Statesboro, May 10

According to my ACA maps I’ve done 809 miles since leaving Key West. Not bad. Key West to Bar Harbor, ME, via the ACA Atlantic Coast route, is 2,676 miles, so I’ve rolled off more than a quarter of that. However, that doesn’t include my planned ramble around Nova Scotia. (Haven’t looked into what that total mileage will be.) But, so far so good. Only major complaint is the rain. Very few days without some, but into every bike ride some rain must fall.

This is graduation weekend at Georgia Southern University, so motels are jammed but I managed to look pitiful enough to one manager who found me a room normally used for storing things. The room is fine. The graduating class is the largest ever, well over 2,000 at this university of 19,000.

To get here I rolled past thousands of acres of pecan orchards and sweet onion fields, some of them Vidalia onions. As Nindy McDonald (That’s the way he spelled it.), a farmer from Vidalia, GA, told me over lunch a person can grow sweet onions or Vidalia onions. The latter come from specific seed stock and are trademarked. There’s a 10-county area in these parts that has the right soil, something to do with its sulphur content, that creates sweet onions, regardless of whether they’re Vidalias or not.

We discussed the world of onions while eating at Mrs. Roger’s Restaurant, the first eatery I came to in Claxton. The parking lot was full of cars and pickups so I figured there must be good eating inside. It was a single room jammed with diners who obviously had enjoyed many meals at Mrs. Roger’s. Grace, a waitress, hustled over and explained that it was a buffet, including dessert, drink and tax for $8.25. “Go on help yourself and I’ll get you your tea. Sweet or unsweet? By the time you get ready a place’ll open up.” It did, next to the onion expert.

The buffet offered two kinds of chicken (fried or BBQ), baby back ribs, rice, butterbeans, peas, Mac and cheese, cornbread, corn pudding, boiled cabbage, a salad bar, and biscuits. Lemon cake, apple cobbler and peach cobbler were the desserts.  

It's the city’s lunchtime eatery. The mayor was greeted when he came in as was the district attorney and a judge. An EMS crew took up a table.

This being Claxton I had to pay homage to its most famous product—the Claxton Fruit Cake. Claxton Bakery, Inc. has baked millions of pounds of the nut and fruit-filled cakes since 1910. Beginning in late August each year the bakery produces 86,000 pounds of fruit cake daily. I bought a $1 Snack Slice for my ride. When I analyzed its contents the Slice didn’t vary that much in nutritional value or ingredients from the much more expensive “sport,” “energy” or “nutrition” bars.

As I rolled through Glennville roadside signs let me know this is the hometown of former NFL football stars and brothers Shannon and Sterling Sharpe. It’s also the home of the 1999 and 1939 Miss Georgias.

PS--Penny and Jim, being the Georgia natives that you are and knowing how much you love your homestate fruitcake, a 5-pound brick of it is on its way to you.