January 6, 2007
Surprisingly, Ozark, AL has some very nice homes near the downtown area. Unlike most of the towns I’ve passed through so far, these homes have been taken care of and renovated. More than a few had a Mercedes or Lexus parked out front. I now wish that I had stopped and taken a few pictures, but it was the beginning of the day and I was anxious to get going.
My knees have been hurting lately, so I stopped at a CVS pharmacy to pick up some general meds. I asked the girl at the checkout what the industry is in Ozark. Was it agriculture? The army base? She didn’t know. I asked her what is the population of Ozark. She didn’t know that either. I thought, And that’s why you work at CVS.
I rode through Fort Rucker and saw some Army guys at the shooting range, but mostly it was just a 2-lane road surrounded by pine and hardwood forest. I thought about the war in Iraq and wondered how many of those guys have fought there, 2, 3, 4 times? I thought about how it costs a billion dollars a week, for nothing. The National Park Service has a billion dollar budget shortfall (mainly for repairs, improvements, park ranger salaries) that goes unfunded. Something that millions of Americans enjoy every year, wasting away. Yet our government blows money left and right so we can ship tanks and hummers to the Middle East and blow shit up for no good reason.
The rest of the day I passed through a few more sad small towns. Crossed the FL/AL state line. Almost stopped to camp at an abandoned gas station, but it didn’t look good enough, and there was still an hour of sunlight left so I pressed on. Several miles into Florida I found an abandoned house secluded a couple hundred feet from the road. The front door was unlocked, it was fairly clean on the inside, and a newspaper from June 2006 told me that it was only recently abandoned. I moved my bike inside and unpacked my gear as the sun went down.
When it got dark a security light came on outside. I thought, There is no way this place has electricity? I had checked the lights when I got there, nothing. But when I went to the side of the house and flipped the main breaker, the power came on! I now had lights and a place to charge my cell phone and camera batteries. To celebrate the occasion, I made about a dozen calls to my friends.
I thought maybe I could get really lucky tonight, so I turned on the well pump to see if I had water too. It worked for a while, but the water was murky. Then water stopped coming out altogether. I did, however, find 3 water bottles in the house and near-empty containers of shampoo and conditioner. So I gave myself a sink shower. It only helped a little bit, but then again my hair smelled like roses instead of road stink, which is always a good thing.
Glow-in-the-dark animals kept me company as I fell asleep.
