Georgia & South Carolina

01 June 2024

I stayed in Chattanooga last night only because it wasn’t Leeds.

Leeds, Alabama is equidistant between Mussel Shoals and Athens, Georgia where I’m booked tonight. But I couldn’t stand the thought of another night of Mexican food, having endured two on the trot, so to speak.

At the upper end, Mexican food is the perros idiotas but the slightly-out-of-town motel sites seem to attract places serving a just-about-edible, pale imitation of the same thing. The menu descriptions sound so enticing but unless you’re paying top-dollar, it’s just spiced-up mush that makes you fart like a dray-horse the next day. Even though I’m not sharing bathroom facilities, I didn’t need another meal that made my lower colon feel like a wind-sock. Budget Mexican is all Leeds seemed to offer so I cancelled my motel and went to Chattanooga instead

With such an evocative name, I expected Chattanooga to be charming. It may well be but I don’t think I found its heart. After pounding the streets, looking for something that resembled the centre, I abandoned the mission to ask meekly at the top-rated St John’s Restaurant if they could accept a walk-in for dinner, which they could.

Very classy it is too, and if you find yourself in Chattanooga, I can heartily recommend it. I just can’t find a reason to heartily recommend you go to Chattanooga in the first place.

I leg it sharpish the next morning as Chattanooga is to be enveloped by a violent rain storm from 09:00 onwards. Without time to fuss over the route, I just punch ‘Athens’ into the SatNav that suggests going towards Atlanta before veering east.

I cannot express sufficiently how awful US traffic is when you get close to any major city, other than by repetition, but Atlanta takes the biscuit. At 10:30 on a Saturday morning, the traffic is flowing at a steady 80 MPH despite the 60 limit, but the gap between each car is Infinitesimally small. The moment it isn’t, some arsehole in a pickup truck fills it. Honestly, a session in the ‘Fast’ group at a Caldwell Park bike track day (I ended up in one, unwontedly, once) is like a new-father NCT male-bonding evening compared to this.

One freeway had seven lanes, each peeling off to a different exit or route. This means you must muscle your way into a specific lane to go where you intend, just as everyone else has to. It’s a chastening experience, made worse by the traffic frequently slowing to a walking pace for long periods, causing the bike to overheat. For the first time since it blew up, the red warning light returns… Taking no chances, I spend ten minutes on the hard shoulder while it cools down, along with five cars that have just had a minor shunt. One of many I saw and a nagging reminder there is no such thing as a minor shunt when on two wheels. Avoid. Avoid. Avoid, at all costs.

Athens is a university town, built on a series of small hills, and resembles a Trumpton version of San Francisco. It’s home to Weaver D’s Fine Foods, an organic cafe made famous for its borderline non-sequitur service slogan ‘Automatic for the People’. Local band, REM were customers and asked if they might use it, for reasons unknown, as the title of their 1992 career high-point album. It’s closed, despite TripAdvisor suggesting otherwise, so I check in to the hotel on the outskirts and walk downtown to explore Athens.

It looks like a great place to study. Lots of bars, music venues and affordable restaurants, one of which is the Last Resort Grill. This dates from 1966 when it was a music bar and is now a staple of the Athens restaurant scene. The menu emphasises fresh ingredients and champions local producers - both bait to foodie pseudo-liberals - where possible. Crab cakes and a short rib of beef, are both done simply and well, and served with a winning Southern charm.

I’ve a long day tomorrow to get to Myrtle Beach, 318 miles east, so I walk the mile or so back to the hotel around 21:00. I’ve not whinged about hotels much recently, have I?

The reason for this is I cancelled the majority of my bookings at Motel 6 and Super 8. These chains are now, effectively, an outsourced branch of social services and usually on the spectrum between throughly-unpleasant to borderline-dangerous.

Going a notch or two upmarket within the Wyndham group to Days Inn, La Quinta and Microtel solved this problem at a stroke. So I’m surprised to see the car park of the Athens Microtel, deserted a few hours ago, is now full of scrap-cars. Non-matching body panels and missing door mirrors abound, while the owners mill around the car park, smoking.

All I can think is this must be one of the cheapest hotels in Athens, even though it is $113 a night. With no Motel 6 or Super 8 close by, the local authority must have block-booked this place for emergency accommodation. Oh well, everyone needs to sleep somewhere.

Back in my room, I can’t close the curtains and a security light is shining directly in. I go down to reception to complain. The night manager explains there is a motorised blackout blind and he’ll show me where the switch is. Apart from there isn’t one. How has anyone ever slept in this room? I ask the manager, who just shrugs his shoulders.

He unhappily gets me a second room as I refuse to pack my stuff up and move it. The last remaining one is next to the lift which makes a loud, grinding sound every time it is used. Well, it’s 10:30 so everyone will be tucked up shortly and I won’t be disturbed.

02 June 2024

I was wrong. It’s in use throughout the night. At 06:00, I abandon hopes of getting any sleep and go down to load the bike up. Outside reception is a sea of cigarette butts that accounts for the constant nocturnal activity.

I know I should feel sympathy for these people as they continue to splutter and wheeze their way in and out the hotel, pausing briefly in the Breakfast Room to load up with multiple plates of sausage, scrambled eggs, bagels and muffins before returning to trough it in their room. But I can’t, and wonder how much of their misery is self-inflicted. Before leaving, I have a final moan at the manager who, unconvincingly, says how sorry he is,

It’s my last proper day of riding. After today, it’s just two short freeway hops from Myrtle Beach to Charleston, and then on to Savannah, where I will drop the bike off with the customs agent for shipment back to the UK. Consequently, I’ve plotted an unknown route across country, using routes 78 and 378. Without knowing what I will find, I’m just determined to avoid freeways.

I think the other guests at the Athens Microtel did me a favour. As a result of their anti-social behaviour, I’m on the road by 07:00 and riding swiftly and serenely through countryside just washed by Georgia rain and gleaming in the early morning light.

Neat farms with white-picket fences are either side of deserted, wavy roads, roadside stores, abandoned gas stations and churches pepper the route. As Georgia becomes South Carolina, every cliche of Americana is present and correct. It’s a fitting near-end to the overall journey: middle-America as I’d always imagined it.