On In To Mobile!

Friday, February 29, 2008 (Leap Day)
All Systems Go!
We headed, FINALLY, out of Florida, to the west.
On the way out we stopped in Apalachicola, Florida. This is a very nice and very small beach city center with a bunch of artsy things going on. There are a few great antique dealers, great old buildings a small little port that was used for shrimp boats at some point (this small port is reminiscent of Middletown’s place on the river (great potential, yet undeveloped as such)
We landed, just a short piece up the road, for an overnight stay in Mobile, Alabama. None of us had ever been there before (We had never been in Alabama at all) and it is entirely possible that we will not go there again. We drove through downtown and it was nice and interesting. I found the old train station to be very cool architecturally. They also have a good science center and museum but if there were any other drawing points, we missed them.
There was really one cool thing that did occur for our time in Mobile which was also serendipitous. As we pulled into our under embellished camp field for the night and got settled another camper pulled in right next to us within the next 10 minutes. We exchanged hellos and each of us went about the business of setting up our traveling homes for the night. After a while, when all was set, I saw them fussing around with their bicycles in the back of their pick up truck. I went out to see what they were up to and found that their bike rack had broken off of its stand on the back of their trailer while enroute to the site earlier that day.
One bike had been pretty serious bent up but the tandem bike they had survived the fall to the highway and being dragged at 65 miles per hour (unnoticed by them until another driver on the highway enthusiastically informed them that they were dragging their bikes). While talking and examining and helping them determine the best way to load them into the back of the pickup, I noticed that the man was wearing a Yale Divinity baseball cap. So we got to talking about that and I found that he went there way back and was now a recently retired minister from a liberal Christian church in Dallas. (As liberal as it can get I suppose, he likened it to UCC in CT.) We talked a short while about our friend Charles Vogl (of New Year Baby fame) who is currently attending Yale Div and how it is a small world and such.
Moments later, I had this thought that we could do something really nice for them and also help us out with an up and coming issue if we offered them our two bicycles (Megan and mine) as a pay it forward offering and so that they would not have to be without a bike or worry about trying to get theirs fixed.
I have just bought two recumbent bikes on EBay from a guy in Houston. We figured we were on our way through there and would pick them up on the way. My regular 21 speed road/mountain bike has been hurting my shoulders and wrists for years and I wanted to have the sit down on and pedals forward type for years as well. This trip has afforded us the luxury of time to bike but it wasn’t all that much fun when I hurt afterward.
Seeing that we were just two weeks away from Houston and getting our newer bikes there, we offered our bikes to our new friends. After a bit of discussion and them trying them on for size and convincing them that we did not want anything (money) for them but just wanted to help them out and have our bikes go to someone who would use them, we all agreed and made the gifting official.
They were on their way to a month long campground host volunteer position in northern Florida and were amazed and very happy to have the bikes to use there. I love it when things just work out this way. I was wondering what the heck we were going to do with those bikes once we got our new ones.Issue Resolved in a really nice way!