The original plan had me leaving Monday morning, pointed toward Ichetucknee Springs in Florida — it’s one of those places that had been on my list for years. I still remember it like it was when I was 17 and learning the ritual of camping in Scouts. The spring’s crystal clear water, old cypress trees, the kind of swimming hole that made me feel like I was in a big aquarium.
Unfortunately, It wasn’t going to happen. The trip to Atlanta, the ongoing mechanical gremlins with the GS, and saying goodbye to the lakehouse had taken more out of me than I wanted to admit. Every rider knows this moment — the one where the plan exceeds the person, and the person doesn’t have it.
Monday was going to be a bi-day. Rest, recoup, and reset. There’s no shame in that, but there’s always a loss. Ichetucknee would have to wait until fall at earliest, when the crowds thin out and the temperatures (and bugs) come back down to something I can actually manage.
Claxton, Georgia
On just about every trip I take, I try to find the wacky, out-of-the-way thing. The oddity. The stop that makes zero sense on paper but ends up being the best part of the day. I’d heard Claxton called the Chicken Capital of the World — turns out that title technically belongs to Gainesville, a couple hundred miles north, but Claxton has Claxton Poultry, a full operation that’s been running since the late 40s, so the chicken credentials are real enough. (Claxton’s actual claim to fame is fruitcake, which feels like information best withheld until after you’ve already driven there.) Claxton qualified either way.
With nothing more than Yelp in hand, I landed at Cowart’s — a genuine, bona fide Southern buffet. It had black-and-white checkered tablecloths, a wagon wheel on the wall, corrugated metal ceiling overhead, sweet tea appearing on the table as a matter of course. The buffet covered the essentials: fried chicken, collard greens, macaroni and cheese, mashed potatoes, and what I can only describe as lettuce doing its level best to pass as salad.
I was that guy who asked for unsweet tea. The waitress gave me a look and a smile — the kind that said we get one of you every now and then — and brought it without complaint. It was obvious by every measure that I neither fit nor belonged here as the motorcycle dude that looked like a power ranger, and honestly, sometimes that’s the whole point.
I mentioned I’d ridden in from California. I mentioned I’d heard there was no better place on earth to get chicken than right here. Then I tasted the macaroni and cheese, and my eyes absolutely lit up. After a string of base hits in Savannah, this was a home run — and I wasn’t quiet about it. I got a smile from the waitress. A wave from the older lady running the serving line. And on the way out, the owner came outside and said, “Hey — thank you so much for coming to our restaurant. I’m glad you enjoyed it.”
That right there. That’s southern culture, and I mean that with zero irony. The south has the crown on hospitality. If you’re ever on Interstate 16 and want a reason to get off, Cowart’s is well worth the detour.
The Roads Between
It was truly nice being off the interstate. Google Maps routed me through mostly two-lane byways threading through small towns, gentle curves in the road, nothing asking too much of me or the GS. The weather, though — wow. As the thermometer crept up, the full weight of the humidity landed like a wet blanket. I’ve ridden in the high nineties in California and been fine. The high eighties in southern Georgia with all of its humidity is a completely different conversation. At each gas stop, I could down 32 oz of hydration easily to fill my body with water.
The roads themselves were something else entirely. Gentle — a stark contrast to the aggressive ups, downs, lefts, rights, and twisties I’m used to back home — but not monotonous and grid-like the way California’s Central Valley can feel. In many ways it felt like returning to the beginnings of motorcycling: open roads, light traffic, gentle contours, room to just ride. I’d often spot side roads branching off the main highway that were nothing but dirt. Trucks had dragged that deep Georgia red clay out onto the pavement and embedded it right in. In the back of my mind I was quietly grateful it wasn’t raining — I wasn’t entirely sure how the pavement, the rain, the clay, and the motorcycle would all get along together.
Fitzgerald
I pulled into Fitzgerald and it hit me the moment my helmet came off. The gnats were relentless! They instantly swarmed around me — ears, eyes, everywhere — surrounded by nothing but concrete at a gas station – no water to be found. Around these parts I’d been getting the occasional question: “Are you hot in all that gear?” I usually smiled and said this gear increases the distance between the devil and me when I go to meet Jesus. That quip gets a laugh every time in these parts. Now I had a second answer: the gear keeps the bugs off. Gnats, no-see-ums, mosquitoes — they are all out here in force, and they mean business. From Fitzgerald forward, all the gear stays on, all the time, regardless of how hot it gets.
Crossing Interstate 75
Somewhere between Fitzgerald and Dothan, the route crossed Interstate 75 — the main artery connecting Atlanta to all of South Florida. I was casually keeping an eye out for a gas station. There wasn’t one. No exit ramp, no truck stop, no convenience store. Just a two-lane road crossing one of the busiest highways in the Southeast, and on the other side, an abandoned antiques building slowly being reclaimed by the Georgia landscape — corrugated rust roof, faded lettering, an empty parking lot with weeds pushing through every crack. The contrast was genuinely disorienting. All of that traffic and momentum flowing north and south, and here on this quiet crossing, just stillness. I pulled over and took two pictures. Some quiet places earn a moment.
The Ballot
I’d been carrying my California absentee ballot in the top case for most of the trip. It had crossed state lines with me — Savannah, Atlanta, the North Georgia mountains, and now deep southern Georgia. Voting matters to me. I’ve done it in every election since coming of age, and I don’t think it has to be complicated — I simply logged into the county elections website, updated my mailing address, and had the ballot sent to me on the road. I wanted enough time to watch how the June primary was actually unfolding before committing my vote, and eventually I found a small-town post office and sent it on its way. Every American should have that kind of access. One vote headed back toward California while I kept riding deeper into the South.
The Farm
I wandered into Dothan as the sunset brought out long shadows in the surrounding trees. The harsh light of the day was relenting to that soft, outstretched warmth of twilight. My buddy had pivoted through a number of roles inside corporate America before making the leap to tree farming, running that alongside a handful of other small businesses. In this light — literally and otherwise — I found myself genuinely admiring that risk. Part of what this journey keeps teaching me is to stay open. I want to listen to other people’s stories and take the lessons with me. My own pull toward the mountains has some parallels here worth sitting with.
Walking the farm the next morning, something shifted in how I saw the tree-lined roads I’d been riding through all day. Not forests — farms. This is paper country, and trees are a serious input into a lot of industries down here. Some plots held seedlings barely past germination, standing in wide open fields with everything still ahead of them. Others were in full adolescence, competing hard for light and space, sorting out which trees were going to win. Yet others were fully mature, the forest floor clean and open where fire had come through to burn off the detritus — controlled, intentional, and part of the cycle.
We talked about growth, stewardship, what to plant, what to cut back, what to let mature, and what happens when you ignore something for too long. Then the conversation moved into forest management — comparing Georgia’s approach to California’s, how out west we’re carrying significantly more fire load due to decades of suppression in an environment where summer rain is essentially nonexistent. Talking through it with someone who thinks about trees for a living has a way of sharpening the picture.
Somewhere on the property, a gopher tortoise was making its way across the ground, shell dusted in that Georgia red clay, completely unbothered by any of it. I stopped to take a picture. It connected something — all those roadside signs I’d been passing that said Watch for Turtles. Out here they mean it.
By the time we got back to the house and settled onto the couch, we’d spent the better part of the day talking about growth cycles, risk, and stewardship — what to plant, what to cut back, what to let mature, and what happens when you ignore something for too long. The conversation had drifted well beyond trees without either of us noticing. It turned out physical farming and spiritual agriculture are a shorter distance apart than you’d think. My buddy looked at me and asked: “So — how is your walk with God?”
That might have been the most unexpectedly defining question of the entire trip. I hadn’t really been to church since 2011. Coming out cost me most of my social community at the time, and somewhere in the years that followed I found myself settling into something I can only describe as genuine agnosticism — not knowing what to believe, not having the confidence of a committed Christian or a committed atheist, just sitting with the uncertainty honestly. When that question landed, I felt something like nakedness. Like I’d somehow failed a former version of myself. And yet in the same breath — confidence in the life I’ve actually lived. Those two things don’t fully resolve, and I’m not sure they’re supposed to.
I carried the question with me anyway. Sometimes the road gives you space to unpack and resolve the more complicated things. Other times it just lets them rest. This question sits somewhere between the two — and for now, that’s enough.
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