TheSouth2011

Day 13

Wednesday, 8 June 2011
Madison, GA to Sandersville, GA
70.9 miles, 5h44m, 12.3 mph
Elapsed Time: 8h23m, Max speed: 37.0mph
Total Climbing: 2397ft, Max elevation: 689ft
Total mileage: 844.3

The plan for today was to ride 70 miles to Sandersville. Then I would decide whether to ride all the way to Statesboro on Thursday or whether to split the distance over two days. By the end of the day I decided to ride two shorter days. But then I was inspired by the crappiness of my motel room to skip the small towns and just get to Statesboro. And then I found out that there aren't and motels between Sandersville and Statesboro anyway. So, it'll be 90 miles on Thursday.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Wednesday started out easy and got increasingly more difficult.

My first failure was that Bill Weiner's Microcar Museum is closed until August. I guess it'll
have to wait for the next time I'm near Madison, Georgia. That might be never.

The second failure went to Georgia's highway department. Nice placement on the
rumble strip. By the way, this is an official Georgia bicycle route.

Oh, come on!

The rumble strips were bad all the way to Milledgeville, but then they went away. So they were an annoyance for only half the day. There was an unusually high volume of truck traffic--probably because of all the highway construction, gravel pits, dirt mines, and logging operations. The predominant smells were pine trees and diesel exhaust.

Failure the third. This is the Rock Eagle Mound--an effigy mound made from a pile of rocks.
The viewing tower was taken over by school children. So I was thwarted.

It would have looked like this (without the yellow border and words).

The first success was the oddly named city of Eatonton. This is the Pvtnam Covnty Covrt Hovse.

Eatonton is the birthplace of Joel Chandler Harris, author of the controversial "Uncle Remus"
stories, of which B'rer Rabbit is a central character. B'rer Bear needed to get in a picture.

I left Eatonton and headed toward Milledgeville. I decided to take the highway instead of the route I had laid out because I figured it would be faster and less hilly. I was right. It was faster and less hilly, but also probably less pleasant.

Everybody wants a piece of Ollie.

Milledgeville was the capital of Georgia before the Civil War. This is the reconstructed capitol
building, which is now a museum.

Then it was back on the road for the final push to Sandersville. The terrain got hilly and the heat started to be a factor--it's been over 90 degrees for 11 straight days now, so I hardly notice it anymore unless there's a lot of climbing. Lots of sand hills through pine forests--at least it smelled nice.

Usually when the house is overgrown, the yard is unkempt. What's the deal here?

The courthouse in Sandersville.

I went off the board for the motel, and I'm regretting it. What a dump. I won't go into details, but let's just say most people would have bailed on the place.

Anyway, it's off to Statesboro tomorrow and Savannah on Friday. Linda is flying down tomorrow, so at some point tomorrow I'll be able to ditch my bags and ride unencumbered. Woo-hoo!

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