Long distance trip number three is here. In the beginning, time seemed so slow. With each ride, adventure, encounter, it keeps going faster and faster. I’m noticing a pattern, though: before each one of these major adventures, some bit of anxiety creeps in about what may or may not happen.

With Life at the Pace of Sweet Tea, it was mechanical. Batteries, brakes, suspension, clutch switches all ate away at the adventure, fixed with a credit card swipe at the BMW dealer. With Recalculating, it was the fires — cadence, then re-cadence, of planning and routing around whatever was burning that week in the Pacific Northwest. Both were phenomenal experiences. I’ve long learned every adventure has to have a villain if there’s a hero in the same story. The challenge is you never exactly know who the villain is, or when they’re gonna show up.

Packing is supposed to get easier the more I do this. It doesn’t. Something always changes. This time it’s the diabetes and trip length. The insulin, pumps, and all the related paraphernalia I have to carry have changed. This is a longer adventure than Sweet Tea, and I don’t have the luxury of the bigger bags I run out west. My packing list is phenomenal, but this round has been an art in space management. To add to it, forgetting that pair of shorts sitting wet in the washing machine fifteen minutes before departure isn’t exactly smooth planning. I“I’ll get there,” I told myself under my breath. “I’ll get there.”

Departure eventually happened. Unfortunately, it was noon.

Highway 21 (Of Course)

I met Trevor at Kickstart Motorcycle Club here in Savannah, a group I’ve come to very much enjoy. He told me to go ride a bunch of beautiful places in the Low Country over the winter, and stay off Highway 21 — It’s filled with trucks and not so beautiful.

As I pulled out of the subdivision, I found it ironic that Google Maps was sending me east, far out east, to turn around and go west. I let it pull my proverbial chain. Maybe it was routing me around some traffic challenge downtown. I kept scratching my head, though — why wasn’t it sending me down I-16 toward I-95 to head north?

Whatever. I kept following it.

Maps dropped me onto Interstate 516. Close enough, I figured.  At least it’s a freeway. One exit later the highway ended and I was dropped into the center of Garden City, a place I’d never been, so maybe that’s an adventure in itself. Google Maps must’ve been listening yesterday at Kickstart, and had a bit of a sense of humor. Where did I end up? Highway 21.

The town started getting industrial, and I got a closer look at the shipping and receiving economy of Savannah. Did you ever watch Bagger Vance? That Savannah is tree-lined streets, Spanish moss, quaint coffee shops and restaurants, iconic architecture. That is not this Savannah. I was in the bowels of the industrial center of town, transport trucks all around me, rough pavement, a mix of inattentive and overly aggressive traffic driving very big machines. Unlike that Savannah, there was nothing genteel about this moment. Trevor was right. This sucks.

I thought about my buddy Corey from Washington, and how I used to joke with him that all the crazy stories they tell you at motorcycle safety training are true. They are. I smile now because they’re still all true, a whole continent away. I was exiting a post office parking lot, the exit clearly marked with multiple signs — DO NOT ENTER — and a large SUV came barreling in anyway. I saw it, hit the brakes, swerved. She was clueless about me, the signs, the markings, and unbothered that I was in her way. I was unseen.

The industrial stretch slowly waned. I’d hoped the trucks would magically all peel off onto I-95 for destinations beyond, but no — this area has industries scattered across the whole metro, so rather than one triumphant departure, they disappeared a little at a time. A factory here, a transfer station there, a truck stop over yonder. By fifty miles out of town, I was finally by myself.

Southeast Georgia in the Rain

There was no way I was staying dry on this trip. The rain down south doesn’t bother me anymore. If anything, I welcome it on these small country roads — it keeps the temperature down and me comfortable. A respected rider friend once told me about the Zen of riding softly in the rain, and that was the moment today. Quiet country road in southeast Georgia, rain gently tapping on my helmet, suit, bike. Life was good. The fact that I can say that makes me smile, because I’m becoming a more confident rider.

I’ve been all over North Georgia — the country roads, the small towns. I’ve only run the interstate in every other direction in the state. I have not been well off the beaten path in the southern part of it. Outside a narrow window called Savannah, it’s all foreign land, so I made a focused effort to really see.

It’s not athletic riding, the way Northern California is athletic — tight, windy mountain passes, rough coastal roads. It’s not athletic like Atlanta, where you’re racing well above the limit just to avoid getting run over by someone further over the speed limit than you are. Here, you’re just here. State and federal highways snake all over this part of the world, going relatively underutilized as the interstate takes the bulk of the traffic.

I was on a beautifully paved four-lane with nobody around, and that gave me time to see things. I saw a survey crew off to the side of the road. Then came two guys on a landscaping crew, bush hogging an old abandoned gas station with an overwhelmed zero-turn mower. In the next small town, another guy leaned back on his zero-turn, watching the day and the traffic go by. Every set of people I passed, I’d catch their eye, wave hello, get the same hello back.

Most of the communities in this part of the state seem to be predominantly African-American. There’s something universal about a smile, a wave, a nod, a hello — it almost always gets the same energy back. I think at some level we all want to be seen. To be seen is to be known. It’s a much more basic recognition than being “seen” at work for the next promotion. That’s hustling, and I don’t take anything away from the hustle — but what I’m poking at is simpler than that. It’s the fact that you’re recognized, on the same level ground as everyone else.

I remember SIPDE from motorcycle training 30 years ago: scan, identify, predict, decide, execute. It’s the rubric that continually comes to mind keeping me safe and engaged. The scanning shows me the highlights and the hazards on the road ahead. Today I noticed I was using that same rubric to be connected to where I was and the people around me.

Grace

It’s hard to separate this part of the country from its deeply Christian roots, coming back so many years later. Even my Spotify playlist carries some remnants of that season of my life. I’ve held onto “Cry Out to Jesus” by Third Day, because it reminds me of one of the fundamental goodnesses of Christianity — true grace, often long forgotten in the heat of our moment.

There is hope for the helpless
Rest for the weary
And love for the broken heart
And there is grace and forgiveness
Mercy and healing
He’ll meet you wherever you are
Cry out to Jesus, cry out to Jesus

Grace is the one word that keeps a tendril for me in the faith. I remember making the decision to come out, and had all the backs of my faith community turned on me. I’d been led to believe over decades the faith had no place for me to be seen as a gay man. The altar somehow wasn’t wide enough to extend to my life. Here I was today, passing church after church, empty parking lot after empty parking lot, with the same music in my ears from back then. They were wrong then and wrong now.

What’s different? I’m truly seen today across a vibrant community. All of me is seen. Something so simple, with such rich intrinsic value. Time and this opportunity have given me the chance to slow down, give some waves, and extend some hellos, liberally give kindness and get to know those around me – even at 55 miles an hour.

Then I passed Strom Thurmond High School.

Really?

The anger came fast, and I wasn’t ready for it — not after this day where the kindness I’d been shown, wave after wave, hello after hello, conversation after conversation, had come almost entirely from the Black communities I’d been riding through. 

Here was a name honoring a man who fought integration with everything he had, sitting in the middle of the exact kind of place that had spent the day treating me, a total stranger, like I belonged. I pulled over. I needed a minute. I was angry.

My own high school went through a racial integration in the 1990s. I remember our 25th reunion, everybody back in the room with twenty-five years of perspective behind them. Our principal stood up and talked about that integration, how beautiful that moment in our history had turned out to be, how the school became better for it. Twenty-five years out, with nothing left to prove and no reason to be polite about it, and that was still the answer. Progress as something you get to keep, and get to confirm you kept.

South Carolina has a different answer. Normally a local school board in that state has full authority to rename its own school — that’s how the law works. Not here. In 1986, the state legislature passed an act specifically providing that Strom Thurmond High School “shall hereafter remain so named.” Then in 2000, the state’s Heritage Act made it even harder — any change to this kind of name now needs a two-thirds vote in the legislature. They didn’t leave it to the local community. They made sure this community couldn’t ever settle it themselves, twice over. Out of everyone in that state’s long history, this is who they doubled down on protecting.

It’s a strange kind of faith — one hand reaching for the Bible, the other refusing to let go of the hate that Bible is supposed to answer for. Grace doesn’t get legislated into being. Somebody has to be willing to extend it. This state, on this particular question, made itself legally unwilling. This isn’t the grace from the God I know.

I got back on the bike head shaking and heart breaking.  This ain’t right.

The Postcard Rally

As I approached Greenville, I began to look for a postcard in earnest. In many ways this whole search has turned the trip into a kind of rally — points to stop in, places to find things. Being this far off the beaten path, unless you’re standing in a clearly marked tourist trap, most locals just look at you like, you want a what?

So why postcards?  Dad’s birthday is next month.  I’m at a loss on how to get a man who has everything he needs and doesn’t need more stuff. So, I’m bringing him along on this trip.  Each place I’m sending a postcard sharing a moment on the trip, a memory between us, as he was the one who quickly fell in love with my book Follow Me East some 20 years earlier about crossing the country west to east by motorcycle.  This one’s for you, Dad.

The journey began in the Bay Area.  I’d found a holographic postcard at the SF Exploratorium I loved. For Savannah, my sister had suggested Walgreens, said they’d have a tourist section. I came up dry. She suggested Ace Hardware next. I called ahead to check before hopping in the car, and I was in luck — they had some. The problem was once I got there, nobody knew where the postcards were, because they’d just redecorated for Halloween. Doh! We eventually found them. That’s part of the adventure too, right?

Greenville came through for me too. I found my way to M. Judson Booksellers, who had one, made by a local artist. Yay!

Greenville itself was tough, though — long first day, and South Carolina blessed me with every single red light from the Georgia line to the North Carolina line, plus a little rush hour thrown in for good measure. Crossing I-85 at least marked progress.

Dinner was fast food, standard fare. I got in and out before two school buses pulled up and unloaded a massive number of kids.

And then there was Google Maps, fighting me the whole way. I never could tell what it was optimizing for — not clear on regular planning, not clear on avoid-highways, just recalculating and recalculating again. One missed turn and the whole thing went into limbo, tacking on hours or dropping me back on the freeway. Recalculating followed me from the Pacific Northwest all the way to the Carolinas, apparently. Same villain, different coast.

Hendersonville

I rolled in at 8:30 p.m., just under 300 miles on the day.  Day 1 complete. 

Wunderlich is first on the list in the morning. Best place to outfit your BMW, and they call this town home. I’m after case liners — long overdue, and they should make loading and unloading a whole lot easier for the miles still ahead.

Route: Savannah → Hendersonville