![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.jaderiderjourneys.com\/2endslavery\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/ferry.jpg\" "\\"Aurora")
<\/a>Aurora Ferry<\/p><\/div>\n
So lets get the black tonalities out of the way.\u00a0 If there is something I do not like, it is riding in the rain.\u00a0 Even less than that, cross-winds, but the worst is the combination of the two.\u00a0 For a while, I had that yesterday.\u00a0 It was towards the end of the day, and in some places it was quite harrowing.
\nRain started coming down while crossing the Pamlico River.\u00a0 By the time I got on the road, it was a steady drizzle.\u00a0 Yet, I was making reasonable progress.\u00a0 The small back roads were in good shape, and while I was traveling at a fifty mile\/hour pace, things felt good.\u00a0 It all changed when I got onto a 4-lane road.\u00a0 The wind started blowing from the sides.\u00a0 On a couple of occasions I almost got blown onto a neighboring lane.\u00a0 But the scariest time came on another river crossing, where the visibility was minimal, and even at 27 mph the BeMWu entered into this regular fishtailing pattern.\u00a0 It almost felt like a choreographed dance.\u00a0 With such low visibility, steady rain, side winds, and a several mile long bridge, I felt a car or truck would end the dance for me.\u00a0 My hazard lights flashing, I kept repeating \u201cNice and Easy\u201d, over and over again, interspersed with ‘Our Father’ prayers.\u00a0 With 120 miles to go at that point, I was thinking I would be riding for another 6 hours.
\nThankfully, it all subsided after an hour or so.\u00a0 Still, the 5 hour ride that I scheduled for yesterday ended up taking about 13.\u00a0 Ugh!
\nBut now for the gracious lines, the whites and grays.\u00a0 I must say that the roads and sights of yesterday were what I had been looking for all of this trip.\u00a0 Just after leaving the urban, commercial expanse of Myrtle Beach, the roads began to undulate and twist.\u00a0 The hills rolled in front of me, and with the air dry at that point, I was having a great time.\u00a0 White magnolias lined the road, the air was cool, and the BeMWu hummed along.\u00a0 Even my lower back was feeling great.
\nI left South Carolina behind, rolling into North Carolina.\u00a0 Another state on the list.\u00a0 By the way, I really like the South Carolina crest.\u00a0 It is a palm with a crescent moon next to it.\u00a0 What makes it so cool for me is that I have a hard time thinking that people would make the same choice these days, but now, there is no rolling back.
\nShortly after rolling into North Carolina I started seeing signs for Bolivia.\u00a0 Now this one caught my attention.\u00a0 Typically we see a lot of towns named after European cities, sometimes with ‘New’ preceding the name, but Bolivia?\u00a0 I so wanted to get a photo of the sign, but as fate would have it, and confirmed by some of the rules of the road, with no shoulders on the minor byways, it was never safe to stop to snap a shot.\u00a0 Finally, without any warning, a turning lane with the sign showed up.\u00a0 Bad thing, it came out of nowhere, and I could not stop in time.\u00a0 Yet, not to be deterred on this mission, I waited for the next cross-over and rode back an additional 4 miles just to snap that shot.\u00a0 [Donors who are donating by the mile, this will be an additional 4 pennies courtesy of Bolivia].
\nSo what is the story with Bolivia, North Caroline?\u00a0 To start out, according to the Wikipedia, it is the county seat for Brunswick.\u00a0 It has 148 inhabitants, and the name came from the fact that many boxes were being shipped from the area to Bolivia, and people liked the name.\u00a0 Missing in the explanation is why so many boxes were being to Bolivia to begin with.\u00a0 Any guesses?
\nI really enjoy agricultural landscapes, and yesterday was rich on this.\u00a0 Cotton fields were all over the place, along with sorghum.\u00a0 Not to be missed were the required side road landmarks.\u00a0 Every road has to have a mattress abandoned on the side, and North Carolina made sure that the one I spotted yesterday was blue.
\nIn one of the small towns I saw another two wheeler who called to mind someone I know.\u00a0 Just like a few days ago I saw a biker that seemed like the spittin’ image of our realtor Mike, yesterday it was a BOS [brother on scooter].\u00a0 Coming down the street, in a small town, and turning right in front of me, with a bright smile, and a thick gray mustache was a black man on a scooter that could, by all accounts, be our beloved Uncle Henry.\u00a0 This was a great highlight of my day.
\nThroughout the North Carolina roads and small towns I saw the signs of the recent storms that have battered this area of the country. Twisted gas station overhangs, fallen trees and branches, and the infamous blue tarp roofs that Houston, and the Gulf Coast have become all too familiar with.
\nThe awareness focus of my trip continues to develop.\u00a0 The ‘Not For Sale’ sign on the side of my bike continues to spark conversations, as does the patch on my safety vest, or my orange bandana.
\nHope grows, and today, while a slow down a bit in Virginia, having put 3,000 miles bend me, I still dream that freedom for the captives will come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Yesterday I saw sunlight for about 30 seconds.\u00a0 It was truly a black and white day.\u00a0 But like any lover of black and white photography knows, the combination of black, white, gray tonalities, and geometry can create a beautiful picture.\u00a0 Sometimes, things are better in black and white, rather than color.\u00a0 I can not vouch… Read More »A day in black and white<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":434,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[13,15,19,24,25],"class_list":["post-432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-3","category-journey","tag-cbc","tag-ferry","tag-journey-2","tag-north-carolina","tag-photos"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.jaderiderjourneys.com\/2endslavery\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/ferry.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2o6Hc-6Y","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jaderiderjourneys.com\/2endslavery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jaderiderjourneys.com\/2endslavery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jaderiderjourneys.com\/2endslavery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jaderiderjourneys.com\/2endslavery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jaderiderjourneys.com\/2endslavery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=432"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jaderiderjourneys.com\/2endslavery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jaderiderjourneys.com\/2endslavery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jaderiderjourneys.com\/2endslavery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jaderiderjourneys.com\/2endslavery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jaderiderjourneys.com\/2endslavery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}