Biking Into Montgomery Redux

Yesterday was just not enough.

By 4:30, we had only seen maybe half of the historic sites we had hoped to visit in Montgomery, we were tired and it was late, so we decided to spend THREE days pedaling into downtown Montgomery. Today was Day Two.

We knew the route today, so it was much easier, even with the hills you don't expect.  Montgomery is a very hilly city, making bicycling a bit of a strategy exercise as well as a physical exercise.

But we met the challenge.  Here we were, pedalling down Monroe street toward our first stop --

BOOM!

David thought it was a gunshot.  Kathy felt a stinging pain in her leg.  Kathy stopped and we looked at the rear tire of her bike.  She'd had a blowout and pieces of blown innertube had shot through the outer tire, splitting it, and hitting her leg.

Hmmm....What were we going to do?  We had spare innertubes and tools, but we didn't have a spare outer tire, and this tire wouldn't make it 11 miles back to our campground.  As we pondered the situation, a kind lady stopped and said she had a friend who participates in bicycle treks and had mentioned to her that he puts a thin piece of cardboard inside the tire where the rip is, to keep the tube from popping through (and to protect the tube).  We thought this made sense.  We also decided some duct tape absolutely couldn't hurt to create a new road surface for the split tire.

A kind bicycle police officer a block or two away directed us to an auto parts store, where we found duct tape and rubber auto tire patches.  We snapped them up and took the opportunity to walk back over to The Alley (where we lunched yesterday) to grab some lunch to fortify us for our bicycle tire repair.  We picked Wasabi Japanese Cuisine, and we were not disappointed.  Thus fortified, we walked back to our bicycles and performed the surgery.

All better (well, mostly so...):

Back on track for our city tour, we first encountered the cenotaph memorial to those men and women from Montgomery who gave their lives in World War II.  It memorializes the Four Freedoms:  freedom from want, freedom from fear, freedom of speech and freedom of worship:

It seems an appropriate monument to sit in the same neighborhood with the Rosa Parks Museum (which we visited yesterday), and the Freedom Riders Memorial and Museum - the Greyhound bus station where the nineteen Freedom Riders arrived from Birmingham and were brutally beaten by a local mob that included hundreds of members of the Ku Klux Klan:

The station is still standing, and displays a timeline of the Freedom Riders efforts and the results and reactions:

We were particularly taken by a door that had been cemented closed, tiled over, and then marked with a sign noting that it had originally been the "Colored" entrance to the bus station:

We hadn't expected to find the Decatur Street Baptist Church where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. originally served as pastor before growing into leadership of the Civil Rights Movement by events and others in the movement.

The church is not far from the Civil Rights Memorial and Museum, sponsored by the Southern Poverty Law Center.  The most prominent feature of the Memorial is an outdoor monument, created by Vietnam Veterans Memorial designer Maya Lin, honoring the achievements and memory of those who died during the Civil Rights Movement, a period framed by the momentous Brown v. Board decision in 1954 and the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King in 1968.  A circular black granite table records the names of the martyrs and chronicles the history of the movement in lines that radiate like the hands of a clock. Water emerges from the table's center and flows evenly across the top. On a curved black granite wall behind the table is engraved Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s well-known paraphrase of Amos 5:24 - "We will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream."

The Museum inside contains exhibits further memorializing the Civil Rights efforts, including an exceptional video putting the struggle into perspective.

A final feature of the Museum is its Wall of Tolerance, carrying the names of everyone who has visited the Museum and been willing to identify themselves as dedicated to justice, equality and human rights - the ideals of the Civil Rights Movement.  We added our names:

Montgomery has played roles in the fight for equality in more ways than one.  From February to late May 1861, it was the capital of the Confederacy before Virginia seceded from the Union and the permanent capital was moved to Richmond.  During the period that Montgomery was the capital, the President of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, lived here, in a house provided for him and his family near the then center of government.  The house has been moved up to a location across from the Alabama State Capitol Building and is known as "The White House of the Confederacy":

We had toured his retirement residence, "Beauvoir," in Biloxi, Mississippi, when we were there, and we thought it would be interesting to see this residence.  As it turned out, some of the pieces of furniture the Davises owned and used in Beauvoir now reside here.  The photo below is of Davis's study:

Rain was threatening for late this afternoon, and we weren't certain that Kathy's bicycle tire would make the full 11 miles without further incidents, so we headed back to the RV after our stop at The White House of the Confederacy.  Nevertheless, halfway home, as we passed the Fairgrounds, Kathy spotted a herd of horses in a pasture and walked over to try to make friends with one horse by offering him a handful of sweet grass.  No go.  He seemed very suspicious of the camera and would not approach.  You can see Kathy's exasperation (and the horse's reticence) in the photo below:

Back on our bicycles, we finished our ride home without rain or tire incidents, and now we hope to just rest and enjoy our weekly episodes of "NCIS" and "Person of Interest," while keeping an eye on the approaching storm with The Weather Channel.  Tomorrow is logistics day, so we'll prepare a slightly different blog, then we'll be back at it on Thursday and will chat with you then.