Furniture and Friends

Met Pastors Wayne Cochran and Chris Cochran for breakfast. They are en route home from preaching in Michigan. They used our Expedition to haul their bikes in Joe Dykes' trailer. First stop was Thomasville, full of beautiful civil war era homes. Prayed for Jim on Broad Street (main street) who said he he had not eaten in several days. Thinish, badly gapped teeth, mouth with a dark brown edge and has strange brown eyes. He was carrying a bolt cutter. He asked for money for food. We offered to buy him dinner but he said he had a special diet. So we prayed he would find work and that his stomach problems would be healed. Chuck gave him $5 even though he declined our offer to buy him something to eat at the restaurant next door. We overnight in Macon, GA. We dine with Mike McQueen, editor of the Macon Telegraph and a former colleague at FIU. Good conversation, good times. Mike is very happy at the paper although his family is still in Miami.

We had a tour of the city in Mike's Beemer. Interesting place. Macon is either on the verge of total collapse or on the verge of blossoming into one of the great undiscovered cities in the U.S. Downtown redevelopment seems poised to explode but the city has some serious financial problems.

The Adventure Starts

Sunday, Aug. 15 -- We make a delayed departure from Miami enroute to North Carolina, Michigan, Oregon, Texas and back to Miami on the Great Motorcyle Adventure. We planned on leaving on Friday, Aug. 12 but the approach of Hurricane Charley changed our minds. The hurricane hit Punta Gorda between Fort Meyers and Port Charolotte on the East Coast of Florida. We saw some damage in Central Florida but not a whole lot. We did see many, many, 18-wheelers heading to Georgia to pick up relief supplies or going south from Georgia with aid for the hurricane victims.

We have been planning this trip for months. I have a professional development leave from Florida International University and want to use the semester-long leave to see what young journalists think about their university education, especially as it relates to their work in converged newsrooms. I calculate we will be on the road for at least two months, with longer stops in North Carolina, Michigan, Oregon and Texas to visit family or friends. The map shows it to be about 9,000 miles. I plan on posting to this blog frequently as we ride to Portland.

We rode only to Valdosta this day, 440 miles. Pastor Wayne and Chris Cochran met us at the motel late in the evening en route to Miami from Michigan.