August 20, 2016 – Sunny, 85 degrees

Miles Today: 18

Miles to Date: 14,835

States to Date: 41

My warmshowers hosts, Laura and Mike, rode me to the Carter Center to kick off my day of Atlanta sightseeing. The Jimmy Carter Library is the seventh I’ve visited along my route. Nestled in a gully, the building is unassuming as the man. The museum focuses less on Carter’s Presidency compared to the other libraries. This makes sense for a man whose single term was a mixed bag of successes overshadowed by the Iranian hostages, but who’s post-Presidential is more influential than any other.

I cycled through some vintage Atlanta suburbs, stopped by the Martin Luther King Jr. Historical Site, toured downtown and Centennial Park and managed to duck indoors when a mammoth afternoon storm drenched the city.

A pair of friends hosted me in their Midtown apartment; a sprawling complex of several hundred high-end units wrapped around a five-story parking garage. I had never seen that arrangement before; very handy to drive to the level of your unit. Bruce and DFior both work in the travel industry and fly places virtually every week. The big draw of Atlanta? Direct flights to everywhere. Fortunately for me they were home on Saturday night and cooked up pungent crab boil and braised Ox-tail.