Our Indian friend from the front desk of the hotel burst into our room a few times in the morning as we were preparing to get an early start for Jacksonville. Each time he said \"ooh, sorry, wrong room!\" As we were actually leaving he dashed in again, frantically looking for something and caught us as we were getting on our bikes. \"Did you leave the key?,\" he asked. Andy and I looked at one another trying to remember who had the key last (this was not the first time we had walked away with the key). Each of us looking at the other more and more confidently, trying to intimidate the other into digging through panniers to find the key.
I finally fessed-up to having it last and rifled through and found it. Breakfast was at the 3-B's again. There was a table full of waitresses from the night before and one was with her girlfriend. We were both amazed at how many rural lesbians there are in the U.S. who seem to be out, happy and accepted in their communities. Andy was still grumbling about the beer episode the night before. He finally calmed down after a few cups of coffee. The first part of the riding day was great. Warm morning sun, wide road, little traffic, big shoulder and exquisite scenery.
Crossing the foliage-encrusted Suwannee River we got into the groove for last day of riding in the states. The splendor faded gradually as we headed for America's largest city (824 square miles). We knew that we were in the capital of white trashdom and redneckdom as we pedaled past a business called \"Repo City\" that specialized in reselling repossessed trailer homes. Cringing and laughing at the same time upon seeing the signs that boasted \"E-Z terms\", \"No money down\" and, the especially ironic - \"No credit check\". We were riding through what was signed as a National Forest. Nestled in the National Forest were five more correctional institutions.
We mused about what Florida should consider changing its tagline to. We imagined them supplanting \"The Sunshine State\" with \"The incarceration state\". The \"National Forest\" was a sham, behind the rows of trees that had been left along the road there were acres and acres of land that had been clear cut. Occasionally we came across groves of trees that had been spared. Near one of those groves we saw a tortoise on the opposite shoulder contemplating crossing the road. In horror Andrew sped across the road, picked up the wayward creature and relocated him back to the grove. Not long after this good deed we road into McClenny, nearly the last town before the sprawl of Jacksonville.
The main streets were perpendicular to the small highway we were riding on and were devoid of any lunching opportunities. We couldn't figure out where the folks in a town of over 10K were eating. We finally ran into a couple who had been stranded in the town for a few days while their car was being repaired. The looked like they were incarcerated, very sullen, very sad and very fed up with being in McClenny. They pointed us down a side street that led to the new center of the town that had grown up around the WalMart. There we hit paydirt, ate lunch and hit the trail.
The next miles were not as interesting as the last. The terrain became more and more urban. The shoulder became narrower with each mile. The traffic became heavier. Gradually the riding experience became more and more hellish. By the time we reached downtown Jacksonville we were ready to forego the Atlantic Coast Bike-at-the-beach vanity shot. We persevered and rode onward. Motorists became ruder and ruder, coming closer and closer as they passed. Finally we elected to take a lane on the narrow road and that is when all hell broke lose. As we approached a signal an impatient female motorist came up behind us and laid on her horn.
Then a bearded dude in a very fancy pickup truck lost his temper and tried to run us off the road. He nearly clipped me but only brushed my front pannier. I lost my temper and so did Andy. I saw a cop in the gas station on the corner and sped off to explain what had happened. Andy berated the bozo through the window of his truck. As I told the cop the story he started to tell me there was nothing he would or could do. Just then a woman who had seen the whole event unfold rolled into the station and started to tell the officer what had happened.
He still said there was nothing to be done. I wouldn't settle for that, the driver had intentionally tried to hit me. I told the officer that I wanted to press charges for assault with a deadly weapon. With that he called his supervisor, who instructed him to write a Hit and Run citation. That wasn't the last redneck run-in that afternoon, either. Looking back on it, Jacksonville has to be the most dangerous urban area we'd ridden through during the trip. We rode slowly and carefully to the coast. After winding through coastal residential neighborhoods we found ourselves at Neptune Beach.
The excitement of seeing the sand was too much; it signified the end of this leg of the trip. It also meant the end of riding with rednecks. We dragged our bikes down the beach and into the water coerced some little passerby to take the photo and were ready to seek a hotel when we met Robert. Robert is too large a character to describe. Novels are based on people with this big of a personality. He is the uncle of Will, the boy who took our photo. Wade, Will's brother, and Robert came up to us just after Will snapped our picture in the sand.
Robert was from Massachusetts, lived for years in California and now in Neptune beach with \"his Woman, Peggy.\" We knew this and more within two minutes of introduction. Before we knew it we were having a beer and watching the sunset on Robert's porch overlooking the Atlantic musing about our trip and learning Robert's life history while he apologized to Peggy for bringing home strangers again. Model, filmmaker, boat restorer, clothing manufacturer, professional kickboxer, amateur artist and professional bullshitter were among his past and present careers. We escaped (narrowly) to our hotel down the beach, but not without promising to come back the next day to share our bottle of champagne that somehow ended up in Robert's fridge.
On the way to the hotel we couldn't help but think how great America is and how nowhere else in the world could breed people like Robert, as well as our friends in Sanderson, Allen and Amy from Pensacola and all the other wonderful, wild and weird cast of characters we'd met along our route. We cast aside sentimentality and were soon stuffing our faces at the copious seafood buffet of our hotel, wondering how Europe would compare to the U.S. for pedaling so hard through Florida (\"the Redneck State') was not meant to be. All of the hotels in and around Jacksonville Beach were booked by prom-goers, softball clubs and fraternity parties, so we were sent packing after our brief one night stay at the beach.
We did make it down to Saint Augustine in friend Randy's veryfast car. I was curious to see our intended destination and what is billed as \"America's oldest city.\" Unfortunately, what remains of the historic old town has been all but obscured by a barrage of tourist hype. The \"oldest schoolhouse\" houses a gift shop. The \"oldest courthouse\" is now a Ripley's Believe-it-or-not Museum. Talent-free musicians pollute the streets, and busloads of tourists search for bargain souvenirs. We ended up spending that night in downtown Jacksonville, where I watched to sun set over the St. Somethingorother River. Since it was Saturday night, I felt obliged to check out the queer scene, and took a cab to a club called \"3D.\"
It was a cavernous and empty place, but soon I was talking to a guy called Patrick, a white schoolteacher who taught African-American history to black students. I thought he might be able to enlighten me as to the thought processes of rednecks. \"What makes them so mean?\" I asked, but the best response Patrick could come up with was \"That's just the way they are.\" More edifying was my conversation with a boy who insisted I call him Thumper, even though everyone else called him Richard. He was 21 and had an eight-year-old daughter living somewhere with her mother. It seems Thumper married at age 12 a woman seven years his senior after making her pregnant.
They split up when his wife caught him in flagrante delicto with her brother --a Southern story if there ever was one. timeless town center. Our first evening there we went to a highly segregated queer bar, where we treated to a rather pathetic little drag show, after which I continued my investigations into redneck culture. I met a couple at the bar who introduced me to a kind of whiskey called \"blend.\" Both of them managed restaurants in town and had grown up in redneck families. They said that rednecks made excellent lovers, which would surprise me, and were actually rather sweet, given the right circumstances.
I think they wanted me to discover this for myself, but I graciously turned down their offer. When I started to talk to Garrick, a black boy who had just moved there from Colombia (in one of the Carolinas, I think) to manage a BP station. He said he thought that the people of Savannah were mean, but didn't elaborate. I think it made him nervous talking to a white boy in front of his friends. The next day we walked around the many squares that characterize Savannah, marveling at the old live oaks dripping with Spanish moss and the carefully restored homes.
We stumbled upon Clint Eastwood and his production crew, on their first day's on-location shoot of \"Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil\", based on the book that inspired our visit. Clint looked pretty haggard, wrinkled and skinny and I wondered how anyone could still consider him a sex symbol. \$10-a-day Taurus. I entertained myself with the GPS system, which helped us find Pat's house. Pat --formerly known as \"Aunt Pat\"---is an old friend of my family's, a connection which Fred and I exploited in order to get a dose of homier living. Her house provided a great staging ground for our departure for Europe, and her hospitality was unsurpassed.
She even provided us entree into Atlanta's bewildering homo scene by way of her dentist friend, Dr. Dick. At Blake's bar, where we went no fewer than three times, we felt underdressed in jeans. Everyone had that over-groomed, just-out-of-the-shower look and I suspected that most of them vote Republican. For my birthday Fred got me a haircut at a fabulously chi-chi salon, where the ultra-glam receptionist gave me a tour before sheparding me to my chair. I also got new biking gloves and a glittery blue saddle, purchased from a dyed-and-tatooed poser called Booger. We also gorged ourselves in upscale eateries like Annie's Thai Kitchen, Indigo, and Zocalo, where the host's welcome was especially warm.
An unexpected surprise came when I was able to cash in our tickets to Europe and use a free companion coupon, saving us enough bucks for two extra weeks on the road... At the airport we were pleasantly surprised by the service of Delta's counter staff. The Japanese woman (Komiko?) who weighed our bags (more than 60 pounds each of gear, not counting the bikes or our handlebar bags) was very funny, and waived the fee for the bike boxes. A friendly homo --whose name unfortunately escapes us now--- helped us box the bikes and scored us some seats on the full flight.
Once in the air, I could only think of getting out of the claustrophobic plane and back into breathable air. Our fellow passengers seemed to consist entirely of retired American package tourists and loud and smelly Spaniards. I didn't manage to sleep at all, and felt like hell when we finally made it to Barcelona. had assembled our bikes, it was raining pretty hard. Plus we learned that the safest way into town was via the freeway, and that there was a train; so much for integrity... As we pushed our bikes up the escalators and out of the train station in central Barcelona, people waved at us and gave us thumbs-up signs.
The traffic on the streets to our hotel was horrendous, but I never felt threatened, and the hotel staff went out of their way to accommodate our bikes. After a shower and a delicious lunch (though Fred mistakenly ordered tripe and pouted through that part of the meal), we were liking Europe. It definitely felt different from the vast spaces of the US, especially in the cramped alleyways of the Barri Gotic, where we were staying. We wandered around for a while and took a coma-like nap before checking out the rather miserable Monday evening homo scene. The first place we deemed worthy of a stop was called \"La Concha\", its walls covered with photos of Barcelonian singer/actress Sara Montiel.
In another bar that doubled as a queer youth center, we met Gino from Uruguay (whose card vaguely states \"show businéss\") and young Malik from Calais, in France, who moved to Barcelona to work in a bagel shop. We poked our noses into a few other places, but they were absolutely void of life, so we opted for dinner in a lively tapas bar before hitting the hay. The next morning at breakfast we met a trio of American homos from Tampa, and then ran into them later on the roof of Gaudi-designed La Pedrera, where they invited us to have dinner with them later.
Fred and I went on to visit Gaudi's yet-unfinished masterpiece, the Sagrada Familia temple. Climbing the stairs we ran into a couple of cuties from Emory college in Atlanta who recognized us from the plane (I hadn't noticed anyone under forty) who deemed our project officially crazy. Over lunch in another tapas bar we talked to an Italian named Lorenzo, who works for a network marketing company and tried pushing his product on us. Manuel, David and Newton made excellent dinner companions. Manny is a Cuban-born pediatrician, and Newton is his cute and subtly outrageous student boyfriend. They had tons of energy and stories, while their vegetarian bachelor friend David was more phlegmatic.
We took them to La Concha to show them the Sara Montiel shrine, and then called it a night, since they had a plane to catch the next morning and we were planning to hop on a train.