Day One Hundred-ten, 090618 - Baxley, GA

Day One Hundred Ten, Date Thursday, June 18, 2009
Time in Saddle: 9:07
Distance for the Day: 96.09 miles From Callahan, GA To Baxley, GA
Accumulated Trip Distance: 5176.03 miles
Altitudes: Starting/Ending 0’?/137’ Highest: 185’ Accumulated: 1161’
Speeds: Avg: 10.5 mph, Max: 27.6 mph
Weather: 75-78°, high overcast in the AM warming to 90s, fairly humid
Expenditures: $12

Woke up around 5:30am and was ready to roll by 6:45am. Stopped off in the town of Callahan for breakfast. It rained heavily at 7:30am so hid under an out-of-business gas station along with a couple of motorcyclists, reading my book, and waited until it stopped before continuing on at 8:26am. I’d just like to take a moment to thank the drivers for going around me, and to thank the ones that didn’t go around me, but didn’t hit me. It looked like I was heading into another thunderstorm up the road; I hate that! It was cooler, lower 70s, but very humid. The storm hit, so I stopped at a Subway in Homeland at 11:00am to wait for the rain to stop and to get an early lunch ($9), while I also charged up my laptop. It was so air conditioned in that Subway, that I got hypothermic, what with my sweat-drenched shirt, and had to go outside to warm up. At 3:27pm I stopped at a mini mart for fluids in Hoboken ($3), as it had gotten hot after all that rain cleared. It was hard, riding in that heat (up close to 100) but not insurmountable, and I headed north passing through Blackshear, Bristol, and approached Baxley by evening. At 7:50pm, the sun was getting really low, and I saw a sign off Hwy 212 saying there were a Methodist church thisaway. I found it about 1.5 miles in, asked the pastor there to set up my tent, but he said ‘no’(!) That was a first. So, I went back to the highway and saw big lightning strikes a few miles away (great!), and continued on towards Baxley in the advancing dusk. Just as the clouds overhead began to look *really* nasty, I found a large building with some small activity happening, so went up to the people there and got permission to camp out under its eaves (turns out it was a middle school) (N31 43.352’ W82’ 20.110’) The clouds overhead looked like something out of a Steven Spielberg movie – purple-black and light electric blue, roiling with flashes of lightning, some stretching across the sky, almost from horizon to horizon. Just as I started to set up my tent, the rain came down, but I was high and dry, and stayed that way the whole night. The mosquitoes were curiously absent, and I read my book in my tent until about 9:30pm before going to sleep.