February 02, 1998

"YOU CAN'T CAMP HERE!"

Around 5:30 p.m., I arrived in Bay Harbour, GA. I had already pedaled 79.7 miles from Yulee, Fla. and I was tired. It was getting tired and I wanted to get to a church for the evening service. The sky was starting to darken and I didn't think I could make it into Brunswick. I made my way over to the only church that I could see and that was the local Church of G-D.

There were a lot of people in the congregation and I was given more handshakes than I had ever got at a church. There were a lot of singing before the message.

The minister's message was about the Holy Spirit. The minister started to get into the style of most Pentecostal sing-song with foot stomping and dancing. He didn't stay in one place for long while he preached. He worked up a sweat. An interesting concept that he talked about was that ADONAI picked people for their jobs. This was sort of a confirmation for my being out on the road on two wheels.

The sermon went on for quite a while and there was a long altar call afterwards. The pastor was waiting was for just one soul to come forward and repent. Twice during the quiet, the silence was broken by two different ladies who started to supposedly "speak in tongues". I never heard an interpretation on what had been spoken.

The service ended around 7:30 p.m. I was a bit stunned on the reaction of the minister when I asked him if it would be possible to camp out near the church for the night. Here was this supposedly spirit-filled minister and his answer to me was "No." He was just all words and no action.

His next statement really floored me and that was that if I didn't get on my way soon he would call the police. Quietly, I left the church grounds holding my tongue. When I got to the edge of the parking lot, I just shook the dust off my feet and headed out.

I didn't want to go because the batteries in my helmet light were almost out. I walked most of the way down the highway in the dark to the Brunswick Bridge. There was really no place to camp out along the way because the highway was on a narrow strip of land between two marshes.

Even though it was after 8:30 p.m. by the time I started to walk across the bridge, there was still a lot of construction activity on the new high bridge that was being built to replace the drawbridge over the sound. When I got into Brunswick, I just wanted to get through town as fast as I could so I stayed on U.S. 17 heading northward.

The ride through Brunswick was hard because of the patches of road grading. It was a tricky ten mile ride up to Darien. There wasn't any place to stop and camp out because of marshland. I relied just upon the moon to be able to see the white lines of the road. Along the way, I had a couple of run-in with dogs. It was quite scary since I couldn't see them rush up at me.

I had forgotten how far it was to the bridge over the Altamaha River into Darien. Just before the bridge, I became a bit frightened when some locals passed me several times. I didn't know what they were going to do so I tried to play it safe.

I got into Darien almost about midnight. I didn't see any place where I could camp out. I stepped up the pace. A little after 1:00 a.m., I came across a church on the south edge of Eulonia after riding almost twelve miles from Darien. There was no traffic on the road so I took the chance and pulled into the church driveway and found a place to camp out behind the fellowship hall. I had cycled at least twenty-five miles more than I had wanted to. In all, I had pedaled almost 105 miles since heading out yesterday morning down in Florida.