One of the biggest differences between travelling by two wheels instead of four is that a bicycle journey can be enjoyed not only by the eyes but also by the ears, the skin and the nose.
As far as those last two senses are concerned Alabama feels like a wet blanket and smells like a wet blanket. Or, at the risk of sounding like some poncey wine connoisseur, at least the base notes are wet blanket. The top notes range from the cloying sweetness of honeysuckle through freshly cut grass (the Americans love their ride on mowers) to gut-wrenching road kill. Armadillos may have a tough exoskeleton but it’s no match for a 40 tonne semi-trailer (that’s juggernaut to non-Americans).
Little things remind you how bloody big this country is. And not the obvious little things like sitting on a bike for seven or eight hours a day to get from one reasonable sized town to another. Things like house numbers. Imagine living at 15,887 Vicious Dog Creek Road. Actually I made the road name up but not the number (see picture below). In the UK I’ve never lived in a house with a number greater than 75.
And it’s not just house numbers that are big. Everything’s big. Including the people. Supersize humans waddle (and I mean waddle) around supersize malls that they’ve driven to in supersize cars. They eat supersize meals (which is, of course, a part of the problem). In fact people with an athletic build are so few and far between that they are the ones who turn heads. Fat is the new norm. Going large is easy and cheap. Or rather it’s cheap in the short term. The long term costs – for example in terms of public health – are huge. Or should I say supersized?
Crossed into Georgia today – the last state in our epic ride across America. Three days to go. Three hundred miles to go. Will I be glad it’s over? I’ll let you know…
