Crashed my bicycle
Hey, everybody! I spent the Labor Day weekend in Savannah visiting Kat. Apparently she’s dyed her hair black now. She also has a pet kitten now, who is adorable. I got some pictures of her (Isobel? I just remember that’s it’s spelled goofily.), which I will post when I’m feeling more motivated.
Savannah was beautiful, and I had a chance to ride around it a bit on my bicycle. While looking for lunch, I found some bike route signs that I think lead out to Tybee Island. I didn’t get a chance to go quite that far, but being able to go there on a bike seems like it would be a neat trip. About the only part of Savannah that really bugged me was River Street, since it seemed to me like a celebration of everything that’s wrong with tourism. You could have moved River Street anywhere else—any Florida city, a Caribbean island, Fisherman’s Wharf, even Atlanta’s Five Points if you put a canal through the middle of it—and it would be the exact same experience. For a city that claims to have so much character, I’m surprised that such a generic parade of restaurants and souvenirs is tolerated, both by the residents and the visitors whose money creates such a bazaar. I had a few drinks at the bar Kat works at while waiting for her to get off of work, and even this place, with the best Bloody Marys in town (which come out of a bottle) was just very unexciting. All the drinks at the bar were served in plastic cups. How lame is that? Besides reminding me that I hate tourists even when am I one, though, Savannah was quite a nice place. Sure, the historic district is riddled with poverty and crime, but I feel more comfortable there than I do out here in the ‘burbs. There’s just something about it, perhaps the oldness of everything, that has a very pleasant and calming effect, as if the place is trying to tell you that it stands for something, that it has it all figured out, and it’s best to just go along with it. Maybe it’s the Spanish moss. We don’t get any of that stuff north of Macon.
The drive to Savannah was the most boring thing ever, of course. I think that I-16 was twisted through the least populous areas of middle Georgia by design, emphasizing its purpose as no more than the Macon-Savannah connector. Of the 19 counties [1] I passed through on this wild ride, 11 of them were on I-16, and yet, excluding its endpoints, it only held three of the cities through which I passed [2]. It’s not that these counties don’t have cities, it’s just that their cities aren’t anywhere near I-16. I think that Laurens county was the most densely incorporated on my path, excluding Chatham and all those silly islands, and yet even there it seemed like I passed through Dudley, a city of 464 according to the 2000 Census, purely by accident, as if they mistakenly claimed I-16 while trying to acquire some land on the other side of the road.
In other news, upon my return to Smyrna, the Jonquil city, I managed to sprain my ankle in a few short hours upon arrival. Unlike Savannah, which is mostly flat and filled with slow-moving cars, riding a bicycle in the Atlanta suburbs is a truly harrowing experience, since everyone drives about 55, no matter the road, and it’s rather hilly, so it’s difficult at times to maintain a pace that’s more than a crawl next to the cars. Out of this fear of becoming a hood ornament, I usually ride sidewalks where possible in Smyrna. On Monday, while on the way to Barnes & Noble, I hopped off of the sidewalk on Cumberland Parkway or Boulevard or whatever it’s called near the h.h. greg greg to dodge a family that was walking on it, and, when I tried to get back on behind them, I found that the next ramp wasn’t so much a ramp as just a shorter curb. I hit a lip of two inches or so with my tires nearly parallel to it and went down in a pile of spinning wheels and swearing. Either the sounds of the crash or the foul language attracted the attention of the people I was dodging, but apparently I looked healthy enough while sprawled out on the grass that they just kept on going. I’d like to extend a big thanks to the guy across the street who at least stopped and asked if I was all right. Sure, I didn’t have any obviously broken bones or life-threatening injuries, but damn, that hurt. As someone whose scars come mostly from bicycle injuries, that was the most painful spill I’ve ever had, especially since my ability to walk is still impaired a day later.
My ankle isn’t broken (it doesn’t hurt like a son of a bitch, just half of one), but I may have sprained it or something. It’s not so serious that I can’t still hobble around, and, in fact, I had the stupid idea of continuing on to the bookstore as soon as I had picked the pieces of my headlamp out of the street, but it does hurt, and it’s bruised up in a rather unattractive manner since yesterday. During that accident I also managed to put a hole in the shoe of my other foot (along with the sock and the foot itself), which means I need to get new shoes now. Grr. I remember buying those during the last ice storm, so I don’t think I’ve had them even six months yet. What a waste.
Political boundaries along I-16 were determined mostly through the use of GDOT maps and occasional help from county GIS services.
[1] In order from Cobb: Fulton, Clayton, Henry, Spalding, Butts, Lamar, Monroe, Bibb, Twiggs, Bleckley, Laurens, Truetlen, Emanuel, Candler, Bulloch, Bryan, Effingham, Chatham
[2] In order from Smyrna: Atlanta, Morrow, Stockbridge, McDonough, Locust Grove, Forsyth, Macon, Dudley, Metter, Bloomingdale, Savannah