, as the point where I could rent a car and be in Boston by April 1st. But it was cutting it close, and I was running into some difficulty arranging for a car hire in Wilmington—a convention or Spring Break?

So when I realized how much of a chunk I bit off biking 83-miles, leaving a mere 16-mile ride the next day as per plan, I thought I’d check to see if I could move the visit up a few days.

As nice as the Lowcountry waterside setting in Georgetown, SC is…

… spending a few extra days with Pattie seems like a better alternative. No contest! So I quickly came up with an alternate. 

I was able to secure a one way rental car to Boston, MA. Note here the first pannier is already in the car…

… and now the entire kit and bike. (Who’s behind that shadow?)

Yes, that’ll do nicely. 

Now for a longer day driving 880-miles, through torturous beltway traffic around Washington, DC: because 15-hours of driving is nothing next to the joy of spending Pattie’s birthday with her, instead of dodging cars, screws, nails, and every type of road detritus imaginable (and now no-see-ums).

This will be bliss!

And so, with this short break—I do have 2,000 more miles to go to get to Canada—on a bike, yesterday, I also hit the halfway mark of my goal to bike 3,000 miles this year. So Canada seems imminently doable — after this brief pause.

After 26-Biking Days:
Start: Key West, FL
Temporary Stop Point: Georgetown, SC
Miles: 1,085.7

Yeah, that’s me… and all this time you thought I was a mere shadow… stay tuned for the conclusion.

What I’m Reading:

Americans are most themselves and most likeable when on the road. We are a restless nation. Adventurism, for better or for worse, is the bedfellow of optimism.

— Robert D. Kaplan / Earning the Rockies