On the bright side, the scenery was really nice and the other riders were friendly. The other plus was that when you bike, you create your own breeze. And there seems to be a tradition at BRAG where some guy hangs beads on all the road kill he encounters, so every so often I would ride by a dead animal wearing purple beads. Ya gotta smile when you see road kill wearing beads.
Far more challenging than riding, we camped out at every stop. I quickly discovered the harsh realities of summer camping in Georgia. First, the nights are hot and muggy. This fact is especially notable because tents do not come equipped with air-conditioning. Second, the ants have taken over Georgia. Worse yet, there are fire ants, a particularly mean variety of ant with an incredibly painful bite, everywhere.
I also learned an important lesson about camping: if someone gives you a tent, assume that there's something wrong with it. I had naively taken a "free" tent on the trip. This was a disaster. The tent was tiny. It sagged. It had no ventilation. And it leaked. Even the ants rejected it. The second night out, in a contest between rain and my tent, the rain won. It seems that my tent held water in much better than it kept it out. I was fighting back tears when a guy with a big tent traded tents with Eugene so that Eugene and I could sleep in his tent. Unfortunately, the ants seemed to like the tent as well, and attempted a coup. We headed them off by spraying "Off" on their entry point and all along the trail, but there were still a few wandering around the tent. We both suffered from psychosomatic ants crawling on us all night long. I bought a new REI tent the next morning.
The next night we bailed the camping life and stayed in a motel in Savannah, where we spent the off day of the ride (there was no official ride planned) swimming in the swimming pool, sightseeing in Historic Savannah, watching street performers, eating snow cones and sleeping in a dry, air conditioned, ant-free motel.
The ride ended at the beach on Tybee Island. The temperature reached 100 degrees, but swimming in the ocean made the heat bearable. And I found a fabulous snow cone stand!
It was a long drive back and I was cranky the first half of the day. Peace on the planet, or at least in the car, was saved when I found a snow cone stand. Better than Midol, the snow cone took the edge off and I was happy for the rest of the ride home. The moral of the story is: on a long distance biking adventures, never trust a used tent, take plenty of Off, and snow cones cure all.
