To the Coast

I got my stitches out while at the house, spending time writing, editing photos, generally catching up. Justin's parents graciously took me out to an Italian dinner and I talked bikes with Justin's dad and then on Saturday I decided it was time to start heading back, if in a round-about way. I'd checked the weather and it was forecasted clear and cooling, so I headed to the coast for some calming and then back home.

I decided to follow the Georgia-South Carolina border southeasterly to the coast then head north, island hopping to Charleston. At first the route was up and down and lined with trees, following a river more or less, and there was some water here and there.

Sunday my phone broke down, starting the worrysome process that follows when you’re alone and in the unknown with no contact, then spent a lot of that day trying to get it to work for me again, and eventually with a helpful hand from Justin was able to figure things out and follow the worry-free road again.

Spent the nights in the forests and cooking up my dinner under trees, then waking up to stick bugs and unknown patterings and rustlings of feet in the leaves and darkness. Too heavy stampering meets with me clapping my hands, heart racing from the shadowy sneakies of the pine needles, then they high tail and make their wild sounds, and I hear the things running off into the distance.

Crossed the border, following the road into Georgia and took me through Augusta. At first it was all suburban stores and a main street of endless restaurants and strip malls, then I got into the downtown after a long ride on a forgotten gravel highway shoulder. On the main drag I met some homeless guys in the park that runs down between the one way streets.

Rob, Jay, and David. Rob was the pushiest, but in a self-maintaining way. He seemed to know he’d met a kid who would give a dollar if he had it. He took me to the music store where he played on a guitar and sang about Georgia, sang another song in the park, gave me a lesson on making flowers from palm leaves, had me record all of this, told jokes, etc. They’d all occasionally burst out into song, pass the torch for telling stories, recite poems, anything to pass the time and shoo the boredom.

Rob’s habits were balanced by the serene mocking air of Jay. He’d been a professor once. He was an unquotable guy with such wit and an irrepressibly spontanious tongue. Nothing I can faithfully reproduce in text by memory. It’d be a crime to try. He read some of his writing, improvised prose, gave words of wisdom with bottomless grace. Rob had drawn a portrait of Jay on the ground of their circle and Jay seemed to take a small amount of pride in the piece. David once had placed his shoes down on the hair of it, and Jay had looked over and told him to keep his shoes off of his hair, please, with a mild, perhaps sarcastic, tone of offense.

David would go on trying to defend himself and maybe apologize, but as with any other time he’d try to get in a word, we’d all try to listen, but with a voice so soft against the drumming of the cars most often no one could catch more than a bit of it.

They’d all discuss the town and its ways. If you were to buy the local newspaper, read one of the editorials on one of the three topics of interest (there are always three) and form and defend your opinion on your chosen topic, you could get a free cup of coffee anywhere in Augusta, Jay said.

He also told me about the cycle of being homeless there: You’d go to a homeless shelter (or a transition house as they like to call them), stay the night. They’d eventually decide that because you were homeless you were no longer fit to be there (this was totally arbitrarily decided), and then kick you out. You’d then, out of necessity, spend your nights on the streets, eventually to be picked up by a cop and taken, again, to a homeless shelter, where the process would reiterate itself. He said it all with a laugh and in a way such that you would roll your eyes with him and watch as he brushed it all casually off his shoulders and dance blissfully away from the sun into the colorful allies to have another fitful adventurous night.

I could write pages and pages on the interactions between these guys, but I feel like I’d never achieve any authenticity. Together they were a working mechanism, unique in every aspect and seemingly perfectly functional. Each was a character novel-worthy. We sat in a circle for a couple of hours passing some time but eventually it was time for me to move on.

The riding continued somewhat monotonously along the state lines. The typical scene was a long, flat, skinny road, no shoulders, running alongside the string of electric lines, trees on both sides. Sometimes an elongated pond would seep up through the ground in the right or left ditch, and I'd pass by as a turtles pair would hop off a fallen log into the water, eyes and noses peeking out from the surface at me as I went, or there'd be a group of butterflies drifting along in the air beside me, floating over the golden rod or little purple trumpet flowers. It went on like this for days, steadily and slowly as I crept toward the coast and last night I finally got here. Made it to the coast and onto Hilton Head Island, where I am now.

I suppose I should preface my impression of Hilton Head by saying that it's a beautiful place, everything nice and shaded, a whole island with a roof of leaves and branches. The problem that I've encountered is that, though it's lovely I'm sure, I just can't get to the beach. I'm on an island, and stranded in the middle of it. The entire border seems privately owned and is posted for trespassing (violator's prosecuted!). Everywhere you go, it's resorts and hotels. This would be fine if they didn't form a wall keeping me from experiencing anything other than bike paths. I can go in circles all day long, riding next to old people looking down at me from the seats of their rented bicycles, but that's not enjoyable to me. I had to deal with highway traffic and no shoulder to even get onto the island, and now that I'm here there's nothing to do. This place just wasn't made for people who don't have money to spend on a weekend reservation at a resort hotel.

Besides all that, it's lovely.

And here I am, sitting in the library, and what would I do without libraries? They save me. When I'm on my computer writing and just playing around on the internet it's like I'm at home again. I forget where I am and what's outside, and often that's a comfort. Now I suppose I'll try to find my way off this island and go north to Beaufort. Hopefully it's the opposite of what I've found here.