Day 2, Wilmington NC to Conyers GA

Mar 26, 2019 Tue0Motorcycle

Miles:	408
Start Point:	Wilmington, NC
Start Weather:	At 6:00 AM EDT the temperature was 55.3 ° with 95% humidity. The conditions were overcast with a wind speed of 4.5 MPH and wind gusts of 7.6 MPH.
End Point:	Conyers, GA
End Weather:	At 6:00 PM EDT the temperature was 60.8 ° with 65% humidity. The conditions were drizzle with a wind speed of 4.4 MPH and wind gusts of 11.4 MPH.
Sun Rise:	7:08 AM EDT
Sun Set:	7:52 PM EDT

	Previous 40 to Phoenix Rides
	Rain and More Rain
	Elevation Changes During the Day
	Google Map Track Log
	Comments
	Other Blogs About This Trip

Previous 40 to Phoenix Rides

This is my 3rd 40 to Phoenix ride. I have visited just about all the Route 66 sites I want to see and have written about them in previous years. To read about this day and see photos from previous years, please see Day 2, 2017 and Day 2, 2018.

Rain and More Rain

This morning the weather radar on my iPad showed the clouds had moved through during the night and were off the coast so we expected a rain free day. It was not to be. We did not get drenched but we had off and on drizzle for several hours. Also today did not offer much in the way of photos.

Mar 26, 2019 Tue 8:31:10 AM EDT Altitude: 63 ft Camera: iPhone 7 PlusDisplay on Google Map
South Carolina State Line
Laurie

However I have some photos to share that we took over the last two weekends. Dorothea Lange took photographs for the Farm Security Administration (FSA) during the Great Depression. You can read about her life and photography on Wikipedia.org.

One of her well known photos is of a country store in Gordonton, North Carolina, July1939.

Mar 26, 2019 Tue 5:10:27 PM EDT

I read an article recently about how old black and white photos are colorized. The author, JJ Lloyd of Dynamichrome and Professioinal Colourist, talked about how much research it takes to colorize a photo. He spent a week on research and several days applying the color. You can read the article here. Below is the colorized version.

Mar 26, 2019 Tue 5:10:36 PM EDT

In the article he stated that the store still exists and provided a Google Map link (coordinates: 36.280323,-79.126892). It is north of Hillsborough so we rode the bike to take a look and get some photos. The light was bad so we went back a week later to get more photos. You can see those below.

I found a neat article at WalterMagazine.com that had some thought provoking insights. Here is a snippet.

Further scrutiny of the old photo invites speculation about what it felt like to live in 1939 Person County. The presence of an electric meter, barely visible over the man on the right in the photo, assures us that the fellow guzzling his soda pop was probably enjoying one that was refreshingly cold. This was when only about 11 percent of rural North Carolina had electricity.
But most compelling to me -and a testament to Lange's skill as a photographer and student of the people she photographed -is the curiosity about her subjects that the image invokes.
Would the black men on the porch have been allowed inside the store at a time when Jim Crow dictated race relations? Rainey Baynes and the men seem to be engaged in easy banter and surely knew each other well. I grew up in rural Arkansas in the '50s while Jim Crow still very much held sway, but the country store down the road let blacks freely enter and do business. In town they would have to go to a window around back. I think Baynes let them inside.
What day was the photo taken? The men aren't dressed for field work. This question was answered by research confirming that it was taken on a Sunday (no blue laws in rural N.C.).