35: caterpillar and ant, a delicate matter with christine, george and the angel's wings, creepy and fuzzy, fleetmaster and tractor, sixty acres, mudville, chris, .38 and hot dogs

April 21, 2025

Givhens Ferry State Park to Blacks Camp

Is this little guy crawling across my tent the same kind of caterpillar as the one I saw in New Smyrna Beach?

I got a late start today and didn't leave until noon, but it's not going to get hot today and I'm only riding 33 miles, so... okay.

When I stopped in at the Office on the way out I found Christina at the front desk again. She had mentioned that the water here is filtered, and much better than the water at the campsite so I wanted to fill my bottles.

After they were full I went back up to the desk, took a look around to make sure no one else was there and said, “I have a strange question for you.”

“I get all KINDS of strange questions,” she assured me. "I could do a podcast."
“Good.” I glanced around again, then asked, “I was wondering if you could take a look at my butt.”

Christina, to her professional and personal credit, maintained that cheerful smile as if I had just asked for a pen instead of instantly becoming one of those creepy perverts she has to deal with on a regular basis. She tilted her head and lifted her eyebrows waiting for me to continue.

“You see, my wife called me this morning to ask if she could throw away a pair of my cycling shorts. Then she sent me this picture.”

This is how our conversation went, although I didn't share it with Christina.
"These are your Garneau shorts. You can see the trees in our backyard through them. Is it okay if I toss them?"
Garneau? Those are one of my favorite pair, and they're only about ten years old.
"I don't know....." I said slowly, thoughtfully, as if I were concentrating on a complicated passage of poetry. "Those things could be anything. Not necessarily trees."
"Okay. I don't mind if you want to show off your ass."
Well....
"I guess it's okay to throw them away."

"The thing is," I continued with Christina, "It's that when I was getting dressed this morning I realized that the shorts I was putting on are also Garneau, because I bought two pair at the same time. Now I'm wondering if this pair is as bad as the other one."

Unless my thigh is shrinking, which is a definite possibility, the elastic does seem to be wearing out a bit.

This is when I showed Christina the second picture, and finally getting around to why she shouldn’t call the police.

"So," I asked sheepishly, “Would you mind taking a look at my butt?”

She was a better sport than I could've hoped for. “No problem! There's nothing wrong with butts!” I looked around for a third time to ensure no one else was there, then stepped into her office. I turned around and leaned over, announcing “This is the position I’ll be in when I ride,” as if she’s never seen a bicycle.

“There’s nothing to worry about. It just looks a little… ‘dusty’” she assured me. Considering I’ve been using these every 2-3 days for the past month, I was reassured.

But, as I rode out of the park this afternoon, I did wonder what “dusty” looks like.

Alas, George, has it come to this? I'm afraid an angel just lost its wings.

Image not found :( — I saw a lot of controlled burn areas today.

My creepiness threshold is pretty high, but I saw something today that pushed those limits. Riding through a small town on a side street, I passed a woman somewhere around the age of twenty five to thirty five. Shoeless and draped in a formless, faded floral shift, she was holding hands with a small girl. A doll dangled from the girl’s other hand. The woman's limp hair was dark, and as faded as her eyes.

I waved and smiled as I rode by, but they remained motionless. “Motionless” doesn’t really capture it - she was completely immobile, as if she were a painting in a haunted mansion, and nothing moved but her eyes as they followed my slow progress up the street. I continued pedaling, then noticed the cemetery across the street.

As soon as I saw this, the creepy feeling dissipated like the mist in a cemetery at sunrise. Fuzzy! Although a cold fuzzy instead of a warm fuzzy, a fuzzy nonetheless.

My route took me down Mudville, which is a long stretch of nothing but which, fortunately, had no mud. I wonder if Casey still lives in Mudville, and whether he's still playing baseball.

I'll be interested in reading the comments on this street name.

This one is nailed onto a tree so it makes me wonder if it's legit.

I stayed at Blacks Camp, about a mile and a half off the route.

It’s a bit disappointing, because what you get for $100 is a bed, a sliver of soap with no shampoo/conditioner/lotion, a towel, no wi-fi, and one bar for cellphone coverage.

Because there was no wi-fi I needed to get closer to the office, so I took my computer and sat down in one of the Adirondack chairs facing the water. It was a pleasant 75 degrees with a slight breeze, and I was enjoying catching up on the blog when a woman asked, “Do you mind if I smoke?”

I realized this was another opportunity to work on my assertiveness so I said, "ummmm, well, sort of, yeah."

By God, THAT should leave her with absolutely no doubt about my feelings on the subject.

Then she added, “How about over there? Downwind?”

The breeze was strong enough so that her sitting twenty feet away wouldn't bother me at all, so, “Sure.”

Once situated, she mentioned how some people are actually allergic to smoke.

"That's true," I replied with a confirmatory nod, then followed with my usual approach when talking with a smoker.

“I don’t see how you afford it.”

“Well, I don’t smoke in the trailer and I don’t smoke in the car.” It took me a minute to interpret her seeming non sequitur: she’s cutting back.

The conversation started picking up speed when I asked her how she ended up in South Carolina. Chris is originally from Indiana, but the school she attended was too big for her liking so she landed in East Texas. After her high school graduation, a man twenty years her elder asked her to accompany him to Georgia. She made sure there wouldn't be any "funny business" ("No, it's not like that. I just want some company") and they started off. At one point she fell asleep, and when she woke up and looked around at the Georgia hills she immediately determined that that's where she wanted to live. She moved there knowing only one person and has lived in the area since.

From there, the topic of conversation drifted to her two dogs, which she appears to like more than her husband of twenty years. She has a chiweenie, my second favorite name for a breed (the answer is Shih Poo, which I always “mispronounce”), and opined that it costs $1000 to get her dog neutered - and that’s after coughing up almost that much for a couple of appointments to treat an ear infection.

She taught her other dog, a chihuahua, to sit at the table and join them for dinner like a regular family member. It has wonderful table manners, never eating off anyone else’s plate, always waiting patiently to be served, and, I assume, not picking her teeth or belching after the meal - although teaching a dog to eat off a plate is like teaching a it to pee on a fire hydrant, or like teaching a cat to shred your furniture.

We talked long after she finished her cigarette.

Later, sitting there as I wrote, I eavesdropped on the nearby conversations.
“I like that pistol.”
“Yeah, it’s a .38”
“They make ‘em without a hammer.”
“Yeah, I got one but I put it in my pocket and it went off. I don’t wanna shoot my leg off so I don’t use it. My wife gots one of ‘em though. She walks up on a snake at the cabin, she’ll mess him up.”
I wondered if the “snake” was metaphorical.

And later:
Man #1: “She was selling them hot dawgs for a quarter apiece. They was delicious. Sold four to six hunnerd a day.”
Man #2: “Sax Hot Dawgs. They’s one a the cleaner ones around. I love a good hot dawg.”
Man #3: “They must make ‘em good down at Donnies. People call in, say gimme 10, gimme 12.”
Man #1: “Brennan’s got a good hot dawg. He sticks them buns inna microwave ’n it makes ‘em reeeal sawft.”

<<>><<>><<>>

On a side note, as you read the conversations I have here in the South, and the ones I overhear, you'll notice the accents. There's one thing about which you should be very aware, this for your own benefit. Simply because a person has a Southern accent doesn't make him stupid. It's cultural, and if you mistakenly believe someone is dumb you'll eventually get taken to the bank. Of course, the accent doesn't mean they're smart, either.

What you can infer from a Southern accent is that the person has an accent.

(Although the guy who stuck a gun in his pocket and almost shot his leg off? I think it's completely safe to make the assumption that if he tried to count to twenty one he'd probably get arrested for indecent exposure.)

Because this is a fisherman's motel, there was a boat in front of every one of the rooms and the parking lot smelled of dead fish.

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Today's ride: 33 miles (53 km)
Total: 957 miles (1,540 km)

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Rich FrasierMark, I'm really enjoying this journal. One of the things I enjoy most about it is that you're doing this ride and meeting these fine people and I don't have to. Thank you.
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Mark BinghamTo Rich FrasierI actually snort laughed when I read your comment. I'm really glad you're enjoying it, and I hope some other people are as well. Thanks for following along!
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1 day ago