NYC -2- ATL

We awoke to some mechanical troubles this morning. One of Dad’s pannier bags had a busted rivet. He made a quick fix with a bolt from his toolkit and we were off for a planned long day on the road. On the way out of town we visited a memorial at Wilmington Fire Station #2 that contained a steel beam from the World Trade Center.

A short while later, we were back on the East Coast Greenway heading south when we spotted another touring cyclist stopped by the side of the road. We pulled over and found out that Shawn was also from the Atlanta area and heading north from Savannah, GA to Norfolk, VA. He had a really cool Surly bike and had also recently made a fix to his trunk rack in the field. We swapped stories quickly, but we all needed to get going and alas we were headed in different directions.

We stopped at Big Daddy’s Seafood and got our food to go so we could head a few more miles to the Fort Fisher ferry terminal. Once there, we had about 20 minutes before we would board so we ended up eating quickly at a nice shady picnic table at the terminal. We were hungry and the food was good. This last of our planned ferry rides, across the Cape Fear River, was the shortest at only about 25 minutes or so.

The afternoon was long and hot. The sun was intense. The quick fix did not hold and we stopped to shore up the saddle bag with bungie cords, which seem to be working quite well. The miles rolled by. We crossed into South Carolina.

At one point, we saw another northbound cyclist, fully laden with gear from across a busier road. We waved, but didn’t have the chance or desire to stop. We noted how all of the other bicycle tourists we have seen have been riding solo. Dad remarked how hard it is to find someone else who likes to bike these kind of distances, at a similar speed and style to your own, and make this kind of journey, who can take off of work and life and hit the road. He has been lucky over his decades of cycling to have a few good friends, and even rarer, his wife, who can do just that. I feel lucky to be able to make a trip like this with him.