Biking Across America (19 page)

As I pedaled through Georgia on September 7, I reflected on the many ways my life had changed in four years. I have never liked change, but God brought healing to my life and started me on new journeys.

I sometimes laugh at my own inadequacies and remind God that he is using a very leaky vessel to do his work. Too many folks think their vessels must be perfect before they can serve God. I had tried being perfect, but it just didn't work well. Thank God for grace. Another church sign summed it up: “Grace, God's Riches by Christ's Sacrifice.” What a glorious promise! And because of God's amazing grace, we who have lost loved ones can look forward to a grand reunion someday.

The next morning, fifteen miles passed quickly beneath our wheels, and another glorious statement on another sign offered a promise. “Welcome to Florida,” it read. With incredible exhilaration, I rode into my final state. Another beautiful promise lay just beyond the welcome message. The dreadful grooves on the shoulder ended at the Florida line, and beyond stretched a three-foot-wide, wonderfully unbroken shoulder. My thirteenth state had rolled out the welcome mat.

My cousin especially appreciated the smooth shoulder; his rightful territory had just expanded to six feet.

F
lorida rolled out that smooth welcome mat and I was free to think of things other than avoiding shoulder grooves. The excitement of riding into the last state of my journey was accompanied by reflection on the incredible meetings that had already taken place.

I also had time to think about what still lay ahead. Tucked into my journal was a letter, postmarked in Florida, that had arrived at my home in Ohio shortly before I'd begun my ride. I'd brought it with me, intending to respond sometime during the weeks I was on the road. I had not yet written my reply, and now I discovered it was possible to deliver my response in person.

How could one book sent to a prisoner start such a chain of events? The story had begun when a praying mother in Florida contacted me. She was concerned about her son's spiritual condition, or rather the lack thereof; he claimed to be an atheist. His mother thought he might enjoy my book about hiking the Appalachian Trail.

Her son was in prison. I sent him a copy of my book and soon had a reply from him. He had enjoyed the adventure of the hike but did not believe what I had written about walking the trail in a real relationship with God. After he finished reading, he had passed the book on to seventeen fellow prisoners in his cell block.

His critique of my book was well written and obviously penned with much thought and intellect. I wondered how such a brilliant mind could deny the existence of an almighty God. I tried to think like an atheist, tried to imagine myself not believing in a Creator. It was an impossible exercise for me; not believing is far more difficult than believing. How anyone can look at the composition of a flower or a tree or our bodies and deny that God exists is baffling to me.

I acknowledge, though, that while I was out riding a bicycle through dramatic canyons and majestic forests under the vast skies of God's universe, this man languished in a prison cell, steeping in anger and bitterness.

Sometime during my ride through the West, I received an email from the Mayo Correctional Institution in Mayo, Florida. I recognized the name of the institution; this was the prison where I'd sent a copy of my book. The email was from an instructor of GED courses for inmates at the prison.

The instructor was going through a difficult time in his life, and one of his students, an inmate serving a life term for murder, gave him the copy of
Hiking Through
that was being passed among the inmates. The student thought the messages of the book might interest his instructor.

Fourteen of the fifteen hundred inmates were enrolled in the GED class. The instructor had emailed me to ask if I would be interested in coming to the prison and speaking to the class. I sent him a reply immediately; I was on a cross-country bike ride and would get in touch with him once I was finished with the ride and had returned home.

If I consented to speak, the instructor had told me, the prison would have to do a background check on me before I'd be permitted inside those walls. A background check. At last, all my speeding indiscretions would be revealed.

I had never heard of Mayo and had no idea where the town was located in Florida. If the time came that I visited the prison, then I'd check a map and find the place. But I'd think about that after my ride was over.

On our last night in Georgia, I mapped our route across Florida—and was amazed to discover that in two days I would be pedaling right past the Mayo Correctional Institution. I planned to take Route 27 through central Florida, and that highway ran through the little town of Mayo. What are the chances of riding coast-to-coast, over forty-five hundred miles, to find out that your route takes you past a prison that has extended an invitation to you? No, the word
coincidence
does not belong in this story.

This discovery convinced me to stop in Mayo and visit the facility. However, the background check had not yet been done, so I was quite certain I would not be permitted to pay a visit to any inmate.

“I thought Florida was flat.” Marv's voice behind me arrested my thoughts of going to prison. The road was indeed still hilly here in northern Florida. The gradual ups and downs brought us to our first town, Monticello, where beautiful old homes extended ornate front porches to welcome visitors.

We stopped at Monticello's post office for the fourth and final cleansing of my panniers. I stuffed an assortment of seats and seat covers into a box headed for home. The side pockets of my panniers were beginning to bulge with my roadside booty, so several handfuls of change were also added to the box. The final addition was tucked beneath an open seam in one of the seat covers. Since I'd found that silver money clip clasping its bounty, I could no longer be nonchalant about leaving my bike unattended. That
burden also went home, and my bike and my mindset were both lighter as Marv and I pedaled toward Perry, our destination that first night in Florida.

“How far to Mayo?” I asked the lady at the front desk.

“It's only twenty minutes down Route 27,” she replied.

For what was probably the hundredth time in my ride, I asked for a translation. “How many miles is it? I'm on a bicycle; I doubt I can ride it in twenty minutes.” It was amazing how few people could tell me the distance in miles between towns. Many folks had no answer for me.

We measure so many things by time. It's time to eat, it's time to sleep, and it's time to wake up. Clocks in our houses and in our vehicles and on our wrists control all we do. And that morning, it was time to head down the road twenty miles or so to the big house where they not only tell time but do time.

Swampland flanked both sides of Route 27. We were still a distance from the prison when we saw a large clearing in the trees and swamp. The buildings of the Mayo Correctional Institution soon appeared, set back from the highway. Fencing topped with razor wire imprisons fifteen hundred of society's poorly behaved children. A nondescript brick building stands guard outside the razor fence perimeter, and just beyond that building a sign warns against unauthorized travel. Convinced I was in the “unauthorized” category, I entered the brick building and was greeted by a receptionist.

I assured the receptionist that I had no plans of moving into the neighborhood and explained my contacts in the prison and my cross-country bike ride. “And it was just so incredible that I was pedaling past this place, that I wanted to stop.” That really was my only reason. I had no illusions that I might gain entrance to the world behind that fence.

“Do you wish to speak with the warden?” she asked. I stammered for a few seconds before replying, “Sure, if that's possible.” This was a scenario I hadn't imagined.

After a few minutes, I was ushered into the warden's office and I explained why two bicycles were parked outside her prison. Yes, the warden was a lady. One lady in charge of fifteen hundred prisoners. I surmised that this was probably a lady I did not want to upset.

“You can't go inside the prison, but I will allow you to write a letter to your friend,” the warden told me. “And I'll see that he gets it.”

I quickly penned a letter to my godless friend.
Unless a person believes in coincidence piled upon coincidence, one would almost be convinced God brought me past your prison home
, I wrote him.
God loves you so much he brought me to your prison door to tell you that. He won't give up on you and will chase you until you either give up or run out of time.
I also noted that I would be coming back to the prison to do a program after my ride was finished, and I hoped to meet him then.

It was time for us to leave and it was time to eat. The Mayo Correctional Institute employs five hundred people, but the town of Mayo has less than a thousand residents. We found a small diner, the Mayo Café, catering to the local crowd. Lunch was a gustatory delight. For less than seven dollars, I grazed among the fresh fruits and desserts at the salad bar and a variety of comfort foods at the hot bar.

In a far corner of the buffet was a pan filled with mystery food. I summoned the server to inquire about the unknown vegetable.

“Those are collard greens,” she replied.

“I've never tasted collard greens before. What are they like?”

“They're a leafy vegetable in the cabbage and broccoli family.” I was acquainted with the cabbage family. Her comment evoked images of cabbage leaves floating from the sky. “Most folks cook
them with garlic, onion, and bacon grease. We use ham bones to add flavor.”

Sure enough, a large ham bone was submerged in the slimy green mixture. I enjoyed sampling the new dish; the taste of the collard greens was interesting, with just enough seasoning and pig fat to make it palatable. The experience just confirmed what I already knew from years of food service: any food can be made tolerable with enough sugar or grease. How can a person possibly stomach a slice of rhubarb pie without obliterating most of the woeful taste with excessive sugar? I do question whether anything as indestructible as a patch of rhubarb should be eaten.

A brilliant thought occurred to me, the solution to the South's menacing creepy crawler: kudzu salad, kudzu pie, kudzu casserole. Boil it, fry it, bake it, and dump grease and sugar on it until it's palatable. Another world problem solved.

The server had also told me that collard greens were full of vitamin K. I didn't know what vitamin K was or what it did, but I ingested plenty of it that day. My cousin had trouble keeping up with me as we left Mayo. I must have benefited from the extra vitamin K, but Marv had passed on that experience and now paid the price.

Just outside of Branford was a little settlement called Fort White. We stopped to refuel at a small store. An elderly man outside greeted everyone in sight. He wore a billed cap with a Beech-Nut logo and sported a long white beard. I commented on his cheerful demeanor.

“My name's Happy,” he said with a wide grin. “I never have a bad day.”

Everyone in town knew Happy, and he spent most of his day there at the store, talking with whoever stopped by.

“What do you do for a living?” I asked.

“I'm on disability. I get a check from the government every month. Folks think I'm crazy.” He looked at me with that grin still in place.
“I've convinced everyone I am crazy. I'm not, but I don't mind if they think that.” My short conversation with him led me to believe there was a high probability that Happy might be wrong and everyone else was right, but I kept that thought to myself. Maybe a monthly check from the government is reason enough to be happy.

Happy wanted to know about my bicycle ride and I explained I was biking cross-country and had already ridden over forty-five hundred miles on my way to Key West. When a clerk came outside to coat her lungs with nicotine, Happy's chatter turned in her direction and he told her about my attempt at riding from one coast to another.

“Happy, I used to think you were crazy, but I know now you're not.” She nodded in my direction. “But that guy, he's definitely crazy.” Happy found that proclamation quite to his liking and howled with laughter.

I'd been to Florida many times before. Most folks know Florida as home to DisneyWorld and recognize cities such as Tampa, Sarasota, Miami, and Tallahassee. Now I was traveling by bicycle and discovered towns such as Monticello, Mayo, Branford, and High Springs. In these small towns, the heart of America can be found. Homes with welcoming front porches, inviting shops, and interesting diners are the norm in such communities.

Across from our motel in High Springs was a small eatery with a retro '50s look. The Fleetwood Diner is distinguished by a large, six-foot clock on the front of the building. It's time to eat, was the message. That's always time well-spent. I had no need of more vitamin K; however, a huge plate of steaming spaghetti did supply just what my body needed to finish off another day.