Cycling Across America #19
Part 19 of the Cycle-Across-America series relayed day by day, exactly ten years after it happened. (Read from the start in Boston)
Ten years ago today I was taping myself whilst cycling, so bear with me if you dare:
Tuesday, twenty past three-ish, in the shade of a tree. On the Old Camden Road, heading towards Camden having had a food stop in Hartsville - a mainly white town compared with Bennettsville where I where I stayed last night, which was a black town.Fifty-six miles on the clock. Most of these cars wave at you like there, little one or two-fingered waves off the steering wheel. And I wave back. If people are waving at you from the gardens, hand up and a quick flick of the wrist forward, like a salute almost. Some of the black guys kind of point at you in slow motion, almost as if they’re shooting you.
Since Hartsville, when I got onto this road, the Old Camden highway, at a place called Clyde; it’s been trees all the way typically. Mostly pine trees. It’s been pretty wild. It’s not like North Carolina. It’s different.
Typically I’ve had my left hand side; trees twenty-five feet high, on the right hand side forty to fifty foot high. Twice I’ve passed a field of grass, which was just amazing. Nothing particularly big, average size for home but you just don’t see grass like that at all. Not in that expanse. Perhaps I won’t find it so amazing when I get out into the Midwest. I guess so much of today was just so similar. Nothing really to stimulate the eye. Nothing different that is. You end up thinking about other things. So you think about the heat. And you go,
–My God, it’s hot!It’s just all, walls. It’s all sand with stuff growing out of it, wild flowers, wild grass, trees haphazardly, bushes. There’s not a lot you can do with it. You can’t put many houses in that. They’re picking up now actually I see. In the last couple of miles we’ve had a few.
Camden is about twenty-five miles from Colombia. Now if it’s half-three, let me see, will I make it into Camden for four o’clock? I doubt it.
“Ducks for Sale”, “Baby Chicks for Sale”. Passed some good signs today. A few signs for boiled peanuts. But I didn’t buy any.
For the most part traffic’s been giving me room. That said, a big Dumpster didn’t move over into the fast lane, which he could’ve done, never mind the central lane. There was nothing coming the opposite way at all and he had the two lanes but in the end he didn’t move whatsoever. He didn’t quite make contact with me but the wind he created very much blew me off the road. I was watching him in the mirror and knew he was very close, and was trying to see if I could hold on and stay on the road. I do have my confidence back though. It’s good. It’s real good.
Not so much a racket here. In North Carolina you always had a ditch beside you. There was always frogs and stuff jumping in and out as you went along. All this plop-plop-plop as you went along. Something getting away from you. And on the far side there was growth, and the noise of crickets. You could see them, they were two inches long. I can certainly hear some things here now but it’s not to the same extent today as I had throughout North Carolina. And yet it’s wilder kind of country in some respects. More tangled up.
“Young Road”, “Old Wire Road”. So there you are, I’m not on the Old Camden Road. I’m on the Old Wire Road.
I met an interesting chap at a garage. He was sweeping up. You have to sweep a lot here because the sand just ends up on the road, everywhere, just pure sand. It was only a small little garage, a BP one. He was born there and brought up there all his life. He was in his seventies. He has nine bicycles, because somebody gave them to him. Though he only cycles four or five of them, he says. It keeps his legs going.
He used to cycle to school (it was three miles away) when he was a young boy. And when he was a young boy he was hit by a vehicle once as something shot out of somewhere. And the wing mirror, it hit him in the arm. It broke off. He doesn’t understand why it didn’t break his arm, or take his arm off, but it split the bone in two and was stuck into his arm. He had to go to the doctor’s.
And he was telling me that he knew who had done it, and he was going to go to him but someone told him that he’d hit a boy. So he came back to him, the man did, and gave him ten dollars. And he said all those years ago when he was a young boy, ten dollars! He was going to let him stick a knob through his other arm and through both his legs. He was quite happy with that.
I only had to say a word and he’d be off into a spiel. I mentioned Virginia. He told me he had a daughter, she lived in Virginia, she died of cancer, and they buried her. He went there when they buried her. He was chatting for ages. He was good. Great accents, and he knew everybody. He told me he knew everybody, and sure enough anyone that was going past, he was waving at them, they were waving at him. He was saying hello to everyone; they were saying hello to him. And he told me when I’m going past next year, call in.
Despite the big trees, you still don’t get much of a shadow. I mean a couple of the pine trees just have a tiny smatter of a shadow like here. Not much of one, just like a few feet wide and sticking out three feet onto the road and that’s it. Because the sun is directly above us, at whatever time of the day it is now.
Let’s see, my average speed is 12.2. The odometer, the total mileage from the centre of Boston is 1’115. Maximum speed today, 27.4 miles per hour. And I’ve been cycling today for four and three quarter hours. It tends to be about seven hours by the end of the day, which doesn’t count when I jump off and take photographs. It doesn’t count my food and drink stops. Which works out about ten hours a day traveling. I left this morning at I think it was half-eight.
And dogs. I’ve been chased by a few dogs today. I tend, even though I’m a lot stronger now, I tend to slow down and talk to them. It tends to work. They might yap annoyingly but they don’t go for you. They don’t have the same get-up-and-go because there’s no target any more once you slow down. I should’ve thought of that one earlier. Though I’m not so sure that would work in Kildare and Meath.
Actually while I think about, since there’s only trees. There’s not even a sign to read, wild growth on both sides, I’ll just run through the physical pain at the moment. The small stuff first I suppose.
The right knee where I lost the skin has a thick scab on it, which used to hurt because it was tight but it now only hurts when I knock it. Which is frequently. Or else I’m scratching a Mosquito bite or a hive with my glove, the reverse side, and I hit the scab, the tender areas around the edge of it. Though that’s quite liveable.
The right hip has bruising and grazing on it. Small, compared with the left. I feel it, though.
The right leg, the muscle below the right knee goes in and out of pain. And it sometimes stiffens up in the evenings, and it’s hard to walk. It is hot. The right knee itself went on me today, which is quite sore. I was worried. It could still go through the motions, but it was sore. I was thinking if that goes, or if either knee goes, I’m in big trouble.
The thing is my right leg is my strong one since the crash. My left leg, I don’t know how to describe it really. You’ve got the huge bruise on the bum, which sitting on a bed can be just agony sometimes. It hurts when I move my whole –when I pedal, the bruise and the back hurts. The whole thigh all the way around hurts, right down to the knee but particularly up at the join at the top. The whole muscle is sore, and in moving it, it hurts the, the ass, the buttock. The lower left leg is sore also. I think it’s a knock on effect.
Oh yes this is fun.
Read from the beginning of the Cycle Across America
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