Soul filled people and places

Greetings y'all! It has been a while since we updated the blog and I apologize. It was my turn to blog and I lag. Nevertheless, we are here in New Orleans, taking it easy in the big easy. This city is incredible! Last we wrote I believe we were still in North Carolina. Since then, we traversed South Carolina. We met amazing people in Charleston....students at the College of Charleston who welcomed us into their homes and showed us all that the city had to offer. After Charleston, Erin and I attempted our first century and made it all the way to Savannah, Georgia. Not only was it Erin's first century, but it was pouring rain on us the entire time. We arrived wet and cold in Savannah (with the help of a couple of marines who took pity on two soaked women biking in the rain and dropped us off in front of our destination). Erin and I were hosted by a religious cult that fed us and sheltered us and tried to persuade us to join forces. After graciously declining their enticing offers and terminating our search for the bench in which Tom Hanks explained life, we continued along our merry way, finally heading West! It took us four days to cross Georgia. The first day we camped on a military base. The only downside to the beautiful surroundings were the sounds of guns being fired at the surrounding shooting ranges. We were also a bit concerned passing through the base due to the presence of "Caution Military Maneuvers" signs posted along the highway.....we weren't quite sure what that meant and didn't know what to expect.

Upon leaving the base we entered the small town of Glenville, GA. It was Glenville that Erin and I experienced our first brush with fame. Sitting outside a gas station in the center of town we witnessed the gas station's grand opening. The diplomats of Glenville were present for this momentous occassion, as was the local newspaper. After the ribbon cutting cermony, one of the head hanchos of Glenville asked us what we were up to. After explaining ourselves and our mission, he told us he would like the local reporter to interview us and put an article in their paper. That's right folks, front and center in the Glenville Sentinel. After that, they treating us to lunch at the best restuarant in the county, yes we ate at Dairy Queen and it was out of this world. This was the turning point for us.....From that moment on, our diets went down hill. If you thought Dairy Queen was fatty, you never tried soul food. We spent that night in a beautiful state park in Douglas, GA.

After leaving Douglas we stopped in at a roadside produce (pronounced prah-duce) stand where a nice farmer and his aunt explained to us the difference between the yankees in Northern Ga, and the regular folk in Southern Ga. The duo was sweet and informative. They had us try boiled peanuts and Georgia pears and gave us a sack of tomatoes to eat with our dinner. We graciously thanked them for their kindness and generosity and biked a short day to Tifton where we treated ourselves to margaritas, mexican food and a motel room. At the table next to us a large (both in number and in size) church group was enjoying their dinner. We heard one of the men at the table explain to the woman seated next to him that the reason his wife wasn't present was because she didn't like chinese food. We drank a margarita to chinese food and decided that a tent was not in our near future. Erin had never been so happy to see a bedroom. We were sooo excited, we thought we would be spending the night free of insects and rodents.......little did we know that the critters followed us everywhere we went. Yes, there were huge cockroaches all over the place. After that I decided there was no point in paying for protection in this part of the world, because they were gonna get you no matter where you went.

We left Tifton after a nice continental breakfast provided by econolodge and attempted to say farewell to Georgia. On our way out we passed through Albany, one of the bigger towns we encountered. It was in Albany that we tasted soul food... we asked for a restaurant with good homestyle cooking and we were directed to Carter's Grill. The line to order food at Carter's was about 20 people long and we anxiously awaited our turn. By the time it was our turn I realized i didn't know what anything was and when I asked, I didn't know what anything meant. I was totally lost and just pointed at a few things. I had collards, sweet potatoes, cabbage, stuffing and chicken. Mind you, most of it was called something different which lead to my confusion. Erin had an assortment of "vegetarian" sides. We soon realized that vegetarian is an interpretive word and means different things to different people. That night we spent in Ronda's backyard in Arlington, GA. Arlington is just short of the Alabama border and Ronda's was an experience we will never forget. Ronda was on the porch with Jimmy and Joe. Jimmy had been on the "juice" all afternoon. Joe was just there to fill the chair. We weren't anticipating stopping in Arlington but Erin saw them sitting on the porch and asked if they knew anything about camping in the area. Area, turns out, is also an interpretive word.....we were talking about between Arlington and Alabama and they thought we meant that block. Ronda invited us to camp on their yard and we graciously accepted. Ronda fed us more soul food and once again made Erin a "vegetarian" platter. Erin however did not step it up to the challenge. She took a few bites and saw a chunk of meat in her "vegetarian" black eyed peas. She went pale and I asked Ronda how she made her tasty peas. She brings out a huge meat bone from her freezer and tells us "alls you gots to do is boil dat dere with dis here bone" I see Erin's face contort into an expression of complete disgust and knew that Erin was about to embarass us and make an extremely interesting evening very akward. Ronda turned to walk back to the kitchen and I quickly relieved Erin of her "vegetarian" dinner. So remember, no matter what she says later on...... I went above and beyond....clogged my arteries and gave myself indigestion to help her out. We were visited by Ronda's nephew who was dressed in the most AMAZING outfit I have ever seen. He wore a huge Royal blue satin suit. The shoulders were huge and the suit was long--came down to his knees. He had a cane and white patent leather shoes. He was amazing. I didn't know if he was a pimp from the 70's or had just gotten out of gospel choir. Whatever it was, it rocked. I aspire to look as good as he did some day. Ronda's neighbor came by to hang out and was kind enough to loan us her dog Brownie. She brought Brownie over and tied her up next to our tent. She said that Brownie would keep us from getting messed with (which was known to happen from time to time). With Brownie's help we made it through the night and to Alabama the next morning in one piece (by that I mean with all of our pieces). Alabama was awesome. We had breakfast in Dothan at the waffle house where we voted democrat by choosing blueberries on our waffles rather than strawberries. From Dothan we got a ride in an RV to Enterprise. And in Enterprise we biked to Opp. Opp, Al is a small town where we met some of the nicest people we have encountered yet. This family in Opp took us in and fed us dinner and blessed us. Dinner was once again an interesting experience. It consisted of fried shrimp, fried corn bread and fries. Erin was in a pinch again.....but, I am proud to say she choked down the fries and cornbread even though it was fried in shrimp oil.
This blog is getting too long and I am tired of writing. Maybe Erin will catch us up from Alabama to Louisiana. I send you all my love and hope you enjoyed the stories. We will be in New Orleans til Saturday, then we continue on to Texas.......ahhhh.

This blog is getting to long

Greeting from North Carolina!

Hello everyone!
Erin here...
I am writing to you from the public library in Wilmington, North Carolina (home of Dawson's Creek!). So...Ari and I arrived in Norfolk, VA last Sunday night, and we have spent the majority of this past week in the Outer Banks of NC. The Outer Banks were awesome - you can't ask for much more than biking along the beach in rural areas (i.e. not a lot of scary cars/busy highways) in great weather (we missed the tropical storms/tornadoes on the mainland, thankfully). We got to camp on the beach one night, which was awesome! On Thursday, we got back to mainland via ferry and biked through a beautiful area with some of the nicest people I've ever met - and we found some awesome southern bakeries on the side of the road (although nothing compares to dev or siv's baking :). There is so much support for eating/buying locally in this area, which has been nice to see! Thursday night we arrived in Beaufort, NC and we came across this awesome bar which was kind of the hang out for liberal people in the area. They were having a VP debate party (equipped with Palin Bingo!) and we met some really cool people there. A woman named Hope let us stay on her boat for the night (thank you!!!), which was a nice break from getting eaten alive by mosquitoes constantly (the amount of bites we each have is pretty much appalling). Beaufort was an awesome little oceanside town. Yesterday we biked through Jacksonville (sadly, we were one week too early for the swansboro mullet festival), and now we've arrived in Wilmington, just in time for a big river festival! The biking has been pretty challenging for me, and pretty easy for Ari (despite the fact that she is carrying the vast majority our gear :)), but we are getting stonger and faster! Ari's aunt bought her a GPS tracking device that we have with us as of yesterday, so you can follow our progress on google earth at this link http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?glId=0CKDzWMWCWVPkaQxCnOjQUFovZiXy2leu
That is all for now.
Don't forget to help us raise money for the Venice Family Clinic, if you can!!!
Love,
Erin