41: keep it or not, make stories, tire, bob's paper, state number four, four colors, tarzan and the angry beaver, old stage road, beautiful and heartbreaking, a new record, no trespassing, fudd, bad hair day, farmica, whose fault is it anyway

April 27, 2025

Society Hill to Laurinburg

Shortly after I started riding I saw this on the shoulder and wondered... but no, I already have a knife.

I had a headwind today, but it was cool. I realized today that, in general, you can either have a cool headwind or a hot tailwind, but you're much less likely to have a cool tailwind or a hot headwind.

"Remember that time we drank that Natty? Woke up with nothin' on but my underwear, with alla that blood in it. An' we got them matchin' tattoos of Barry Manilow on our cheeks.... You ever find your finger?" (sigh....) "Yeah, good times. I only got 14 months left with good behavior. How 'bout you?"

This tire isn't flat. All four look like that, and I think they're high-performance wheels. I wonder what the pressure is.

on the side of the road, and not near anything

It's a bit far but it says Happy Paper, and I'm sure it must be the brand that Bob Ross used.

I would've loved to go exploring, but there was a No Trespassing sign (and a person across the street mowing his yard, or....).

This is on the back of the above sign. I hope the vandals just take a second to read it.

My heart rate monitor battery died today. I wish I'd packed one so I could switch it out.

But wait! I did! Did you forget my massive packing list again?

As I was riding down the quiet backroads, the only sound a chorus of birds, I realized that there were only four colors outside the towns. Differing shades, but the only colors were the greens and browns of the fields and the whites and blues of the skies. Even the houses were combinations of those four hues.

This sign is evocative in so many ways. It went to the top of my list for The Longest Distance Pedaled Before Turning Around To Get A Picture. I went almost a quarter of a mile and knew I'd always regret it if I didn't get a shot of it.

Here's my quandary: I'm going right to left along 1108, and I'm supposed to turn right on Old Stage Road.

And here's Old Stage Road on my right. Should I? I mean, how bad could it be? (tip: never ask that question) Plus, it would cut fifteen minutes off my ride.

I decided to take the road less traveled and within 50 yards I practically slammed on my brakes when I saw this.

It's so beautiful, and heartbreaking, and I wish it could tell us its story.

This is what the road ended up looking like, and the only car that passed the entire time was the mail carrier. (so, I guess sometimes it's okay to ask "how bad could it be??")

I found a SECOND abandoned house on the same road! A double, and this one so overgrown that this is the best shot I could get.

....then a THIRD abandoned house within such a short distance. This is a new world record for me.

The Angry Beaver has some competition, unless they end up merging to become "Tarzan's Angry Beaver," or possibly "Angry Tarzan's Beaver."

I wish I knew what the sign said, but it's probably No Trespassing. Look at the roots on those trees.

I see, and I'm not exaggerating, at least 200 "No Trespassing" signs every day.

They were on everything, from abandoned 50-year-old mobile homes to small grassy turnarounds on the side of the road to almost every house I saw (including the ones with a "welcome" sign) to forest so covered with thicket that you'd need a bulldozer to trespass.

Have we, the world's wealthiest nation, become so proprietary that we're afraid we might have to share?

... and several homes had No Hunting signs. Are we hunting each other now??

where Elmer Fudd goes when he has a joint problem

...and it just got worse. Now you don't even have a hat to cover it.

Laurinburg, my stop for the night, has tried labeling itself "The Tree City" and "Cantaloupe City," but after a story broke in the 1970s about carnival worker Cancetto Farmica, it was just "The City Where That Dead Guy Was." When Farmica was killed in 1911 his father made a partial payment for the funeral expenses and promised to send the remaining amount; however, he was never heard from again. Out of respect for the family's wishes, and perhaps uncertainty about what to do, the funeral home preserved Farmica's body, hoping that at some point they would hear from them.

Over time, Farmica's embalmed body naturally mummified. Like Maria in Key West, his remains became an unusual attraction and were displayed in various locations within the funeral home, including the embalming room, and later a storage box among others. For more than sixty years, locals and curious visitors would come to see the preserved figure, turning Farmica into a macabre local legend.

When the story made national news it prompted discussions about the ethics of displaying a body for so long, and the attention created enough local pressure that Farmica was finally buried in Laurinburg's Hillside Cemetery in 1972. A concrete vault was poured over his burial site to prevent any potential grave tampering.

Upon arriving in Laurinburg I stopped for lunch, then loitered at the restaurant working on the journal, until the 3:00 check-in time. When I rode to the hotel and started talking with the lady through the thick plexiglass window, the fan in the background drying the carpet, she said,

"If yewel juhns in air."

Because I have a strong family history of hearing loss, and possibly to prove to Heather that I'm not going deaf, I recently had my hearing tested and found that it was perfectly normal. However, one of the things that happens as we get older is that if there's any ambient noise our brain has difficulty processing what we hear. "Ambient noise," such as, for example, a fan in the background drying the carpet.

"Can you repeat that, please?"
Louder, "If you'll just sign here." Then, "Thezno kingeno pez."
"I'm sorry. There's a fan out here, and I can't hear you."
Louder, "There's no smoking, and no pets."
"Got it," I nodded.
Every time she said something, she went back to her original volume, about as loud as an ant farting
"Bekatfro sextonon."
Again, I contorted my head, placing my ear directly on the half-moon cutout slot in order to hear.
"Breakfast is from six to nine."
I pointed to the fan and reminded her I can't hear, but this continued for another ten verbal transactions. Toward the end, when she said,
"Yurumistul beanclinned" Tired of asking her to speak louder, I guessed that her last statement meant that my room was still being cleaned and, removing the debris the left side of my face had accumulated from the transaction slot, and knowing my cervical vertebrae would never be the same, I nodded. I wondered why she just couldn't speak louder.

I found my room, the door ajar and the sheets on the floor, then parked in front of it, waiting, but there wasn't any shade so I moved around the corner. The woman who does the cleaning went from room to room, and when 4:30 rolled around I went back up to the desk.

The fan was gone so I could hear incrementally better. I started to say,
"Wehnulme rumbyredee," but just wanted to get into my room for a shower so instead I asked, "When will my room be ready?"

She seemed surprised to find that I hadn't been able to get into my room, and immediately wanted me to know that it was my fault.

"Well, if you'd only told me your room wasn't ready."

I honestly didn't care about the wait... it happens, and I wasn't even blaming her. I'm sure she gets a lot of criticism from every dissatisfied customer, and for issues that are beyond her control, but I found it annoying for her to criticize me four times during our conversation for not informing her: "If you'd only told me...."

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Today's ride: 30 miles (48 km)
Total: 1,096 miles (1,764 km)

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