The Brothers’ Bike Ride

Tallahassee to Madison
Tuesday, March 1

The Home2 Suites breakfast bar offered the novelty of little wrapped sandwiches that could be microwaved and enjoyed. In normal life I eat a yogurt for breakfast, but when in Tallahassee I eat a sausage and cheese on English muffin in order to start the day with as many unneeded calories as possible. It was delicious, and it touched off a spate of Brad Pitt-style snacking that I’ve found impossible to curtail.

Today in hotel hallways

Tim has an angelic glow as he watches Brian and Matt affix a brake light to Brian’s bike

Matt has arrived to add a little color to the proceedings

Parting shot of the stylish Home2 Suites living room with unfortunate artwork

I made another Walmart stop before leaving town. The aisle with the big jugs of water was cleaned out, and I hesitated, trying to figure out which type of water to get, since the kind the guys usually get wasn’t there.

“Ma’am, look to your left,” a voice said. It came from youngish employee a few yards in front of me.

I have just now in sharing this realized I looked to my right in response. I thought he was telling me that there was a lot more water to the right, across from where I was looking. There was, but it was all in small bottles.

“No,” I said, “I’m looking for like, big…” I held my hands a foot apart to indicate big.

“No, there was a bird up there,” he said.

“A bird?” I looked to my right again, up at the high ceiling. I saw no bird, probably because it was to my left. “Crazy,” I said, even though I didn’t think it was crazy. You should see Port Authority, I thought, but I felt like I might have to explain too much. He started walking away but glanced back, I guess to see if I was going to say anything else. I felt bad for letting him down. He just wanted to share the bird moment with someone and I was too preoccupied to connect.

Today in pretty Floridian roadways

It was another good, though brief, drive. Florida, you’re so pleasant! Who knew! I timed my departure perfectly and arrived at the Best Western at exactly the same time as the bikers.

Our best lodging option in Madison was a Best Western. It could have been worse, but Best Westerns are my least favorite places to stay. They’re independently owned, so they’re very inconsistent — except when it comes to their pillows, which are of the dreaded puffy variety. Anyway, they usually feel stodgy and have weird furniture and outdated bathrooms. Madison’s Best Western was no different, though its warm paint colors tried to cover up its deficits.

Party time at the B.W.

Party aftermath

Dinner was at a decent Mexican place in Madison proper. I ordered an enchilada and a taco. I thought the taco would be soft shell but it wasn’t, and I accepted it with silent grace. The men all ordered dessert, but I abstained because my non-stop snacking from earlier had left me with no room.

We strolled around downtown Madison a bit after dinner. Small towns throughout America almost all seem to be in a transitional place; you can tell they used to be thriving, but at some point in the past thirty or forty years, things went downhill. Now many of them are slowly climbing back to viability, but they each need to redefine what viability means.

Best restaurant in town

Best courthouse in town

Snap to it

Hotel Art of the Day

Words That Mean Home
Mixed Media
Home2 Suites, Tallahassee

Hotel Art Score

1/10. This is an idiotic piece of crap and I completely hate it. The inclusion of the word “hospice” here feels especially thoughtless, though it might not have been intended that way. Juxtaposed against the “whimsical” paint treatment, though, it makes me think that the words were chosen almost randomly. The thing I loved about Home2 was that it was meeting a lot of needs I didn’t even know I was allowed to have as a traveler: it had a very effective blackout curtain, Kohler bathroom fixtures, a kitchen sink with dish soap, the aforementioned fridge and recycling bins. Everything felt carefully considered. I think this art is just a misstep; it’s got “groovy style,” with that wooden backboard and textured crackly paint, but it doesn’t have any humanity. I think I hate it so much because I’m afraid that stuff like this will proliferate in the culture until we’ve all forgotten what it feels like to have our hearts actually moved by a work of art. It’s a stand-in for real feelings, an avoidance of them.

Art Art Score

0/10. You heard me. I see that it’s signed but I don’t feel like trying to look it up.

Marianna to Tallahassee
Monday, February 29

Now that I’m a hotel veteran, my quality of sleep usually has little to do with the place — unless the pillows are especially puffy (Does anyone like puffy pillows? What is wrong with you, if so?) — and mainly to do with my state of mind. But I’ve noticed that I generally prefer rooms with the window on my left (mimicking my own bedroom’s layout) or, even better, facing me. At the Fairfield Inn in Marianna, an okay but entirely forgettable hotel, the window was on my right. Everything just feels a little wrong when the window is on the right. I woke up at 4 a.m., noted that everything felt wrong, violated my “don’t check your phone” rule, then fell asleep for two more hours.

Mark’s bright headlight helps keep everybody safe

Hotel hallway shot of the day

My first order of business after checking out of the Fairfield Inn was to head to Walmart to pick up supplies. It was a beautiful, warm day; I felt very happy and floaty while I was in the store, like I was gliding instead of walking. The older woman manning the self check-out (or rather womanning it) chatted with me about the nice weather and said she wanted to run barefoot through a field of clover. It took me a few seconds to understand what she’d said because a) it was an unusual thing to say and b) her southern accent was very strong. “You should!” I told her. Good luck finding a field of clover in Marianna, Florida.

It’s nice, on a road trip, to be able to mix music with someone talking to you. On Monday’s drive I listened to a recording Andy made of a chapter from A Dance to the Music of Time, which is very British and engrossing. And long. We’re on volume three of twelve.

Our lodging for Monday night was Tallahassee’s Home2 Suites by Hilton, a brand new hotel and a pretty brand new brand, as far as I can tell. It’s a competitor in the extended stay market, and it’s nice. It feels like it was conceived in this century, which ironically means it has a lot of midcentury modern design touches. I was particularly pleased to see recycling bins in the rooms; one of my biggest frustrations about hotels is that it’s impossible to know whether they recycle. I always assume they don’t and just carry a constant mild guilt.

I was also pleased to find that the room had a full-sized fridge. I’d been worrying that the beer I’d bought in Marianna would, by Tallahassee, be too warm for Tim, but when I walked in and saw the freezer, I thought, “Jackpot.” The beer would be chilled to perfection.

The rooms in Home2 Suites all look something like this

The guys didn’t have an especially long ride that day, and I hadn’t been in the room long before they arrived. While everyone else took a nap Dad and I headed downtown for some tourism. On my trip in the fall I passed through many state capitals, but I regrettably only made it to a couple of capitol buildings. I am a fan of capitol buildings; I feel like their atmosphere can’t help but influence the tenor of the proceedings within them, and seeing them gives me an illusion of insight into what it feels like to be an active part of our democracy.

The Florida Capitol building is an ugly Brutalist Lite structure from 1977, reminiscent of the reviled Verizon building in Manhattan, except with dolphins.

Dad and dolphins, Florida Capitol

It ain’t pretty, but it’s theirs

We peered into the disappointingly drab Senate chambers, then headed up to the main attraction, the wraparound observatory on the 22nd floor.

View of Tallahassee from the observatory

Dad

I found it an appealingly cold space

The Museum of Florida History was open for another fifteen minutes, so we headed over and walked through it briskly, exiting seven minutes before it closed. I think a broke a personal record for least time spent in a museum.

Early ads for citrus, from the Museum of Florida History

For dinner we walked across the hotel parking lot to Blaze Pizza, which is essentially pizza-based Chipotle. It was pretty good! I would definitely Blaze again.

Hotel Art of the Day

Random Pictures
Photographic print
Fairfield Inn and Suites, Marianna, FL

Hotel Art Score

4/10. This makes me wonder how much money there is to be had in the hotel art business. I could make something like this out of my Instagrams and would gladly sell it to the hotel market. This piece isn’t someone’s personal work, I’m almost certain, but a melange of stock photos. I could do that, too! And I’d do a better job of it.

As a hotel art experience, it’s whatever. The main thing it has going for it is that it’s colorful.

Art Art Score

1/10? 2? I don’t know how to rate anything anymore. I’m looking at every individual shot and going, “Okay, okay, uh huh.” It’s like a game of Memory. I’ve got these down and am ready to go. But what does it all mean? Life is a marvel? Life is a meaningless array of patterns? Here are a few pictures I found on Getty?