Wednesday, November 12, 2008

November 8th to 11th My bike was stolen in a brazen Robbery in Charleston

I drove from Wilmington to Charleston, where I circled a bit to find a hotel. On Hwy 17 just before it left the city to the south I found a best Western which hosted a bicycle tour organizer convention. I felt this was the place for me and checked in for two nights. I went out to explore the city center on foot as it is getting really early dark nowadays and I don't have light on my bike. (I have actually lights that I could fix to my bike but don't feel very save to ride in the dark. On a website for cyclists in Charleston I found a description of several bike routes to explore city and beaches and I intended to do so the next morning.
Charleston is really pretty but full with tourists. As it is so small and gets cruise ships coming in you really feel the impact of 500 visitors at one time. Cruise ship tourist are not interesting people you can find. I always think when I see them disembarking in SF that I would never want to be with 500 or even many more elderly people, who never stay overnight anywhere and eat their meals always on the same ship, enclosed in such a tight place for my whole vacation. I don't really get why this is attractive in any way. I found a nice restaurant next to the college of Charleston where I had an excellent low country specialty with fried oysters, crab meat, grits and oysters and pounds of melted butter. I could only eat half of it and I usually can eat a lot. I went home to my hotel, had a good night beer in the roof top bar of the Marriot next door and went to bed. In the morning I copied down my routes that I wanted to take and went down in the lobby to get a Charleston map. I had left my car directly in view of the front desk next to the front door. As my room was on the 6th floor and several cars outside had bikes on top I left my bike locked in the roof rack. I had my map looked out to my car and saw that the bike was missing...
I had to wait for the cops who came and took down my name and made me call in the serial numbers. They told me a lot of bikes get stolen in Charleston and they usually find them after some weeks. But I doubt that there are many nice road bikes around anyhow and much less get stolen. Of all the bicycles that I saw in Charleston not one was as nice as mine. I pounded the possibilities: One of the conventioneers, who were leaving that morning or perhaps someone from the bike shop across the bridge where I had it to try to do something about the problems that I had with my front derailleur. Whatever the bike is gone and I couldn't change it. I rented a road bike (I think this was the worst one that I have ever ridden.) and rode my planned tour. When I came back to the hotel I encountered the night security guard and he told me that he saw the thief and tried to stop him but he backed his truck nearly over him. He could describe him and the truck - dark blond, tall slender dark gray pick-up truck, of which I forgot the make - but he didn't get the license plate.
So now I am without bike for the next three weeks. Andreas was at once online to check on new bikes for me. We found a special in Germany which seems to be real good value and we ordered that. Until now we don't have any confirmation, that we get it but I am rally exited about this as it seems to be an upgrade to my old bike.
I really like Folly Beach outside Savannah. It is part of Charleston but has a really relaxed vibe to it, at least in this time of the year. I left Charleston to go to Hilton Heads. I was not so sure about this as I don't like big beach resorts. But it is the only one in the south (and outside Florida) that I have ever heard about. I found a room in a Motel 6 which was 33$ including tax. For that price I had to chase down a cockroach and in the morning a lizard jumped out of my suitcase just to stay on the power cord of my laptop for the rest of my time there. The beach was nice to run on but there much to many people there and hundreds of beach cruiser cyclists on the beach. The nice thing is that here in the south everything is green and hidden in forests all malls are not visible from the street as they are behind a big green strip of forest, which means on the other side they take up even more space and everything is really far away from each other, but at least it is optically pleasing, which is a rare thing to be said about malls.
Yesterday I was in Savannah where I had already after Charleston the second Veterans Day Parade this week. It seems that all high schools in the Savannah area have ROTC programs. I am so happy that SF bans them. I think it is a scary thing that schools take the underprivileged kids and instead of teaching them to think critically for themselves teach them blind obedience and how to kill and die for the financial win of big corporation whose shareholder don't ever fight themselves. Savannah is very pretty. If it wouldn't have all the trees full of spanish mos it could be any small european city as well. I enjoyed walking around and it seems to me a more real place than Charleston which has a slight artificial gout to it. Tourist, wealthy retirees and students as main visible inhabitants of the historical downtown.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hallo Dorit!
Wie wärs mit ein paar Fotos von Charleston?