Dairy Farmers of America

Brunswick, Georgia

(I should mention, I write these posts in a journal and then type them here whenever I have the internet. That should clear up any confusion about continuity.)

You can smell an ocean breeze from ten miles away, but you can feel it from fifty. The entire ride from Waycross was downwind of an inshore breeze that made for the shittiest, most taxing ride yet. Heat makes you sluggish, but wind drains the shit out of you. It's uncommunicable how frustrating the wind is, unless it's at your back. It's never at your back. The only way you can get anywhere in that kind of winds by drafting off of semis. When a semi drives by with no cars behind it, you cut into its wake and build up speed then ride back to the shoulder. It's the only place you can get enough momentum to keep a good pace.

There are countless spots where the trees stop framing the road, letting the wind flow uninterrupted across open fields. The trees don't stop the wind either, they just funnel it toward whatever stupid fucking thing is on the road opposite the wind.  Despite any bitching about wind on the trip, no other situation compares to the frustration and banality of riding over a windy bridge. Not only a steep climb or a constant flow of traffic, but wind - unhindered by anything below - made Shitty Brunswick Bridge a miserable, gnawing experience. I couldn't make it and had to push my behemoth up the bridge, while fat middle-aged men ran against traffic along the shoulders. For a ride thirty percent shorter than the last two, it took more energy than both. I did, however, get a boss burger with feta and spinach, which in no way makes me feel better about the ride.

I've been without internet since I left, making it difficult to coordinate with my itinerary. Instead of staying in a hotel for a second night, I asked some firemen if I could sleep at the station. A big, burly guy with wife-beater tan lines, a pencil thin mustache, and a lispy southern accent pointed me to the storage hallway on the side of the building. It's a tight, sloping corridor filled with fire hoses and tires. That's where I'm writing from, sweaty and lying shirtless on the ground. I'll probably regret sleeping here tomorrow, but not in a month when I still have my sixty dollars.

I have the windows open because it's absurdly hot, and I heard some loud popping down the road.  After a second of reflection I attribute it to a car backfiring or something. A few minutes later I hear on the intercom that there's been a shooting. The dispatcher said the police were already at the scene, but later radioed that the address they had was wrong. Does that mean that the police called in preemptively or is there some gangster prowling around the street like swiss cheese?

I'm sore the next morning. When I wake any part of me touching the ground had gone numb.