Day 19: St. George Island to Atlanta, GA.

Brother Michael decided to ride part way to Atlanta with me. Susie gave us a route that avoided the worst of the coastal detour and took us north through some nice pine forest and a few small towns. Like most of the southern country roads there are no shoulders and no pullouts. This sure makes it difficult to take photos! Mike and I had a very nice ride. We split up after lunch when we got to I-75. Mike headed south back to Orlando, I headed north to Atlanta, where I would be staying with Susie's boy Matt and his wife Stacey. 

Heading into Atlanta I saw the skies ahead getting gray and ugly - I thought it was just a bad case of pollution. I was wrong. I suddenly saw the trucks up ahead throwing off huge sprays of water! I headed for the first exit, which was only a few hundred yards away, but it wasn't close enough to keep me dry :( I pulled into a small shopping center and went into a Subway, where I drank a Diet Coke, cleaned my helmet visor, and watched it rain. And rain hard! I used the down time to call ahead to Matt to let him know I was only 30 minutes or so away. The rain eased up and I hit the interstate again. There were a couple of more showers on the way to Matt's but nothing really bad. However, as I'm rolling down the last street to get to his house the thunder and lightning begin again and when I pull into the drive it starts to rain very hard. Matt and I both got pretty wet while unloading the bike! 

Dinner that night was at a local pizza place - pretty good pizza, too! Matt and Stacey put me up in a nice room and let me go to bed early :) as I was planning on an early start the next morning to avoid the Atlanta rush hour traffic and the afternoon heat. About 1:00AM there was a terrific thunder and lightning storm with some pretty hard rain. I finally got back to sleep about 2:00am. Sigh.