Spring Break 2022 Bike Tour Day 6 - Tallahassee to Camilla

 

We are now in Georgia, where I am a gas station.

It was a beautiful day, temperatures in the 70s, and a light tailwind. The terrain is gently rolling hills, instead of the complete flatness of Florida. The palmettos have been replaced with towering longleaf pines.

It was a bit unpleasant leaving Florida. We rode on bike lanes and shoulders for 20 miles alongside US 319, a busy divided highway. And when we crossed into Georgia, the nice wide shoulder suddenly had a nice wide rumble strip right down the middle of it. There is about 18" between the rumble strip and the edge of the shoulder. This is not nice for people on bikes, Georgia. 

Luckily, we only had a couple miles on 319 in Georgia, and the remaining 40 miles or so were two lane state highways. No shoulders, but no traffic either. It was great. We made good time.

Lunch was at mile 44 in Cairo, a small town which was the childhood home of Jackie Robinson. I learned that today!

We ate at "Grits", which was a Southern buffet in a corrugated metal building. It was awesome.

Max can really put it away when he likes the food. This was another multiple trip to the buffet table day.

We are at the Day's Inn in Camilla, Georgia for the night. This is the nicest Days Inn ever. RDOQ of course.

There are only 3 motels in Camilla, and they are all right next to each other before you get to town and walking distance to nothing. So we took the panniers off the bikes and rode a mile and a half into town for dinner, which was at a place called Blades. I had fish and chips, which was good, and Max had a ribeye, which was cooked well done on one side and rare on the other, and contaminated throughout with juices from the summer squash on the side, which was described as "roasted vegetables" at the time of ordering. 

We hit Diary Queen on the trip home, so Max is happy regardless.

We did have a bit of a disaster getting to Dairy Queen though. Max wrecked his bike. It seems he wore his regular tennis shoes to dinner instead of his bike shoes, and while riding along, he forgot he was not wearing bike shoes and he tried to stand on the pedals. 

Always wear your helmet!

Max is fine, but that's because he was wearing his helmet. He head hit the curb, and his helmet has a big crack in it now. 

The helmet needs to be replaced, of course, but there aren't really any places to buy a helmet anywhere around here for the next two days except for Walmart. We are debating whether a $25 dollar helmet from Walmart is actually safer than a high quality MIPS-certified helmet with a crack. 

Here is the Strava page for today's ride.
And here is the Strava page for our ride to dinner.