Calhoun Falls, six miles short
My biking goal
this year is to ride my bike on a solo tour around the perimeter of
Let’s get the weather out of
the way right up front; it was beautiful.
The first week in March, and it was a sunny 68. It couldn't be better. A slight chance of light rain, and I mean
slight, the next day, and then another high 60's day the following day with
some wind. OK, wind is not good, but
that's 3 days away, and I could only think of the adventure, and the open road.
We all agree the weather was
near perfect. The packing, and we've had
this discussion before, was not. We are
camping. We are carrying everything with
us on a bike. We do not have room for
curling irons and hair blowers, and extra pairs of shoes, with multiple
outfits. We finally whittled it down,
but the hair blower was going, end of discussion. The bike is loaded with trailer, panniers,
and handlebar bag. Things are strapped
to trailer, lashed to the back rack, sticking out of the bag, and hanging and
dangling everywhere. I noticed two
things as I made our pre-tour picture. First,
I was excited as a little kid on Christmas, but Susan looked like she was going
to her own wake. Second, we both looked
like a couple of Okies trying to escape the dust bowl
drought and depression of the 1920's with everything we owned strapped to that
bike. This tandem is about 7' long, and
with the trailer the whole rig is around eleven feet. It wasn't a pretty sight as wobbled out of
the neighborhood and headed for the open road.
Things did start to pick up as we rolled into the countryside with our
first destination being the sleepy hamlet of Due West.
Now let me explain our
route. I chose this route using my
$20.00 SC topo map.
The small out of the way roads where picked for their lack of
traffic. Before I go on, I want to
assure everyone that I was completely successful in that respect. We saw very
little traffic. Now in English
Literature 101 they would call that foreboding.
Nuff said on the foreboding.
Now, the roads we were on were
so small they did not have names, only rural route numbers, like SSR 83 and SSR
117.
Lunch in Due West, and a rest break goes a long way in
making us feel refreshed. A lot folks
stopped, and talk about our bike and our trip.
Everyone is nice, but as they walk away shaking their heads you can hear
them muttering about the nuts on the bike.
At
Right out side Due West we hit another rural route to Faris
Cross Roads. Now Faris
Cross Roads is just that. A cross road. No town, nothing. I don't why my $20.00 SC topo
map gives me names for cross roads, but not the name of the roads. Just a thought that ran through my head as I
looked at the dirt road my $20.00 SC topo map told me
to take. Well this time we take it. Four
miles of bumpy, muddy, sandy, gravelly, scary dirt road with an overloaded,
unstable tandem goes way pass my adventure threshold. As a matter of fact it is real close to the
fall down crying, screaming, and hysterical borderline. But with Susan there,... you know the macho thing. She just told me to suck it up, and keep on
going. And on we went. The road ended with a hill that had us
pushing our overloaded, unstable tandem up most of the way. As we hung over the cross bar of the bike,
huffing and puffing, too anaerobic to even speak, we look back down that dirt
road from hell, and were just glad to be at the top. After gulping air for a few minutes we
climbed back on our without even talking, and rode off. This lead to the fourth time we got
lost.
Again no rural route numbers,
but at least by now we have gotten wiser.
We kept looking where the road should be, and sure enough we found a
stop sign with the number we were looking for.
Of course we had to turn around and ride back the other direction, but
it was the right road,
SSR 117. Good old SSR
117. Little did we know it still had a
few more tricks up it's shelve.
A quick look at the watch and we were still looking good. Not as good as before, but we still got some
time to spare. As we talked, and rode I
noticed a sign ahead, "PAVEMENT ENDS HERE". The old spirits take a little hit here. I'm also beginning to think I paid too much
for my $20.00 SC topo map, and would have been better
off with a $5.00 SC topo map. One with a few less roads. Maybe it would only show paved roads! At least this dirt road looks hard packed and
used occasionally. It's even flat and
shaded as we ride down it. It wasn’t
long before the unflawed forest look of “a road less travel” started taking the
on gloom feel of a Stephen King novel as we rode past abandon hunting shacks,
deer stands and turkey hides. Old travel trailers pulled off the road in the
woods, and ratty looking tarpaper shacks started getting our nerves a little
jangled, and when the shotgun blast broke the air we both almost fell off the
bike! As we rolled to a thump, thump,
thump stop I realized it was the tire that blew and not a gun shot. It was hard to tell which was thumping harder
though, my heart, or the tire. It was
That morning I pulled the tire off, and after close inspection found the
problem; a split right along the bead of the tire. After applying a few layers of duct tape to
patch the tire, I patched the tube, and remounted the wheel on the bike, and we
were off again. Our hopes are to make it
to Abbeville, and buy a new tire.
Abbeville is 15 miles away. 7
miles later there is swish of air, and we are flat again. Once more the tire comes off, and this time I
cut a piece of plastic coke bottle for a tire patch, and duct tape it over the
split. 5 miles from Abbeville there is
another pop, and it's gone again. This
time I know I've used every McGaver trick I know, and
when I see Susan digging a cell phone out of the bike bag I know we're
through. Now Ashley is in
OK, so there it is. Now, back to the
question; "How did that go?", I can only
say, "not too good....but wait until next time!". There was a silver lining though. Susan said she would never let worry cloud
her good judgment again. I wonder what
she means by that?
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