Unfortunately I had to leave Charlotte really early to get to a tour I had scheduled at Georgia Tech. Unfortunate because I didn’t get to see my wonderful hosts again and unfortunate because it was so incredibly cold. Well, the high teens is usually fine if I’m just going in to work. It’s a different story when I’m riding for 4 hours. In the 30s my heated liners make me feel cozy and warm. In the teens, they just keep my digits from falling off. There were signs of the thaw and refreeze, especially on exit ramps, which I took with an abundance of caution. Fortunately I only need about a six-inch wide section of road surface so I could avoid the fingers of ice running down the slope of the highway in places. I’d have to say (with gentle sarcasm) that the highlight of the day was getting behind a snow plow which sporadically pelted me with rock salt somewhere near the South Carolina line. I’m glad it was mostly powdery snow that the east coast got so that when my beloved cage drivers hit 70 mph, the monumental snow drifts that tumbled off their roofs and trunks scattered into harmless flakes instead of the sailing sheets of solid ice I see so often in Northern Virginia.
After five hours, a cup of hot chocolate, and the can of deicer it took to get my gas cap off, I arrived in Atlanta where it had warmed up to a remarkable 30 degrees fareinheit under sunny skies. My visit to Atlanta itself was pretty uneventful, except for the tourguide who always walked backwards. It was a little disorienting.
Starting the day in Charlotte, blowing through South Carolina, hanging out in downtown Atlanta, then catching a plane to Texas did do something to make me feel a bit rushed.