Murrs Across America

When I’d asked Mike, our gallant rescuer, what the four freedoms of Madison were, he said they were a park. Riding through the small town/ county seat we investigated this confusing postulation and found The Four Freedoms Monument in a beautiful park complete with bandstand and dancing-naked-in fountain. The monument symbolizes four freedoms conveyed in a Franklin D. Roosevelt speech: freedoms of speech and expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear everywhere in the world.

We ate Mexican food for lunch, and pedaled on to Monticello, stopping at another monument in Greenville, childhood home of Ray Charles. The kids played at the playground and chose to have Nemo gummies (one of Brady’s Winn Dixie birthday gifts) instead of having ice-cream, which Stuart requires by 4:30 pm each day in order to remain civil.

You can imagine the fit that ensued at the gas station as Stuart and I ate ice-cream and the children learned about choices. The attendant offered the kids treats to stop the howling, but we declined. It is difficult to remain steadfast in the face of children crying for ice-cream, but such is parenthood. The whole affair was draining. I purposely lagged behind the Burly of Unhappiness after I heard Stuart growling primally at the children.

We camped the Monticello KOA and cooked vegetables purchased at the Jefferson Farmer’s market. We met motercyclists headed to Key West from New Mexico, and Jane made friends with Brooke, a girl with baby dolls and a stroller. Brooke and her parents stay at the KOA while her father builds hospitals nearby. Brooke rattled off about 9 states she has lived in. Jane enjoyed caring for the babies and playing with her new friend.

(Photos to follow)

Jane is an “art artist”: she unwinds whilst wielding scissors; she finds solace in glue sticks. If there is a spot of paper (or her body) without color on it by the end of the day, she just feels off. She woke up with the need to do a craft on this morning.

Our second tire leak required surgery. While Stuart extracted a tiny, staple sized wire from my rear wheel, I took the kids down to the river to play at the beach. The kids are amazed that even the rivers have sand in Florida.

The day was uneventful if you don’t count the wind, which was exceptionally happening in the direction of our faces. We rode through the small town or Lee, “Small but Proud,” and on to Madison “Home of the Four Freedoms”, where dark clouds started happening, too.

We were down to our last diaper (after the Lightening McQueen Incident we had been liberal with their usage), so we stopped at the grocery store to restock. Prompted by the clouds, I decided to ask Mike, a man with his name on his shirt, where we might find a local hotel. Mike said there were a couple options four miles out of town, that we would never make it there before it stormed, and we should just throw our bikes in the back of his truck. We had more gear than he figured on for his short bed/ toolbox situation so we opted to load my bike and the two Burleys. Of course that left Stuart and his bike out in the rain for the not-four-but-six mile ride to the Super 8.

We dined at Denny’s on roughly 4000 calories each, and Stuart pointed out that he probably could have fit his bike in Mike’s truck after all. I did laundry at the hotel, and talked to Linda, en route to her home in Palm Beach with her moving truck. Later that night as I caught up on work and scarffed a chocolate chip Waffle House waffle, Linda kindly folded my laundry and chatted with Stuart, who had just stepped out to devour a large chocolate milkshake.

We ate like kings in Madison. And slept in beds.

The birthday boy woke up bouncing. Beneath our Yurt, our fatigued muscles and sore spots received body blows, elbow jabs, headbutts, and otherwise steamrolling wiggle assaults as Brady reveled in serious three-year-old birthday ecstasy.

We (as in Stuart) fixed our first flat of the trip, a slow leak from a previous patch on the old Burley’s wheel that required a new tube. We pedaled half a mile to the Blue Hole Springs trailhead. We toted (forbidden) food, presents, and decorations down to the spring, which was so clear that Jane declared it “fairy water” and spent the rest of her time there on sharp lookout for water sprites.

Our new friends, Stephanie and Doug, were kayaking nearby, and after hearing Brady on the trail, they joined us at the spring for lunch and a birthday party. We all had a ball, especially Brady.

After the party, we rode in the wind to the Spirit of Suwannee Music Park and Campground on the coffee-colored Suwannee River. We ate chicken fried steak and the like, and enjoyed the Elvis Impersonator-supplied karaoke and the senior citizen two-step rave.  Elvis called Brady to the stage, and the assembly (more lively than they sound here…kind of) sang Happy Birthday.  Later, I sang Bobby McGee as the children boogied and stockpiled yet another dancehall memory to share with future therapist(s).

6:14 am: Chihuahua six inches from my head barks in yappy series of five.

6:18 am: Benevolent woman calls dog away from tent.

6:34 am: Two crows caw six inches from my head in throaty series of five.

6:45 am: Brady wakes up, all smiles, ready for cuddles.

Shalanda said we should knock on her door in the morning to come in and use the bathroom. We did. And for a long time, she didn’t answer, but once Brady found a long metal pole and started playing “shooting gun” and “my arrow it” outside Shalanda’s open windows, she welcomed us in. She made us breakfast. She showed us photographs of her family. As Brady crawled inside her hutch to hide his eyes for a game of hide-and-seek, she told me about her grandmother and her mother; about how her mother died first, then after making a huge Forth of July family diner, her grandmother died in her arms at the fire rescue station. She recalled with tears eating the food her grandmother had prepared as the family gathered to mourn two days later. That’s the story of Nana’s Soul Food, and why the new High Springs restaurant bears her name.

After bidding Shalanda and Terrance fond farewells, we pedaled over to the Winn Dixie to buy supplies for Brady’s birthday the next day. He kept telling me he wanted a shooting gun for his birthday, which I ignored; but he also said he wanted a Spider Man cake. Naturally, I went to the baking isle and gathered all the supplies I thought a Spider Man cake would require. As Stuart entertained the kids isles over, I finally started to come to my senses: BUY A FREAKING CAKE, my senses said. So I did. I bought a big cookie cake and an oversized Spider Man cupcake. Friends who know me know this was a difficult thing for me to do. Le sigh.

As we were leaving Winn Dixie, the clouds didn’t part, and a voice from heaven didn’t boom a command that we should go to church. Rather, the clouds clumped, thunder rumbled, and it started to rain. Straight out of the parking lot was a church with a big covered walk way. We went to church.

We decided, after the service, to ask if we could hole up to see if the storm might blow over. Graciously, the High Springs Baptists invited us to a picnic lunch that had been previously slated for the park. The kids ran around in the gymnasium, making friends, and I contributed Brady’s cookie cake to the long table of potluck cold cut sandwiches, chips, and deserts. Amy was having a birthday too, so everyone sang to the birthday kids, and Jane and Brady blew out candles. I was thankful Brady had other children to celebrate with.

Lunch and chatting and a hunt for Jane’s missing pink teddy bear allowed us to meet some fantastic people. After a kind woman gave Jane some money to buy a new teddy, young Blake and Emily ended up finding the lost bear in the boy’s bathroom (go figure). With an emotionally overwhelmed little girl, and a sugar maniac birthday boy we set out toward our campsite at the Ichetucknee Springs campground.

Of course it poured on us. Poured. And we made a wrong turn and had to head back into the deluge. Eventually, we made it to camp and it stopped raining. We showered and hung wet things, and I made Brady a special mac-and-cheese dinner with noodles from Jorelle’s pantry and Publix American cheese singles. We enjoyed meeting Stephanie and Doug, and talked with them as the kids slept in the dark woods among the first fireflies of the season, which Jane described as “the sparkles before your fairy godmother comes”.

Jorelle and Michael were engaged 41 days after they met. Though they advise their friends against hasty courtships, they’ve been married three years, and they have a lovely Rumi poem on their piano:

“The minute I heard my first love story,
I started looking for you,
Not knowing how blind that was.
Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere,
They’re in each other all along.”

The couple left early to pancake fundraise and then baseball game cheer for 9-year-old Liam, and we caught up on laundry and computer work. We bid farewell our generous hosts, after Liam taught Jane how to put and Brady peed on Liam’s room, and headed across Gainesville to High Springs.

Bicycle Magazine ranks Gainesville as America’s 16th best biking city for good reason: spectacular bike lanes abound. On this record temperature-setting day, we were able to wet down the kids and head quickly out of town, thanks to some brilliant city planning, and the shipment of another 20 lbs. back to Murr Island.

Our ride was spectacular, mostly through tunnels of Live Oak, along cool, smooth roads. We just missed the Frontier Days Festival at High Springs, but we cruised Main Street, noting their farmer’s market and various businesses before dining at Nana’s Soul Food on pulled pork and fried chicken and excellent corn fritters.

At the restaurant, a Timothy McVeigh documentary complimented our fare, Brady peed on the floor, and then, ten minutes later, had a more substantial accident. Now, I know my child’s potty training isn’t your primary reason for choosing this blog for your summer reading, but I’m mentioning it here for authenticating detail, and to highlight that most cross-country bicyclists probably don’t end up washing Lightening McQueen underwear in public toilets, and that it totally sucks and makes my left eyebrow twitch.

As it was Nana’s grand opening and the joint was hopping, I offered to sanitize the bathroom. Gracious owner, Raynyoda, declined saying it was her job, she would go take care of it, and to take our bikes to her house and pitch our tent in her yard.

So that’s what we did. And we watched the ring around the moon expand as Hatian Bruce (resident HUGE black dog) kept  the riffraff at bay.  Raynyoda stopped by before we turned in to tell us we were just fine and welcome, and that if anyone tried to mess with us we should just say, “Shalanda says it’s OK, baby. We’re OK.”