Zachary Backes - TP 10

6/23/12

After my meeting with Maud I waited around for about 30min until Talal showed up on his bike. I had mentioned to him in a conversation over facebook that I liked to bike around town a lot and that he should join me one day. I figured I could turn the ride into a tour/teaching experience. We filled up water bottles and headed out towards Soul Veg, another topic brought up over facebook that I figured would be fun to introduce him to.

The ride was pretty easy, Up St. Augustine to Adams and down that awesome hill to the greatest vegan food in Tallahassee. Heres how good it is; I am not a vegan, yet I eat there damn near once a week. We ordered quickly (half mac & Hebrew rice with extra garlic sauce /drool) and sat down in a booth. Talal got the Garbie burger and we both tore into our food.

After we ate I explained my plan for the day. We were going to ride around and I would try and find odd street names, ones with queer spellings or ones that were major to city thoroughfare. He would write them all down in the notebook I gave him and a major characteristic about it he noticed on the ride. He seemed to like the plan because he finished eating before I did and was impatiently waiting for me to catch up.

Once the meal was done and water refilled we went out the back parking lot and came out on Monroe, our first main street. I explained how long Monroe was, that it went all the way out to Wood-ville in one direction and headed to Georgia in the other, It was also the road the Tallahassee Mall was, which he knew of from going to the movies. we chugged up the hill until we hit the Capitol. We biked around for a bit then headed down Apalachee parkway, our second big street. I told him how this road was a Native American name and that a lot of streets around here had that. It also has another Mall much further down called the Governers Mall, which was much larger but farther away.

We rode down Apalachee until we reached Magnolia, I told him that this name came from a flower and it was a very important road because our major Hospital TMH is on this road. We biked down the road until we were right in front of the hospital. Then we took the connecting street back to Tennessee past Leon High School. Tennessee was kind of sketchy to ride on, so I took us over from Monroe to Jackson St which turns into Pensicola, another Indian name. Along the way I told him just how far Tennessee actually goes, the size of the streets really seemed to astound him.

We followed Pensicola back to campus and I took it all the way back to Appleyard and home. I really enjoyed the ride and I think Talal did too. All in all it was a pretty awesome way to spend a Saturday.