Georgia is on my mind. How couldn't it be? It's smack dab in
the way of my progressing up north. Fortunately I still have some friends in
Atlanta so I'm gonna make the most of it.
Crossing the border from Florida I immediately stop to fuel
up. At $3.33 per gallon I briefly consider just doing laps around Georgia for
the remainder of the trip, but a bookstore billboard catches my eye and I
decide to have a look. First I go next door and have a stroll at the Antique's
store which is a very large utopia for anyone into that kind of thing, but it
also has a seriously good collection of vinyl too. If you're looking for new
tunes to rock those needles let me know, I'll send you directions.
Now I enjoy reading. I used to do quite a lot of it, but
these days it's mostly via the web. However, on a trip like this some thread bound
paper and ink is never a bad thing. Even if only to start a campfire. The
problem is that I hate searching for books. When I walk into a bookstore my
brain just sort of freezes up and shorts out from information overload. I do
slightly better in libraries where I find it easier to zone in on what I find
interesting, but I decided long ago to more or less give up on finding books
and focus instead on letting books find me!
I know that may sound like some Age of Aquarius mumbo jumbo,
but I have to tell you that although I haven't been constantly reading lately,
the books I have read are all winners. So it's with some intrepidity that I
stroll into this bookstore. I quickly realize that one way or the other it's
going to be a quick trip. Fifty percent of the books are Bibles, another 40% of
the books are about the Bible and the remainder are, I assume, filed under the
genre of "slightly to mostly blasphemous".
Amazingly I came away with three books. The Auto- biographical
Volume 1 of Mark Twain who happens to be one of my favorite authors, nearly
tackled me as I walked down its aisle. It's a tome and with its weight and
girth it simply jumped out in front of me and demanded that I buy it. Out of curiosity
I decided to see if they would carry anything Buddhist and to my surprise I
found my second purchase, the one and only book of that type in the store.
Lastly, at the checkout they offered a
book by Mr. Rogers for fifty cents. When I was very young, maybe 6 or 7,
I remember exclaiming very loudly to my
Mother as I pointed to him on the T.V., "I DON'T LIKE HIM!!". I can't
remember exactly why I objected so much to Mr. Rogers, but I suspect he was
just too nice and sugary. However, as an adult I can respect his message and
heart so I felt I had to give him a second chance and bought his book for a penance.
Though I do hope it isn't too sickly sweet. 
Heading deep into Georgia I had planned on staying in Oconee
National Forest for the evening. Unfortunately, I didn't do much actual
planning and drove around and through about 80% of it trying to locate the
Ranger station and only finding private homes everywhere which I thought was
very odd for a National Forest. Needless to say you can guess where the Ranger
station check-in was (somewhere in the other 20%) and I eventually gave up on
the idea and settled for another night of concrete camping.
The actual heart of my Georgia trip I'm going to keep short
because it was about getting caught up
with a couple of old band mates and although vastly fulfilling for me, it would
be of little interest to others. Suffice it to say that they are doing well and
I'm very happy to learn that they have not let their creative sparks die and
are as successful as ever. A third band mate whom I didn't even know was living
there was working so I missed him, but it was nice to hear his voice and catch
up on the phone.
Progressing north I was a little bummed that plans fell
apart to have breakfast with an old mountain biking buddy due to residuals of a
dental procedure, but he did confirm what I would be doing for the afternoon.
Riding Blankets. No, not sleeping in between the sheets. Riding "Blankets",
a top-rated trail system near Woodstock,
GA. I never in my life saw a trail parking lot with close to 100 cars in it!
Roswell Bikes and Specialized even had tents set up and demo bikes available.
I'm not quite sure why I skipped on demoing a $5000 bike? I guess I was either
afraid of trashing it or afraid of taking too much of a liking to it! All in
all, a great place to ride. They put a lot of work into it and it's well laid
out.
One last night of camping in Georgia, I stayed at Cooper's
Creek in Cohutta National Forest. I thought it was funny that neither the camp
host or the camp Ranger were familiar with my "America the Beautiful"
Annual Inter-Agency Pass. It wasn't quite like a bad movie parody, "We ain't
never seen one a does 'fore!", but I still had to chuckle and then settled
into a cool evening by the "creeking crick". Actually with the sounds
of the water flowing over some of the rocks, it was more of a "babbling
brook", I'd say. I couldn't understand what it was trying to say, but that
didn't stop me from trying. It kind of sounded like it was saying, "Aren't
you glad you're not in that horrendous Atlanta traffic anymore?" The
answer to which would be a resounding "Hell Yes!".
So it's off to North Carolina.....
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