Things Got Tough...
Savannah was a real high point in our first week of the trip. We felt ready for anything after having a short time to explore a new city. However, we were about to learn just how hard bicycle touring can be.
As you recall, we had to stay an extra day in Savannah because rain and high winds would have made for a very rough ride to Statesboro. Thankfully, by Wednesday the rain had subsided, but there were still going to be winds up to 20 MPH. We figured that the wind would be a lot easier to handle in sunny weather rather than rain, so we took off on Wednesday morning, hoping to ride about 55 miles to the nearest campground in Statesboro.
The ride started out well enough. We got past the roads with a lot of traffic, leaving the outskirts of Savannah and entering the rural areas of Georgia. The wind was gusty at times, which slowed us down, but it didn’t really bother us much. We stopped at a gas station for a bathroom break and to pick up some canned sardines for a later meal, and the older man behind the counter warned us that someone had been killed on the road we were riding on, and gave us another route that might have less cars on it. We took his advice and followed the route, which took us through a quiet neighborhood.
After about 20 miles, Andrea started feeling some sluggishness in her rear tire. Mitch pumped it up with our hand pump, and we started on our way again. After a few more miles, Andrea noticed the sluggish feeling again, so we looked for a safe place to pull over and take off the tire to make sure there wasn’t a leak.
Luckily, only about a half-mile down the road, there was an abandoned church, door wide open, with a grass lot in front. We stopped in the grass, unloaded Andrea’s bike, and took off the rear tire to inspect it and the inner tube. There didn’t seem to be any damage to either one, so we put them back on, pumped them up, and started on our way again. Immediately, Andrea felt that the tire was bumpy, so we pulled back into the grass lot and repeated the process. By the time we were done, it was after 4:00 PM, and we still had about 2 hours of riding to do before reaching the campground. We didn't want to set up at the campsite and cook dinner in the dark, and the temperature was getting closer and closer to freezing as the sun set, so we made the decision to stay at the Friendship Baptist Church overnight.
The church had obviously been abandoned for a few years. There were holes in the bathroom walls, saggy wet spots in the ceiling, and mouse droppings all over the broken piano. As we looked around, we soon realized that this had been an African-American Baptist Church, and an old one at that. Our thoughts were confirmed when we discovered a box of papers on the floor of the main sanctuary, which contained a Sunday School booklet detailing the history of the church. It explained that the church had in fact been founded by slaves in 1867, where the congregation practiced in a space lent to them by the white congregation of the Old Fellowship Baptist Church. After the church building was constructed, the white owners controlled both churches until 1886. This church had a long and arduous history, and it was very unfortunate to find it in such a state of abandonment and disrepair. We spent some time reflecting on the weight of what we had stumbled upon, sitting in an empty pew and hoping that someday someone would have the means and the willingness to restore this historical site so that it didn’t completely deteriorate.
Soon after, we set up our sleeping gear on the carpeted floor, cooked and ate a simple pasta dinner outside in the graveyard behind the church, among the headstones of slaves and other more recent churchgoers. It was a somber meal, and though we were grateful for the shelter for the freezing cold night, we weren’t exactly looking forward to sleeping inside the church that night.
Our melancholy mood continued as we prepared for the night, and neither of us was much motivated to do much of anything, so we both texted our parents to let them know where we were, turned off all our devices to save the batteries, and settled in for the night, just as darkness fell on the empty choir pews on the stage in front of us. Sleep was fitful, but mostly peaceful. Thankfully, the church was on a very quiet road, so cars stopped passing by soon after dark. The only thing that woke us from our slumber were a couple of church mice, not so quiet as they nibbled inside one of the two broken pianos.
We awoke the next morning rested, but still feeling somber. We cleaned up and packed our things, leaving the church as we had found it, and set out on our way. Andrea’s bike continued to give her trouble, and we stopped for a bit to try to fix it, but it was still too cold in the morning hours for our fingers to work, so she pushed on until we reached a convenience store about 10 miles away from the church. We had skipped breakfast, so we bought some fried chicken and ate it ravenously before trying to fix Andrea’s bike. The tire wouldn’t seat properly, no matter how much we tried to reset it, so we decided to continue on until we reached Statesboro.
It was a long 11 miles to the hotel, but we made it by 4:30 PM. We wanted to take Andrea’s bike to a shop, but we didn’t have the energy that afternoon. We showered off the weariness of the last two days, walked across the street to a local restaurant to split a fried green tomato club sandwich, then headed back to the hotel to crash for the night. On Friday morning, we packed up and rode to a local bike shop, where Billy, the owner, helped us to pump up and properly reseat both tires on Andrea’s bike. Since we were running too far behind schedule to be able to cycle 200 miles to the farm by Sunday, we rented a truck, put the bikes in the bed and our stuff in the back, then drove to a local campground not far from the farm, where we are currently camping until we bike to the farm tomorrow.
Our spirits are a bit down, and our plans have been a bit thwarted, but we are quite excited to work on a farm again. We can’t wait to see what Thorn Chase Farms in Johns Island, SC has to offer!
