Memoir of a casualty of the "Bradwell Bay of Pigs"

The tale of the Bradwell Bay of Pigs ride begins back in 2006, the first year that I rode in the Capital City Cyclists Spaghetti 100 off-pavement ride. The Spaghetti 100 also includes 100-mile and 100-kilometer road rides which are, so far as I can tell, typical road rides. In fact, because most of the road routes are in south Georgia, and Georgia seems determined to strip every tree from the entire right-of-way of each of its country roads, the Spaghetti 100 road rides don't really seem appealing--unless you're attracted to bicycling long distances on a solar-powered griddle. A hilly solar-powered griddle.

But the off-pavement ride is unique. It's not a trail ride or an off-road ride, but a ride mostly on dirt roads. For 100 kilometers (closer to 65 miles, actually) you get to tour red-clay country roads through game plantations, past cotton farms, and mostly shaded by sprawling live oaks that were old when De Soto passed this way with his Spaniards. I've done the ride every year since my first time, and I've searched unsuccessfully for another event like it.

It became clear that if we wanted another great off-pavement ride we'd have to make it.

For me, part of the charm of the Spaghetti 100 was that it takes place mostly on roads that I ran on back in the 1980s when I was training for marathons and shorter races. Another place that I used to do long runs was the Apalachicola National Forest, which is covered by a network of hundreds of miles of unpaved roads. Some of these are so sandy that they were unpleasant to run on and you certainly wouldn't want to bike on them, but many miles (given good weather) are as firm and smooth as any Georgia clay road.

Ace Haddock, a fellow veteran of the Spaghetti 100, lives in Sopchoppy. I suggested to him, "Why don't we ride from your house back to Tallahassee some time? I could have a pot of chili waiting."

Ace thought it over. "Why don't we ride from Tallahassee to my house?" Apparently Ace is not as impressed with my chili as I am.

I scouted possible routes and we talked to people who might be interested. Ace noted that we'd probably end up going by the Bradwell Bay Wilderness Area and named the event the "Bradwell Bay of Pigs Ride," evoking simultaneous images of fiasco and of the Apalachicola National Forests herds of hungry feral hogs. But the one thing we never did was ride the Bradwell Bay of Pigs. It had to be in cool weather. It couldn't be during deer season (really, it couldn't). It would be best when the weather wasn't too dry. It had to be when everyone interested was free to do it. We should probably drive the route first.

Almost two years went by.

It was late September and the 2009 Spaghetti 100 (October 17) was approaching. "You know," I said, "we should probably do some off-pavement rides before the Spaghetti 100."

"How about we do the Bradwell Bay of Pigs after the Prefontaine 5K?" returned Ace.

"I'm not running the Prefontaine 5K," I said. "I'm running the Quail Trail 5K in Pebble Hill. Why don't you run that and we can ride from Beachton to Boston and back after the race?"

"Do you know how far Boston is from Sopchoppy?"

"Well, I could do it after the Quail Trail 5K, but I wouldn't be able to start before noon."

Surprisingly, Ace didn't see anything wrong with this. We agreed to start on Aenon Church Road near the old Aenon Church cemetery. Todd McMillan joined the party. He was coming from a FSU vs. USF tailgate party, and showed up about quarter after twelve.

"Damn it, you didn't leave without me!" he grumbled.

We set out about 12:30. There was a direct route that was about 30 miles to "downtown" Sopchoppy, but it included quite a few miles of extremely sandy roads and more pavement than we wanted to ride. Instead, we decided on a route that was closer to 40 miles long, covered roads that I remembered as having good footing back when I ran on them, and actually took us by the Bradwell Bay Wilderness Area.

View Bradwell Bay of Pigs, 26 September 2009 in a larger map

We started south on Aenon Church Road, which is also National Forest Road 370. This was paved for about two miles, at which point the pavement mysteriously ends and the fun could begin. Another mile took us to the end of Aenon Church Road and a right turn onto National Forest Road 358. This took us down a hideously sandy slope, which probably would have been worse if the weather had been drier in September. As it was, only Ace made it to the bottom without being forced to dismount. At the end of the sand was Silver Lake Road, which we followed for about half a mile to National Forest Road 301.

We stayed on 301 for nearly seven miles, heading west most of the time. The first mile was sandy, but after that the surface was mostly firm. This brought us to the intersection with National Forest Road 360 and our first stop, about 11 miles into the ride. My body was telling me to bail. I wasn't feeling that bad, but I wasn't feeling good enough to be only about a quarter of the way through the ride. I had plenty of water along, but I hadn't been drinking enough after the 5K and before the ride. Big mistake. I remarked that Highway 20 was just about a two-mile ride to the north, and that I might just pedal up there and call for a ride.

"You're going to Sopchoppy if we have to drag you," encouraged Todd.

It looked like I was going on to Sopchoppy. Anyway, we'd be crossing Highway 267 in a little over three miles; I could always call for help there.

Actually, I was feeling deceptively good when we crossed the highway and thought that maybe I could gut this out. At least I'd try, seeing as how I was the only one who knew the route till we got closer to Sopchoppy. Anyway, there were two hunting camps coming up, Buckhorn and Brown House. One of them had to have water, right? In fact, I was sure that I remembered a pump at Brown House Hunt Camp.

There was no water at Buckhorn.

There may have been a pump at Brown House in 1976, but there wasn't one in 2009.

This should be a lesson to all future riders of the Bradwell Bay of Pigs route to carry all the water that you need and then some. What was left of the three quarts I had brought along no longer seemed sufficient. I was quickly becoming the anchor on the expedition.

Between Buckhorn and Brown House, after about eight miles on 360, we reached National Forest Road 309, where we turned right. For some people, it may help to mention that 309 is kind of a southerly extension of Helen Guard Station Road. For the rest of you--it's just another National Forest road. There are many of them. As Bill Bryson remarks in A Walk in the Woods, "mostly was the Forest Service does is build roads." This particular part of 309 is unusual in that it is punctuated by a couple of stretches of pavement, each about a tenth of a mile long. Back in the 1970s, signs indicated that these were test patches--places where the Forest Service was seeing how different types of pavement held up over time. The signs are gone, the test is most likely over, but the test patches remain to befuddle travelers through the Apalachicola National Forest.

Just over 22 miles into the ride we reached an intersection with National Forest Road 348. I wasn't sure whether we turned left here or continued straight on 309. I hadn't worried about where we turned off of 309 because I felt that it was close enough to Sopchoppy that Ace would know where it was. Ace, on the other hand, felt that the turn was close enough to Tallahassee that I would know where it was. Todd, meanwhile, felt that he could kill and eat both of us and have enough energy to find his way out of the forest.

Ace called for directions.

Todd's phone signaled a message. It was a sports score alert; USF 17, FSU 7. We weren't the only ones having a bad day.

Ace determined that we had to turn onto Forest Road 348. We did so, and a little over three miles later crossed FH 13, arriving at the border of the Bradwell Bay Wilderness Area. The road was good and seemed to have benefited from a recent light rain. More rainclouds protected us from the sun. We spotted dozens of trees marked with white bands, possible homes for red-cockaded woodpeckers. The road paralleled the Ochlockonee River (but not close enough for us to see it), following it downstream. Hey, that meant that we were going downhill. Things were looking up, right?

It started to rain.

Fortunately, the rain never got hard enough to make the road sloppy. If anything, it kept us cool. Just past 31 miles 348 turned a little bit too much toward the east, and we turned right onto the more southerly Forest Road 349. This took us to Forest Road 365, or Oak Park Road as indicated on the street signs. We reached pavement. The off-pavement adventure was over, but we weren't done riding yet. There was a stop at Grimes Cemetery, the final resting place of George Roddenberry, a soldier in the American Revolution. Or at least the final resting place of his wife and children; I was thinking too much about the future possibility of Coca-Cola to concentrate on the grave markers. Without the prospect of an unknown number of miles to Sopchoppy to distract me, I have to wonder how a Revolutionary War soldier found his way down to Florida. After all, Florida went from Britain to Spain after the Revolution, and it was a number of decades before the United States was able to wrestle it away from Spain. However, British loyalists might have fled to Florida during or after the Revolution--and I don't remember anything on the tombstone indicating which side Roddenberry fought for.

At 38 miles we reached Railroad Avenue. Railroad Avenue runs along the route of the Georgia, Florida, and Alabama Railroad as it passed through Sopchoppy on its way south to Carrabelle. You can see a deep cut made for drainage along the west side of the road, a relic of the railway. The GF&A Rail Trail may pass here some day as part of its 53-mile route from Tallahassee to Carrabelle. Tell your children, because I don't expect it to happen in your lifetime or mine.

A mile-and-a-half of wet pavement littered with frog carcasses brought us to Rose Street in Sopchoppy, a block away from a convenience store that sold buckets of fizzy water with sugar in it. Google says it was 39.6 miles from where we started. Just less than another mile took us to Ace's hideout near the Sopchoppy River, where he burned food for us on the grill and demonstrated his award-winning mullet cannon. The Bradwell Bay of Pigs Ride was over. Next time I promise to drink more water.