Day 6 - Rest day - Columbus, Georgia

Finally a day off! After dragging into Columbus late yesterday afternoon, we have now got a day off! Good as it is about 30 degrees and high humidity outside, but not so good as about 80%+ of places are closed on Sundays around these parts & the roads are deadly quiet and great for riding on. Like a ghost town in fact.

The rest day has been well recieved by all members of the group, with some weary muscles after a shock to the system through a grand total of 601 kms for the five days riding! this was in stark contrast to our plan at the start - given our training leading in & our experience cycling with racks and pannier bags (zero) we thought staying under 100kms a day was sensible for the first week. not to be at all! I also want to emphaise the fact that we are carrying our own gear on our bikes - once we get some photos up you will see - which makes it extermely harder than the average sunday morning bunch ride!!

So it was great to stay in a real bed lasty night after a long day on the road (we are averaging 20-25kms/hr at the moment, in flat to rolling terrain). A bit of a sleep in, and then a buffet breakfast. We then rocked into central Columbus (ghost town on a sunday morning!), where we waled along the chatahochee river and then went along to the national civil war naval museum - a pretty interesting place. While at the museum we were lucky enough to coincide our visit with some civil war reinactors - camped out in the full confederate uniform, old school tents, chowing down on a lump of dried cracker - authenic to the smallest detail. Interesting to observe the armoured boats used in the war - 4 inch thick plating over 2 foot of timber! Cannonballs just bounce off!

Columbus overall is a very nice place, wide open spaces, nice old buildings and real relaxed people!

Will be an easy night tonight, then back on the road tomorrow!


Day 5 - 143kms - Warner Robins to Columbus (on the Georgia-Alabama border)

Another mammoth day. Was a stiff headwind for the first few hours and a pretty slow pace! Even looked like rain for a while. Luckily it came right in the afternoon, a lighter headwind/sidewind & it was hot! The ride was marked by a change in eating habits - we are now finding a decent morning tea/second lunch sets us up better for the day (followed of course by a big lunch!!). takes a fair amount of energy to propel those bikes along, especially in any sort of wind other than a tail wind, as the bags & stuff on the racks creates massive air resistance (and they are heavy!).

Finally got the passport question while buying lunch - the lady serving us loved the accents & asked where we were from, to which we answered NZ, to which she replied - gee, does that mean you need a passport?, yes we answered, gee that must be a big hassle having to get one on those things... hard to answer & had to come sometime... however, NZ is a bit smaller than the States...

Overall the roads we have chosen to date have been fairly good - nice wide verges for cycling, better surfaces in NZ, and most drivers are a lot more considerate than in NZ! We have only had one redneck throw a bit of rubbish at us in the whole ride (on day 1), and a handful yell abuse. fingers crossed for the rest. Things got a bit worse as we got closer to Columbus, as the verge reduced to rubble and rubbish we quickly exited the highway & made our way to a petrol station where an absolutely boozed man helped us find accomodiation & pretty much everthing else in the whole town.

As we were now getting pretty high in the km count, we were all on the black gold - coca cola - for the last bit; ironic that coke would fuel us into the home of coke (Columbus is where the inventor of coke comes from).

A pretty cruisy night followed - burgers at a local burger joint and then watching the semis of the March Madness college b'ball tourny back at the hotel.

The hotel room only had tow ful size beds - so once again the rock off was on for the top & tailing - Ben B dominated again, leaving Dave scoreless in rock paper scissors after 5 rounds!!

Day 4 - 125 km - Adrian to Warner Robins (airforce base town)

Following the 80 then the 96 (mostly) - we originally hoped for a 100 km day (the story of the week!) - but forgot to turn at a small town called Danville and ended up doing a bit more (some more got added on at the end as well when we were in search of a place to stay...). Hot today again! Passed through the town of dublin and had a decent lunch of fesh pizza and some subs - easily the best lunch to date. was good to have a chat to some of the locals at the diner as well. on arrival at our destination we made it to the local supermarket - we started talking to some people about places to camp - and a nice guy (Joe) offered us a place to stay in his backyard. A couple of minutes cycle from the store and he even took our groceries in the car for us! legend. His place turned out to be really nice, overlooking a bit of a lake, and Linda (his wife) was really nice also. Joe turned out to be a bit of an antique gun maker and target shooter, which was pretty interesting stuff. The boys however were starting to feel a bit jaded after 4 long days on the road!

Day 3 - Georgia Border - Adrian (143km)

Our original goal on this day was to bike to a little town called Swainsboro (about 115km) away, but we went quite a bit further partially assisted by some smooth highways and tailwinds, but also limited camping options. Once we arrived at the visitor centre in Swainsboro we were pretty tired, had already exhausted our coke reserves and were faced with two options. The lady at the visitor centre had kindly offered to let us camp at her place (5km in the other direction) or we could push on to the next town to a camp site. We decided to push on and arrived in Adrian just before dark. Needless to say we slept pretty well that night. As we have two 2 person tents there is the daily task of deciding who will have the tent to themselves by a game of rock, paper, scissors has become quite a competitive process. After 3 days Ben B has had the single tent to himself with Dave and Ben S beginning to talk about alliances to eject Ben B out of the single tent.

Lucky for Dave there werent too many people around while he got into a bit of a sponge cleansing...


Day 2 - Walterboro - Georgia Border (90km)

After another reasonably smooth day we crossed our first state line and moved into Georgia "the Peach State". The kind ladies at the Welcome Centre loaded us up with goodies including some priceless Georgia lapel pins and we were on our way to Campsite number two down by the Savannah river to meet and greet the local mosquito population.



Day 1 - Charleston - Walterboro (100km)

After a great stay in Charleston we headed off for Sullivans Island where we performed the ritual dipping our toes in the Atlantic as well as exchanging a few photos. From the beach it was a bit of a shaky start as none of us had ever ridden with a load on our bikes before! Charleston is a fantastic town filled with grand old homes so it was a pleasure getting lost here for a while before finding our way onto the open road. Other than one tub of tomato sauce that was sent our way out a car window the day went pretty smoothly the cars and trucks especially gave us plenty of room which was a relief after hearing a few stories of the dreaded Highway 17. Fortunately on arrival in Walterboro we were lucky enough to meet Karl and Beverley who let us camp at their place and shower up and relax to a little tv after our first day in the saddle. This was an awesome way to get started and we hope to be able to return the favour when Karl and Beverley move to NZ one day (no pressure). Thanks heaps guys.