If there could be pictures of what binds us together, then shared experience would be the colors. Although a house may provide the canvas, it is the day to day experiences of sharing the house that makes a house a home, makes a married couple and their children into a family, and reminds you what you left behind when you ride the Bike Ride Across Georgia. Particularly if that house has an air conditioner.
I rode BRAG earlier this June with Ansley from Atlanta to Savannah covering nearly 400 miles in seven days by bicycle. This is about our shared experiences and the colors we saw.
One of the toughest hills on BRAG came toward the end of the first day
BRAG is all about sharing experiences like these:
- climbing hills that seem bound for heaven only they’re hotter than heaven’s opposite,
- sleeping (or wishing you were sleeping) while sweating on extra firm surfaces amongst ants, snorers, and flatulence,
- counting telephone poles in an attempt to distract yourself from how much further it is until the next rest stop.
If you enjoy having plenty to complain about, you’ll love BRAG. What happens though, is instead of painting from a pallette of dark and forboding colors, those of us who ride BRAG find ourselves painting bright and cheerful pictures.
Let’s talk about those bright cheerful pictures. There are as many pictures as there are types of people who ride BRAG: old/young, married/single/divorced/dating, fast/slow, skin suit/business casual, military crew-cut/long-haired hippy, disadvantaged/filthy rich, caffienated cocktails/granola and pressed-fruit juice — more than just a rainbow of colors — it’s a rainbow of colors, languages, political orientations, chords, cuisines, and even body-mass indices (there are a good many overweight people successfully riding BRAG).
So, why do all these different people come together to ride a bicycle across the biggest state east of the Mississippi? I have an idea what it might be, but it might be best to illustrate with … well, pictures.
In rural Georgia, it is easy to find yourself eleventy-hundred pedal strokes away from anything other than road kill. There’s not much to do. Fields become interesting. Barns become interesting. Birdsong becomes interesting. Empty sky becomes interesting. As we ride, we start singing songs, learning new songs, making up variations on songs. We entertain ourselves. Midweek is the BRAG Talent Show. Ansley entered the show this year as a caterpillar (inside her sleeping bag with just her face showing) and did nothing other than fail to successfully get on stage along with the other caterpillars also failing to get onto the stage. The audience was in tears laughing at them knocking each other over and then trying to get back up.
Being new to BRAG and the self-entertainment wackiness, Ansley underestimated how well the clumsy caterpillars fit in. She was invited along with the other caterpillars to participate in Moonbase the following night. Moonbase is really indescribable, but we’ll try anyway: there was space music (as in outer space), funky lighting and it happens in a field far, far away. OH, and afterwards, lots of young people were walking back arm in arm.
It won’t sell any advertisement, but then, it doesn’t need to. BRAG is an opportunity to make your own painting.
Despite the uphills, BRAG usually rides downhill. Starting from the higher elevations and riding down to the coast, part of the anticipation becomes a geography lesson: Georgia’s piedmont is a line where rivers are no longer navigable because the rivers cross falls. The towns of Columbus, Milledgeville, and Augusta are situated on the fall line. Why does the cyclist care?
There is moonlight and moss in the trees, down the Seven Bridges Road.
Once you cross the fall line, the hills get much more gentle. This is also about the spot where you see the “first Spanish Moss”. In our ride packet, on the day we first encounter spanish moss — our signal we’re getting closer to the ocean — there is a note with the mile marker so you can stop to take a picture (like I did!).
This is also the gnat line, but since we’re still working on our bright, cheerful painting, let’s drop a gear to get our cadence up and spin on past the gnats.
We begin each day before day break, riding during the cool hours to beat the heat.
Sunrise with Ansley
Rural Georgia is a wonderful place early in the morning. The trees hold the moisture, concentrating the smells of crops and flowers, and turning reality into a dream world, misty, mysterious, yet cozy. (I’ve placed my order for Heaven, and it looks just like BRAG when the sun just comes up, only my bike is a lot nicer and it sounds good when I sing.) These hours are savory: delightful skin sensations while cruising through the air, sweet smells, heart thumping, wonderful air filling our lungs, and bob whites calling out to us. And if you like the taste of Powerade and bananas, your taste buds are lighting up too.
Food is always dear to the cyclist. I’ve often said that BRAG stands for Buffet Review Across Georgia. On arriving in Dublin, I went to the Golden Corral All-You-Can-Eat buffet for a late lunch (4 plates of food plus desserts) and then for an early supper, I went to a Chinese All-You-Can-Eat buffet for three more plates of food plus desserts.
BRAG Dads on Monticello's Square
The overnight towns and rest stops are where we find sustenance, not only to power our bicycles and our singing muscles, but also our souls. Bluegrass music in Oxford, Southern Rock in Dublin, Milledgeville, and Metter, authentic German restaurants in Hinesville whose owner toasted our journey, and the local townsfolk. Wherever we go, we get questions about riding our bike across the biggest state east of the Mississippi and always they’re so amused that doing this is something we like to do — not only once — but over and over.
"Party in the Park" that Metter hosted for BRAG riders
So why do we come back year after year? What is it about this colorful shared experience that can bind us one to another?
It’s a common story on BRAG: A family whose kids are out of control at home, bouncing off walls, getting into trouble, at each other’s throats, turn into the perfect family while riding BRAG. And it lasts.
In the absence of mass-marketed distractions, we have only ourselves to entertain us, only the birds and the trees to occupy our attention, only our hosts to take care of us.
In the absence of soft beds and air conditioning, we find out what mornings are like. We appreciate water, salt, and peanut butter sandwiches. We relax in the cool of the evening with a tiredness well-earned.
In the absence of noise, we can hear the little voices that each of us speaks. We can sing when we couldn’t sing otherwise. We can be caterpillars. We can climb hills and hurt like all get-out, and still be ready for the next one.
Once we can see each other, we can reach out across all our severe and often painful differences. We can more easily find what each of us really has in common: a human spirit that longs to be with other human spirits. We can be full-color humans, seeing our own reflection in the eyes of others, and we bind ourselves, one to another.
On the last day, we rode as racers do in a peloton. This was the group riding together at our last rest stop before entering Savannah.
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