"Just 26 miles to Charlottesville," I said. Forgot the part about 13 of those miles being vertical climbs. Had to break out the nanotech wheels with the pseudogecko treads.
Then, Charlottesville did its damndest to try and kill me. The GPS crapped out this morning just outside of Palmyra, so I navigated via map and sextant, but this switchback-ridden city was laid out by drunkards. I was supposed to get here between noon and one; I stepped out of my ice-cold shower at about 4:30.
But but but: I just got off the phone with Garmin, and essentially the GPS unit was merely confused (like me). I told it to reset its location, stepped out into the parking lot of my lovely and hard-won motel, and it found all kinds of satellites like the good little GPS that it is. I felt badly for doubting it.
This is just the Yes I'm Still Alive post; more later.
I didn't go down it. I went up it. And there's quite a bit more of it than you can see here:
It doesn't look like much, but photos can be deceiving that way. This is the road leading up to Monticello, which I did not stop and visit due to the lateness of the hour, the heat of the day, and the fact that Jefferson built his house on top of a damn mountain.
Then, after that hill there were more hills. Hills all over the place. Short steep ones. Long steep ones. Plus some really wicked downhills that are highly entertaining, as long as you don't think too hard about maybe having to slam on the brakes and watch the trailer sail gracefully over your head, or the fact that any downhill is just a temporary loan of gravity that will be repaid, and soon, with interest.
Consider that photo right there 1,000 words plus however many more words I managed to squeeze out right here. More to say, more happened, of course, but there's some Icy Hot that needs slathering onto toasted legs, and a pillow that my head would like to get to know better.
More of a Not Triking day, actually...I ran, or rather walked, some errands: a fruitless trip to a bike shop (1 mile), which turned out to be a trendy pseudo shop with nothing I needed and overpriced Clif bars, and then a more successful trip (.75 mile) to a local mall, there to raid Sears for two matching crescent wrenches, boxers, and a T-shirt.
The crescent wrenches were needed to cope with what I consider to be something of a poor design in the trike's steering/fender attachment system, the result of which was the left fender loosening and rotating clockwise into the tire while I descended a vibratory chipseal road at thirty-five miles per hour. Very bad to have to hold the fender in place with your thumb while steering and covering the brakes, especially because braking too hard with one brake can cause the trike to pull rather abruptly to one side.
The boxers and tee-shirts were needed to cope with what I consider to be a bit of poor planning in my laundry/clothing system: two boxers and two tees means I have nothing to wear while doing laundry. So three of each is the optimal number, one to wear, two to wash, and I can wear my rain pants while washing my camp pants. When I got the stuff back to the motel, I discovered that I've already gone down a size: the boxers, in my usual size, were too big. But I'm keeping them anyway, because I am not walking to that mall again.
The stretch of Route 29 that I had to walk along and ultimately cross four lanes of to get to the mall is loud, polluted, and utterly anonymous. Like the mall, it could be anywhere...a stretch of minor highway in New Jersey, or California, or Texas. On the walk back from the mall, the skies opened up and poured loud thunderous rain on me, and I - being on a Rest Day, which means a certain level of fatigue and muddle-headedness - hadn't brought my Gore-Tex. So I was soaked to the skin, feeling very small and pebble-like in the great river of the world.
Once back at the motel, sleep overwhelmed me and I sacked out from 3:30 to 6:00 while my body tried to restore itself. I had already made the decision to spend another night here, and this just confirmed that as a good idea. I wasn't going to be ready to leave Saturday morning.
All part of the learning experience, I suppose, although the lessons of the body seem to be more readily absorbed than those of the mind or spirit...today was, all in all, a very low day. With no immediate task to focus on, such as putting one pedal in front of the other or plotting my path from one shady spot to the next as I inch up a hill, there was plenty of time to dwell on my rootlessness, my foolishness, and whatever other -ness my tired mind cared to dredge up.
That is, of course, part of what I signed up for: time to think, time to be alone, and so on. As always, it's one thing to have an idea in your mind about what a situation will be like, and quite another when the idea leaves your skull and becomes hard reality. Part of it, I'm sure, has to do with the steep learning curve, and my failure to realize the true importance of the Way of Leaving Early in a time of hot weather...it made the first week much more challenging. But most of it has to do with the actual weight hidden within the glib phrase: selling my house, putting my stuff in storage, triking across the country. That weight is much more evident in a motel room than in my tent or on the trike.
NEXT MORNING:
On the other hand, I am staying at Yogi Bear's Jellystone Park tomorrow, so things are looking up.
LATER THAT AFTERNOON:
New Lesson: be not so trusting of GPS waypoint labels. I am now not staying at Yogi Bear's Jellystone Park tomorrow, I am staying at the Misty Mountains Camp Resort in Greenwood.
Which is good, because that's what is actually located at the point indicated by the little tent icon.
Top Three Indications That You Will Not Be Riding Today
1. You pack up your trike and trailer the night before, pump up the tires, fill up your various water-holding devices, and go to bed at around 9 PM (in accordance with the Way of Leaving Early). At about 10 PM, an alarming, prolonged hissing fills the room as your rear tire spontaneously releases all of its air. Subsequent examination of the tube reveals not a puncture, but a deterioration of the valve collar on the tube, which is not patchable.
2. You wake up at 5 AM (again in accordance with the Way of Leaving Early), and the previous evening's meal has transformed itself into a rumbling bowling ball somewhere in your guts.
3. You stumble on down to the Waffle House in the steadily brightening dawn, eat your carb-heavy fuel-breakfast, return to the motel room, and yak it up. Not all of it, just a bit of it. Twice.
So, I'm in the motel for yet another day. It didn't seem wise to get on a trike and attempt to ride for 28 miles when I wasn't certain whether I had food poisoning, the flu, a really bad case of nerves, or a combination of all three. So I moved my campground reservation from tonight to tomorrow night, called the front desk and signed up for another night her at the Red Carpet Inn, then crashed from 7 AM to about 11 AM.
I'm a believer in the utility of dreams: they're an auxiliary processing path that can do some of the heavy lifting when our lives get intense. I haven't had any memorable dreams for several weeks, but this morning I had a couple of thick, vivid imaginings, one of which concerned Peapod. Pea and I were back at the house for some reason, and the buyer was there with his belongings and his tools, working on finishing the projects we could not. As I wandered through the familiar rooms, I found a painting on the dining room wall and thought, "Oh no! I forgot to pack that." But it wasn't my painting, it was the new owner's. He had just hung it in the same place. There were other vignettes of the same type, all conveying the same message in inexorable dream-logic: not our house anymore, not my home anymore.
There were ancillary nonsensical bits, like showing up at the Whole Foods grocery store up the road without any clothes on. But when I finally woke up, the deep tension that has been roiling in my chest and gut for the past couple of days had diminished somewhat. The panic I felt when I realized that I wouldn't be able to ride today had gone. And I felt myself, finally, starting to let go of what has been, and perhaps settling more fully into what is now my life.
This is the part of the journey that doesn't involve pedaling and, frankly, it hasn't been much fun so far. But: I expect it will improve.
Now I'm going to take advantage of my extended stay to get more work done, and hike down Route 29 a ways to another bike shop and lay in a supply of 20-inch tubes. I was counting on being able to patch several holes in a punctured tube before replacing it, which was the strategy I employed in the city...I once had a tube with six patches on it that I only stopped using because I got new tires. But this valve failure has me concerned - I can't patch that kind of damage, and that means that I'm down to one spare tube for a trike with two front tubes that may or may not be deteriorating in the same way as the rear tube.
Off with me! For tubes!
LATER:
I told you things would improve. Steve Roberts just bought me a beer (a PayPal beer, which means I get to enjoy it later).
So True It Went Through Trite And Came Out The Other Side
Wherever you go, there you are. It's been said by better and more fictional men than I, and it explains the unaccountable sadness I experienced when pedaling into vistas like the one above (click for bigger panoramic goodness). Someday I will master the way of color balancing so that my panoramas are seamless and bold.
I feel much better, more content, now that I've reached the campsite and set up my tent, in a way that I never felt while huddled inside the pseudo-Tudor box that was the Red Carpet Inn. It wasn't a bad motel at all...in fact, they gave me the weekday rate for all four (four!) nights there, instead of the much higher weekend rate for Friday through Sunday. But, in addition to rendering most of the weight I'm carrying superfluous, staying in a motel is a mundane experience. You can do that anywhere. Getting to a campsite under your own power and unpacking shelter and sustenance from your rig...now that's something altogether different. It's more what I had in mind when I started thinking about this wacky journey six years ago.
I was on the road by 6:30 this morning, and it was an altogether different experience. I escaped Charlottesville without difficulty, sneaking along the sidewalk bordering Route 29 until I reached the University of Virginia campus, where I darted through No Through Traffic roads with 15 mph speed limits. The ride along Route 250 wasn't my favorite...traffic increased as it got closer to 8 AM, but after a few miles I turned off it, stopped off at a hospitable-looking Episcopal church to use the restroom, and continued on back roads. They were still well-populated with SUVs and school buses, but still preferable to the higher speeds of the larger road.
I passed by some genuine manors - mansions in brick with steeply sloped raised-seam metal roofs, with gates and small but ornately arranged and be-shrubbed gardens. I also met Elizabeth Cantrell, who hailed me from her driveway after I passed by. She's a photographer who's originally from Boulder, so she's seen her fair share of cross-country cyclists. She was quite impressed with my rig. Her son, Luke, hidden in the back of the Volvo with the family dog, wasn't quite so sure...he definitely didn't want to get out of the car to come see, despite his mother's encouragement. And it's a good thing he was wearing what looked to be a riding helmet of some sort, because in her haste to keep the dog in the car and start taking pictures, Elizabeth closed the car door and conked him in the head a bit with the window. He didn't seem to mind much, peering out at me through the glass while his mother took photos of me, the rig, various bits of the rig, all the while exclaiming when she noticed a new gadget or flag. At that moment, she was more enthusiastic about my trip than I was.
And she was certainly more enthusastic than the sour old man who came out of the General Store in Woodridge this past Thursday to peer at my trike and drawl, "You ah nevah gonna make it." To which I replied, "Give me your address, I'll send you a postcard from Astoria."
"You got some hills comin', boy," he insisted.
"You mean the Rockies?" I shot back.
"I'd like to have the percentage," he continued, "All the ones who come through here, the ones that make it..."
At which point I dumped my Gatorade on him.
Actually, I mumbled something about being pretty sure I was going to make it, and made up a much-improved version of my half of the conversation later on in the ride. Thursday, you'll recall, was the day I crash-landed in Charlottesville, which already seems like an age ago even though I left just this morning.
The old man's words stuck with me all that day, though, and they echoed in the motel room where I stewed and fretted and yakked up bits of Waffle House hash browns. Elizabeth's excitement and parting blessings were certainly a counter to that, and the sight of verdant mountains broke through my cloudy mood a little...but I still had to force myself to turn around and pick up a quart of sweet cherries from the roadside stand at Chile's Peach Orchard, knowing I'd feel like a dreary fool if I didn't. I wouldn't have even known that the cherries were the thing to get if I hadn't met a local cyclist, who pulled up next to me to chat, sweating, with road-snot on his upper lip. I didn't mind the goo...just meant the man was working hard, that's all. Originally from Germany, Christian told me tales of the bike paths along the Danube and other major rivers, and had the familiar complaints about local scenery being chewed up and spat out by developers. He also told me about the orchard, so know I've got yummy rubies of cherry goodness to snack on, and life is good.
Still: it didn't seem good until I got here. It might be because my campsite overlooks a stream...I've always had an affinity for water, and the more it moves the better I feel. There are fretful thoughts that remain...namely, the Blue Ridge Parkway, which promises some wicked climbs over the next couple of days. I'm concerned about my endurance, my right knee, my trailer. But that's tomorrow, and the next day.
Right now, the wind is kicking up a bit, which may mean that the clouds that have been passing overhead are thinking about dumping some water on me.
Tomorrow morning, I'll have to finalize my route for the day, which will be either very short with free lodging at the end, slightly longer with a motel at the end, or long, with an expensive cabin at the end. I'm hoping for the first choice, but it depends on whether the Cookie Lady has room.
All three will involve what's been described as "the worst climb on the entire transcontinental route."
I made it to the Cookie Lady's...the climb was difficult but short, and I made steady 2.3 mph progress.
Unfortunately, my EVDO wireless modem is still fotzed as a result of Verizon's again screwing up my electronic payment and shutting off the service back on the 2nd. The service has been restored, but I won't be able to reactivate the modem until I reach Verizon's Enhanced Network in Lexington the day after tomorrow. Unlike the Red Carpet Inn, there's no landline here for dial-up, so I'm using Quick2Net at 25 cents a minute.
Which means I wrote this offline and then cut-n'-pasted it as quickly as possible. There will be a more extensive post (with photos, epiphanies, and dumplings) in a day or two.
I’ve gone 233.8 miles so far, give or take a few miles to allow for plotting difference between the GPS and the laptop, little fractions of miles traveled in campsites and so on. That’s about eighteen miles a day if you do the math proper-like, which isn’t so great, but if you take out the four rest days it works out to a slightly more respectable 26 miles a day…still not enough, just over half of what I need to be averaging. That’ll improve as my legs grow stronger and the terrain gets flatter, he said hopefully.
It was a very short riding day – just over six miles. I was intimidated by reputation of the road to Afton, which is well-deserved. I also wanted to spend the night at the Cookie Lady’s Bikehouse, and the next place to camp after the Bikehouse was well outside of my range. I set out from the Misty Mountains Camp Resort not quite as early as I should have, figuring that even with the climb I’d be able to wrap up the day’s ride before the sun toasted my noggin. Also: my body just doesn’t do 5 AM. I learned the Way of Leaving Early from an old-timer who was also staying at the Mineral firehouse, an Ohio man in his 60s who’d been back and forth across the country two or three times via various routes, and who had pulled an 80-miler the same day I was deep-fried by a mere 43. But my Way will be slightly different. About an hour different, I think.
My first stop was at the Rockfish Gap Country Store, run by Ann and Paul, transplanted Long Islanders. There, I downed a Coke, ate some free peanuts (for the salt, you know), and bought two chocolate-covered pretzel rods, in case I needed a burst of glucose-laden carbohydrate that wasn’t a Clif bar. The mountain I was planning to go up loomed in the distance beyond the parking lot. I felt ready.
And I continued to feel ready. I didn’t really have a choice: one way or the other, I had to go over that tree-covered lump. As I got closer to it, I could hear the blatting of truck engines echoing from the mountainside as they downshifted on Route 250 and hurtled down into the valley – a route I’d have to climb up to get to the Blue Ridge Parkway. But that was tomorrow.
Today: switchbacks. Steep switchbacks. Crawling up the worst of them was like doing thirty leg presses of about seventy pounds with each leg, quickly, one right after the other. No cheating! This is a recumbent I’m riding, so there was no body weight to fall on the pedals, just leg muscles, pushing against gravity. I would go up a switchback, stop, squeeze the brakes, rest, then press on. But press on I did. I was surprised: this was hard work, but not impossible. At no point did it seem like my kneecaps were going to pull loose and lodge somewhere in my groin. I might have to pause every fifty feet along the way, but I was going up this road.
Then, as I was bracing myself for the 1.7 miles my GPS insisted I had left, I saw the sign with the red arrow and the spinning wheels of a yard-art bicycle. I had arrived! When I called the Cookie Lady this morning, I said that I’d be there between noon and one – it was only 11:30, and I was early. There was also a sign on the Bikehouse door, and I did what it said.
There was yet another sign on the door to the next brick house: “Please ring…I may be slow, but I’ll make it!" I waited for what seemed to be a reasonable amount of time, then headed back to the picnic table in the space between the Bikehouse and the large, cinderblock structure with a defunct gas pump in front of it that was between the two brick houses. I was early, after all, and I assumed that she’d gone into town.
After a few minutes, I heard a tapping, and looked up to see someone gesturing at the window of the other brick house. As it turns out, June Curry doesn’t move very fast at all these days.
The Cookie Lady is somewhere around 85, and as she told me, she’s having to get used to not moving as fast as she once could because of her stroke last year. She still does what she can, but has someone who comes in to help her out. This morning, she said, she was particularly tired out as the group of nine cyclists who had stayed in the Bikehouse the previous evening left it a bit of a mess. Just refolding the blankets and sweeping up was enough to put her in her easy chair. This was somewhat baffling to me – that these people, presumably adults, couldn’t muster up fifteen minutes to clean up after themselves. They didn’t sign the registry book either, so presumably they were either ignorant of or just weren’t on board with the whole Cookie Lady thing.
June’s had a place for cyclists both eastbound and westbound since the original cross-country Bikecentennial ride in 1976. Back then, she baked the eponymous cookies herself. Nowadays, they’re store-bought, but she’s still got the same welcoming attitude she had back then, with the added mantle of thirty years’ worth of tradition and appreciation. She spoke of her health, as older folks often will, seeming more bemused by the failures of her body than anything else. She took my picture with a pop-up Polaroid camera, and had to have me collapse the camera back into itself because she couldn’t do that and hold the necessary button down at the same time.
After a demonstration of the life-size animatronic Santa in her living room (laughing, June said he was given to her by a cyclist who told her she "needed a man in the house"), we chatted more about this and that: the dry weather, stories about folks who’ve passed through, and her strict no-alcohol policy. Again, an occasion to be puzzled by adults who can’t grasp the simple concept that when you’re a guest in someone’s house, you do as they ask…and if you haul heavy bottles and cans up a hill to drink at a house where you’ve been asked not to, in addition to being a lout, you’re an idiot.
After a brief sit on the porch, June handed over the key, on a leather fob shaped like a red, white, and blue Uncle Sam-style top hot. I went back down the concrete steps and let myself in to the Bikehouse.
The best thing to do right now is click on the picture to the left. It’s big – about 1MB. Once you’ve loaded it, you’ll be able to peruse in some detail the sight that greeted me when I stepped through the Bikehouse door.
Hundreds of postcards. Newspaper clippings. Photographs. Bike tires. Bike parts. Tools. Jerseys. Water bottles. Cycling shoes. Safety flags. Handmade bits of bike art, made from bits of bikes. Two small jars of water, one labeled “Atlantic,” the other “Pacific.” Volume after volume of photographs like the Polaroid June took of me (which I dutifully stuck in the current album). And, of course, the bike journals: nearly 13,000 names, all of people who had passed through the Bikehouse on their way to the the west or east coast.
Most of the objects – the tools, bike parts, jerseys, shoes, and so on – were inscribed in some way, tokens sent to the Cookie Lady by those who had finished their journeys. There was a pair of shoes hanging in the dining room that read “worn once,” presumably for about 3,500 miles. There were notes from cyclists from England, Australia, Germany, and elsewhere. A guitar leaned in one corner, signed by a South African fellow. It was in tune. In the same room, a tandem bicycle made in 1942 by a father and son to combat wartime gas rationing – it had been welded together from two separate bikes, and had a pushrod system that enabled either rider to steer it.
The aura of the place is difficult to describe. The Bikehouse is the entire first floor of what used to be June’s father’s house, and beneath the accreted layers of TransAmerican cycling history is a structure frozen in time. The fireplaces have been closed off and replaced by hulking brown gas heaters in each room, one of which you can see in the photo of the tandem bicycle. The ceilings are narrow tongue-and-groove planks or plaster, taped over where it’s cracking. The house smells musty and shuttered, even though hundreds of people sleep here every year. Everywhere there are notes from June, some embalmed in yellowed cellophane tape: Don’t open this window, because it blows the postcards off the wall. Use these two bins for bathing or clothes. Please throw leftover food across the road, we have lots of stray cats who need it. Apparently, cyclists aren’t the only wandering creatures she’s concerned about.
On a table in the front room are several bags of cookies. Not homemade, not any more. But the cookies aren’t so much the reason for the place, now. June’s actually selling the property – she owns her house, the cinderblock structure, and the Bikehouse. The sale has conditions: she can live in her current house, just as she does now. The Bikehouse must remain as is, and open to travelers. And when the new owners sell it, they must make provision for its continued operation by placing it under the care of a local cycling club or some other organization.
I ate from the well-stocked pantry: chicken and dumplings from a can for lunch, and – in anticipation of a long day on the Blue Ridge Parkway tomorrow – a big ol’ pasta dinner. I’ll sleep in the front room, near my trailer, because as welcoming as June is, this is still a big, old house that I’m alone in, and the front room just feels better to me even though the couch in the dining room has fewer lumps.
I’m beginning to feel like this journey has finally begun.
Up here I am on Verizon's network, so I took the opportunity to reactivate my EVDO card and to post this picture which was taken of me by a nice Australian lady.
I've been climbing all day, mostly at a steady 2.5 mph. The legs are up to it, it's just slow. I finally broke out the iPod, which made the time go by a bit faster.
Now: I must pack things up and batten down the hatches a little, because it looks like there might be some rain headed my way.
I'm probably going to end up camping at Gertie's Store near Vesuvius this evening, unless my legs feel well enough to make it to Mallard Duck campground a few miles further on.
LATER:
Apparently, that wasn't the top. This is:
Raven's Roost, elevation 3,215 feet. There weren't any nice Australian ladies around, so I just did something silly with the camera by myself.
Today was an amazing day. It was also a long day. After finally getting to use the cellular amplifier and Big Honkin' Antenna (which turned no bars into four bars and let me get online), I set about route planning for tomorrow, and now it's 9 PM and about time for bed. I have stories to tell about the Cookie Lady and about riding the Blue Ridge Parkway and about how my brakes got so hot the metal of the rotors changed colors.
But not tonight. I'll be spending the next two nights at the KOA in Natural Bridge, which means that Friday is a rest day, so I'll have time to catch up on storytelling and other things that need doing.
Right now I'm in a wonderful spot behind Gertie's Country Store in Vesuvius...it's gotten chilly and a bit damp, and the skeeters are out, so I'm off for the safety of the tent. Much more later!
I travel in a bubble of faith...which usually has as its immediate focus the topping of a mountain. Its longer gaze is fixed upon the west coast, but I can't really look that far ahead. Right now, it's still too much for me to encompass.
Today was a challenging, wonderful day. This morning as I left the Bikehouse, a woman on a motor scooter came chugging up the mountain - her name was Debbie, and she was the Cookie Lady's helper. She told me that June was actually up and about, so I got to say good-bye instead of just leaving a note by the donation jar. It felt like something of a benediction...I was off with her blessing.
After that, the rest of the climb up the Afton mountain road. Apparently, it wasn't finished with me just yet: about a mile of the same switchbacks I encountered yesterday. Then a long, steady climb on Route 250 until I finally reached the Blue Ridge Parkway.
The Parkway is a narrow, low-traffic road designed for cruising, not for high speed travel. It's closed to commercial traffic, so there were no trucks at all. I really wish that all of my riding could be along parkways like this...the character of the experience is completely different. The road surface is good, so I don't have to be on the lookout for wheel-grabbing cracks or potholes. The speed limit is a sane 45 miles per hour, so what few cars pass by aren't hurtling machines of incipient death.
And the surroundings are a balm for the senses. I stopped at the first overlook, with Rockfish Valley spread out below, and saw how far I had climbed since yesterday morning:
There was much more climbing to be done. It wasn't easy work, but the fact that I had climbed the mountain to Afton yesterday gave me confidence, and the surrounding forests, mountainsides, and overlooks provided easy places to rest and soak in the sense that at last, I was truly out in America. Oh, the towns, highways, and malls are America too...but they're an America that is so similar to where I've spent most of my life that there was no real differentiation, no suggestion of adventure. Instead of grabbing a sandwich at a Subway, as I did when I rode into Charlottesville, I paused at the Greenstone Overlook and made myself a PB&J. A much better meal:
After a long climb, with more climbing ahead, I pulled into a parking lot near Humpback Rocks. It's a 40-minute hike to get to the top of Humpback Mountain and its southerly valley views, so I rested for awhile in the shade, and enjoyed the view of the fields and the Parkway winding upwards instead.
It wasn't until I had passed Raven's Roost, the highest point on my ride, and glided down a couple of descents that I came upon a view unmarked by human activity. At all of the other overlooks, I could see farms, small towns, roads, antennas on distant mountaintops. At 20-Minute Cliff, the view was pristine. The helpful sign there told me,
IN JUNE AND JULY DURING CORN CHOPPIN TIME, THIS CLIFF SERVES THE FOLKS IN WHITE ROCK COMMUNITY AS A TIME PIECE. TWENTY MINUTES AFTER SUNLIGHT STRIKES THE ROCK FACE, DUSK FALLS ON THE VALLEY FLOOR.
The folks in White Rock community weren't in evidence down below, but there was a couple from Massachusetts on vacation who were taking in the view and the sight of me huffing and puffing into the turnoff. I stood at the stone wall with them and looked out across the variegated green that carpeted the hillsides to the horizon. We were high enough that we could look down on raptors as they soared over the trees far below, small brown crescents with beak-points of yellow.
Looking off to my right from 20-Minute cliff, I could tell by the serpentine break in the distant treeline that there was a road across the valley that cut up and over the next mountain. I was vaguely hoping that it wasn't the Parkway, but of course it was: a long, slow, uphill effort in the hottest part of the day, with frequent rests to allow beat legs to regain a little energy for the next attack. Eventually, I was riding along the ridge, bordered on either side by fields of wildflowers and grassy acres of what was once pastureland.
After several long, deep descents, it was time to exit the Parkway, and take Route 56 down to Vesuvius, my destination. I had heard stories of the descent into town, but while the Adventure Cycling map warned in boldface of a steep, winding downhill for the Eastbound route (which I had, therefore, climbed up), it made no similar mention of the Route 56 descent.
The fastest I've gone on this trike with the trailer is about 43 mph, on roads where the turns weren't very sharp and visibility distance was long. If I had let the trike go on this descent, I would've easily hit 50, or even faster...at which point the trailer would've flipped, probably taking me with it. I quickly discovered that pulsing the disk brakes was a necessity: they got so hot that I could feel the heat from the rotors on my hands, and a thin slick of molten pad compound formed on the metal, causing the brakes to fade. There were "bailout" patches of gravel every few hundred yards, and I stopped at each one of them to give the brakes time to cool off. The edges of the rotors, once silver, turned a burnished brass color, and stayed that way.
When I finally sailed onto the valley floor and into the small town of Vesuvius, I came to rest at Gertie's Country Store. There was a flat field of mown grass out behind the store, with a couple of small willow trees and a tiny stream, where the owners told me I could set up camp. The interior walls and ceiling of the store, like the Cookie Lady's Bikehouse, are covered with their own sort of cycling ephemera: almost every inch has been written on by people who've passed through Vesuvius, with names, dates, and destinations in every color that Sharpie makes. I sat down at a table and bought myself some dinner, then headed out back to my tent.
With the hard work and open vistas of the Blue Ridge Parkway bracketed in the morning and the evening by the hospitality of the Cookie Lady and Gertie, it was a near perfect day, more like what I was hoping for when I tried to imagine what this journey would be like.
There will be tougher days ahead, I know. But I'll try and hold on to this one, as a measure of possibility.
OK, here's another small thing I have learned: when you have an opportunity to eat pasta, do so.
Yesterday's amazing ride along the Blue Ridge Parkway was followed up by a slog today, no doubt the result of not taking advantage of the aforementioned pasta last night and my legs having used up most of their go-juice getting to Vesuvius.
Right now I am ensconced in the KOA Kampground, too close to the sort of people who apparently cannot grasp the idea that no one else wants to hear their goddamned music. Some people just need to be beaten, that's all there is to it. If I weren't so tired I'd take care of it myself, but right now my fatigue levels are high.
As soon as I got here I needed to fight off a fat and bold squirrel (there were casualties), and now I'm needing to fight off sleep just to get this meager post out. I have a lot of photos and some video to process, and if I can manage to get two or three brain cells to fire in sequence I might take care of some of that later tonight.
And if I don't: I have work to do tomorrow, which means that posting here will prove to be an irresistable distraction.
In order to keep things in vaguely chronological order, the new Cookie Lady post is up in the June 6 section. Scroll down to read it, or just click here. I also have to post the Blue Ridge Parkway stuff, and it'll be the same deal: back-dated to the actual day of the tale, with a pointer post telling you where it is.
Meanwhile: I've decided that "Rest Days" are to be re-named "non-Triking Days," because I seem to spend most of them doing everything but pedaling.
Tomorrow will be a 33-mile day, to a town park in Troutville, VA. The day after that will be a big, 50-mile push to an Econo Lodge in Christiansburg, at which point (if I make it) I will have finished the first of the 12 maps I'm using to navigate.
When he was my age, my friend and mentor Gary spent a year and a half traveling the world, celebrating his 34th birthday in Katmandu. It was a "time no object, money no object" sort of travelling, a more or less unfettered wandering through places and situations exotic and banal. But, he told me, about two months in, he crashed hard: is this what I want to be doing? Just one experience after another? Depressed and lost, he ended up at a Buddhist monastery somewhere in Southeast Asia, there to recover his direction and renew himself.
Virginia is a bit short on Buddhist monasteries, which may or may not be unfortunate...I'm not entirely sure how much I'd benefit from sitting still, when it seems to be in my nature to vibrate at a high rate of speed. But I'm quite certain I would benefit from the resultant "letting go," because the farther I get in time and space from my life that was, the more I can feel the cords that connect me to that life stretching and pulling, becoming painful.
This is about more than just my relationship with Pea...the pain I'm talking about is a kind of clinging-by-the-fingertips to the old comforts, the old ways of doing things, the security that came with a roof over my head, a regular income, a shower with multiple bars of soap, a grocery store within driving distance, a couch in front of the television, blankets, and on and on. The more I hang on to all of the things that I have chosen to separate myself from, the worse the yearning and discomfort becomes.
Foolish, yes?
But I've never claimed I wasn't a fool. Or, I might've adopted a certain...attitude, from time to time, but there is a certain measure of foolish lunacy to this endeavor that can't be denied. Then again, that lunacy is defined by the same criteria which make my hanging on to the comfortable things of the past a perfectly rational response...but when the "rational response" results in unhappiness, how "rational" can it actually be? Does it make any sense at all to seek out unhappiness?
Of course not, and that's not why I'm out here. I'm thinking, now, that this anxious sense of strained attachment, this long, bungie-like webbing that is now nearly 1,000 miles and three weeks long, is of a piece with the same sticky anxiety that has plagued me, it seems, throughout my entire life. A refusal to allow what is in the past to remain there, so that there is a constant tugging on my heart and soul that causes my chest to fill with heavy dread, a fluttering, nervous pulse that could only temporarily be salved with alcohol, drugs, or some other distraction.
Thus: I am always restrained, bound, tied to the past. My progress through life becomes slow and tortured, rather than a movement of ease and grace.
Over the last two or three months, as the final sale of the house became more of a reality - demonstrated by the packing of things into boxes, and the increasing number of "last time I'll do this" experiences - I would awake in the mornings in a near-panic. My eyes would flash open, and my heart would pound, and I would think, "Oh God, I'm awake again," as the escape of sleep fled and receded.
That still happens...I awake and stare at the white nylon of my tent roof and breathe in the chilly morning air, thinking, "What am I doing?"
But I suspect that I do know what I'm doing: I'm forcing the issue. The part of me that listens for the voices in the wind has managed to put me in a place where I can hear more clearly, if I will allow it.
Now, it's time to pack up and pedal away from this place, to another place.
[Note: many of the photos in posts are now clickable, and open biggified versions of themselves.]
Soon, hopefully, I will shake the big fear that haunts my mornings, as I gain more knowledge of what it is I can do in a day.
Natural Bridge is a rock formation etched by the action of water, and was purchased by Thomas Jefferson from King George for 20 shillings. These days, it's a touristy place that I was briefly tempted to visit, along with the accompanying wax museum (rock formation, wax museum...a perfect match, yes?). But there was a longish hill to climb. And besides: if I stopped to see the rock with the hole in it, I wouldn't have time to visit Foamhenge. That's right: a henge made of giant foam blocks. Feast your eyes.
I finally got to ride what I consider to be "rolling hills": steep hills that are spaced so that you can fly down one and most of the way up the other without pedaling. Once you get up the first hill, it's like a little roller coaster. There were four or five of them in a row (swoop!) and then a steep descent into a valley where I spent most of the day enjoying the first truly flat terrain of the entire trip, riding along a narrow, low-traffic road that ran between a stream and railroad tracks. The temperature was a breezy 77 degrees, and there were just enough high clouds in the sky to keep the worst of the sun at bay.
But what truly made the day was the iPod. By picking carefully and choosing music that wasn't terribly fraught with memory, I was able to create a sweet soundtrack for the ride. When I came out of the valley on the approach to Troutville, Jamie Cullum's Catching Tales made the climbs fly by. Despite the work, the sweat, and my twingy knee, I was positively bouyant. Music has always had a tremendous capacity to transport me, which is one of the reasons why I've been reluctant to use the iPod until now: I needed to focus on the trike and the trailer, to feel how they worked together, through my hands on the steering bars, my feet on the pedals, and my butt in the seat mesh. That way, if something mechanical gets out of whack, I don't necessarily have to hear it to know about it. Plus, I needed to attain a general comfort level with being on unfamiliar roads before I began to rely more on my mirrors and less on my ears. Now, though...the music just adds so much to the ride.
I reached the town park in Troutville by 1:30, where I saw: lots of kids on playground equipment; a chain link fence surrounding the park with a gate too narrow to easily admit the trike; a loud, long train passing by about thirty feet from where I'd have my tent; and a sign saying No Bicycles, Roller Blades, Skateboards, blah blah blah. Not feeling the love, I busted out the paper map and discovered four or five motel choices not three miles away. And I am now sitting on a bed in the Daleville Econo Lodge. I left a message on the Troutville Town Hall's answering machine, explaining that I had pressed on.
I know, I know: motels bad, can do that anywhere, and so on. I really do like my tent, you know. But I must confess that the shower with its scrubby washcloth and free soap was most welcome. And I feel good, here, unlike the motel in Charlottesville, where I was tired, fried, huddled in bed watching cartoons, and feeling nauseated. Yeah, I'm on a bed now, and there are cartoons, but I'm writing to you fine folks and actually looking forward to tomorrow's ride, instead of steeling myself for it. That's a first.
It's one thing to get rained on when you're already underway...quite another to leave when it's already raining.
The NOAA weather reports for this area are a bit of a crapshoot. Everywhere I've been in Virginia, people have said how much they need the rain...it's dry in the valleys, with fire hazard warnings everywhere. Generally, the weathermasters have put the odds of rain at somewhere between 30% and 50%, and it hasn't rained on me yet.
This morning, though, it's actually raining, with a chance of thunderstorms later this afternoon. Thunderstorms around here are brief, intense showers that dramatically reduce visibility. And they hurt: big, pelty drops that sting. Tomorrow, it will also rain, but the worst of it will be happen before 8AM and it will clear up by the afternoon.
I was planning to stay in Christiansburg for a couple of days anyway, so if I stay another day here in Daleville instead, when I leave tomorrow I'll at least know that the weather system is moving off and I won't have to spend all 48 miles in the rain. Also, it'll be safer to ride into town at the end of the day when the weather's cleared a bit and visibility is better.
That's the thing about motels: they tend to create inertia.
Not that staying in a warm dry room with cartoons when it's raining out is a particularly hard decision...
I left Daleville bound for Christiansburg at about 8AM, under thick gray skies. There was some rain, mostly just mist and some light drizzle - the first test of the fairing. It did a fine job of keeping my feet, legs, and lap dry, but had an unfortunate tendency to throw the water beaded on its surface into my face if I hit a hard bump at speed. All in all, though, it proved its worth, especially on the downhills, where it kept chilly air off my damp chest. I was able to stay comfortable most of the morning wearing just my Gore-Tex jacket, and the sun began to peek through the cloud layer a little before noon.
Riding along Gravelly Ridge was an atmospheric experience, with North Mountain to my distant right and Catawba Mountain closer on my left. The clouds were so low that they caught on the trees, turning into mist that curled and crawled its way down into the low places of the mountainside.
By the time the first shreds of blue sky were showing overhead, I was well into a 15-mile long mostly downhill run, which I was able to ride at a high average speed due to my discovery of a particular set of gears that allowed me to run up rolling grades at more than twice my usual pokey pace. My leg strength has improved so much that I can pedal in gear ratios that I haven't really been able to use before. So I sailed up and down the ridgeline, listening to Al DiMeola's speedy fingers on my iPod and ignoring the inevitable bill that would come due when the downhill ended.
Still, it kept going, and going, and going...nice and straight, for the most part, with some curves that were easily navigable with a touch on the brakes and a good lean. I paid for it when I reached Ellett: a stiff climb to get over the mountain northeast of Christiansburg, particularly tough as the climb came at the tail end of a long day's ride.
My total mileage for the day was 49, which is the most I've done in a day and about what I'm aiming for as a daily average. I did it with six hours, seven minutes of pedaling and two hours, twenty minutes of rest. The GPS tells me these things. It also tells me that my maximum speed was 54.7 miles per hour, but I'm pretty sure it's lying...a couple of days ago I watched it tell me that I was traveling at over a thousand miles per hour while standing in a field near my campsite. Usually it's accurate, but sometimes it can get confused about figuring miles per hour if it can't find all its satellite buddies.
I was downright giddy when I finally got into my room here in Christiansburg: I was tired, but not wiped out; my knees were complaining, but not screaming. I've further increased my knowledge of what it is possible for me to do in a day.
That said: I am tired. Christiansburg marks the end of the first of twelve maps that cover my trip from Virginia to Oregon. I have pedaled 384 miles, give or take a few. I'm probably going to spend the next couple of days here, and push to get my work done so that I don't have to be bothered with it anymore. I'm also going to work on an annotated Google map so that you folks can see where I've been.
I've started to more fully realize that this journey is a lifestyle, rather than a vacation or a trip with a specified endpoint. This was the plan from the beginning...otherwise, I wouldn't be carrying all the gear I need to make working from the road viable. But it's taken me awhile to figure out what that actually entails: work - being the activity that makes me a bit of money and thus keeps body, soul, and trike together - is something I need to be making room for as I travel, instead of squeezing it in here and there.
That means that stopping here in Christiansburg for a several days, instead of just one or two, is an appropriate action, rather than a delay or an interruption. For the next several months, this is what I do: pedal from place to place, work on my small projects, post to the website. I don't have a pre-defined end date, just a destination. If I've got work to do, I find a place with three-prong sockets and a desk and I do the work.
Having decided that makes it easier for me to focus on the tasks at hand, instead of being distracted by the expense of a motel room and the feeling that I really should be on the trike pedaling and sweating.
As always, I'm fascinated, if I do say so myself, by the "technology" of the mind: a deliberate and willful shift in perspective reduces anxiety, promotes productivity, and generally makes me more comfortable. (Up in the sky! It's: Captain Obvious!!!) This perspective shift will come in handy when it's time to start writing articles for magazines and so forth.
You can now see where I've been by clicking the On The Road: The Map link on the left (or just click here now).
It might take a while to load, but once it's done, you can zoom in, and click on the markers for names and dates. At some point I'll add links to posts that relate to the location markers.
That exclamation point is more one of surprise than accomplishment...I'm just happy I put a title on this thing without setting the room on fire.
Completely unedited, tiny, and in CrapPro Plus™ enhanced video, this is just a random snippet I shot back on June 7 when I was on the Parkway. Eventually I'll learn to use the editing software I've got, and there will be fanciness like music and transitions and so on.
And, for now, I'm experimenting with the whole YouTube thing, but if it sucks I'll do something else. If you've got a slower connection, I recommend hitting the play button in the center of the video and then pause it until the whole thing loads...otherwise it'll pause during playback, and de-synch the audio.
After fermenting here for...four days? I had to look at the site to check, it's easy to lose track of time these days. At any rate: tomorrow I was going to saddle up and pedal a shade over 50 miles to a KOA Kampground in Wytheville, VA.
The time here hasn't been as productive as it needed to be...it's proving to be difficult to focus on the work. Paradoxically, I think that's because it's a remnant of my former life (both projects started before I left). For some people, that might provide something to hang on to in the midst of this rootlessness. For me, it's something that I'd just like to let go of...hence, it's something that becomes easy to avoid.
I was thinking that I couldn't stay here any more. As in Charlottesville, the motel room became a kind of pseudohome that only served to remind me of all that has happened in my life recently, in a way that lends itself more to being "stuck" than to processing and moving through.
But it's not a home, and although I need to be in motion now, I also need to put in more hours on these projects. So, I'll stay for one more day, because over the next week I'll be traveling into areas where motels are fewer and cell service is spottier.
This really is an open-ended journey, ongoing, with a barely defined itinerary despite all the maps. I've been on the road for just over three weeks, and for more than a week of that time I've been stationary. It often seems that any decision I make like this - that is, stay in one place, or keep moving - is the wrong one, no matter what the reasons are for it. This depends on which criteria I use to judge it. There are the Keep Moving criteria, which have to do with making miles and heading westwards. Then there are the Lifestyle criteria, which have to do with generating an income while traveling. I haven't yet managed to combine the two sets into a Way of Being...a Keep Moving Lifestyle.
At some point, I suppose I'll figure things out.
But now it's time for bed...once more, in a real bed, with an air conditioner making comforting white noise.
Well, that's about enough of that. I got enough work done to feel like I've done something here other than sleep and eat canned pasta, so tomorrow morning, I'm off to pedal 52.7 miles to Wytheville VA and an overpriced tent site at a KOA Kampground. Fortunately, I'm starting to move into the area of National Forestry Service campgrounds and other, cheaper alternatives - hostels, churches and the like.
I spent part of the evening inspecting the trike, particularly the tires. They're holding up well - a few small chunks out of the tread, nothing major. I actually ran over a broken beer bottle with the right front tire last week, with nothing more than a small cut to the rubber. The kevlar lining is doing its job. I tightened and threadlocked the allen bolts that secure the rear fender, as they have a habit of rattling themselves loose. Everything else seems up to spec.
I also snipped off a thin hash-mark of black electrical tape, about an inch high and a quarter inch wide, and applied it to the right edge of the fairing. It stands for "one TransAmerica map completed." Only eleven more to go. Plus the three maps I'll use to navigate down the Pacific coast, but we'll just ignore those for now.
I seemed to have reached some sort of equilibrium...I'm eager to get back on the trike and get out of Christiansburg. I'll have to ride through Radford as well, but after that it'll be mostly back roads and tiny towns.
I made it where I was going, but the last 15 miles or so were interminable. Got caught in the heat, too, because I didn't leave as early as I would've liked. I'm pretty sure I drank enough (70 ounces from the Camelbak, two 16-ounce water bottles, plus another 32 ounces of Gatorade, salty snacks, and so on), but it was a very long day, and I'm barely able to muster up enough energy to cook dinner. "Cooking dinner" basically consists of boiling water, pouring it into a pouch, and waiting ten minutes, so that should give you some measure of my exhaustion.
And - typical for the region - the weather forecast has changed since this morning, and now indicates a good chance of showers tomorrow. Mainly after 9AM in Troutdale (tomorrow's destination), and after 3PM in Wytheville (where I am now), which means I'll be heading right into the rain...if I go to Troutdale. There is a string of (wauugh!) motels about five miles from here. There was no way I could've gone that extra five miles today, not to mention the fact that it would've cost me my reservation deposit here at the campsite. But I'm not at all sure I can do 40 miles and handle a rainstorm as well.
Tough call.
But - having experienced the roadside siren song of not one, not two, but a good half-dozen motels as I sweated and strained the last eight miles up hill to get here, I expect that my resistance will be low.
Mind you, it wasn't a steep hill. But it was long, it was hot, and my legs had died eight miles previous. A grind, I tell you!
Whose idea was this, anyway?
When I pulled in to the KOA office parking lot I met Mark and his young son, Will...Mark told me that some friends of his had done the crossing America on a bike thing eight or nine years ago, from west to east, and they told him that Virginia was the toughest part of the whole trip. Which is encouraging, or would be if I weren't a giant crispy onion ring.
So, it's pretty much official: I do not like Virginia.* It is trying to kill me.
Case in point: as I was starting to write that line, a branch big enough to make a distressing thump was knocked off of a tree in the next campsite by the wind.
See? Threats. There don't seem to be any widowmakers above my head here at my site, but the message was clear enough.
I will not yield!
*Yeah OK, the Blue Ridge Parkway was way cool. Maybe the problem is that there is too much gravity in Virginia.
So...this morning, I decided to make a short hop of about four miles into Wytheville proper, and get a(nother) motel. I was checked in and showered by eleven.
I had a list of good reasons: 1) I was still dopey and slagged from yesterday's sizzling haul to the KOA; 2) I had work that I wanted to finish; 3) rain looked likely. The first reason turned out to be the one with the most substance...even with the cell phone alarm set for 6:35 AM, I just could not hobble out of the tent until a little before eight. Even on the quick run into town, my legs let me know that they were still noodle-like and would greatly appreciate it if I did not use them very much, thank you. 40 miles to the hostel in Troutdale would've been torturous, especially the last bit, which looks to be a decent climb. When I got here, I crashed out for three hours in the afternoon. Despite the heat and sun yesterday, the only parts of me that actually got burned were my knees. Upright cyclists don't have to worry about toasted knees, but my riding position means that I catch harsh rays on the kneecaps from about 1PM to 3PM if I'm headed west, and apparently two applications of SPF 45 sunblock weren't enough. Not a bad burn at all, just enough to make my knees and lower thighs feel warm today, but I've found that any burn makes me very sleepy the next day.
So, I napped and finished up more work here, enough so that I feel like I can leave it behind for several days while my clients review it.
And, of course...it didn't rain.
But that doesn't really matter. What was interesting to me is that finally, I seem to have shed some of my anxiety...the character of the "motel/no motel" decision was different. As I wrote to a reader this evening, for the past three and a half weeks, I've been beset by doubt and anxiety at every turn. Now, I think I'm starting to get the hang of this itinerant lifestyle thing. I decided I needed a motel, and I went there. I had a good lunch feed at an Appleby's up the road. Then, to make up for the expense, I bought dinner for tonight and some snackage for tomorrow for just $5 at the local Food Lion. I hit the CVS for a big bottle of B-complex vitamins and a couple of baby wipe travel-paks (good for the no-shower campsite I'll be at tomorrow). In other words: I functioned. I did what needed to be done. I didn't fret, worry, mope, or otherwise make myself miserable. And I laughed like a loon on the way back from the Appleby's, walking along the grass next to Route 11, feeling here, now, in Wytheville, surrounded by parking lots and traffic, with a big sheaf of tree-furred mountains behind me. Big grins all around!
Tomorrow I'll be headed for a National Forestry Service campsite in the Mount Rogers National Recreation Area near Sugar Grove (30.2 miles), which will be my first non-private campsite of the trip. I hope it's a good experience; I'm getting tired of paying for private campsites as though I was showing up in an SUV with a cooler and a television.
I do have some more bits to write about yesterday's 50-miler, but it's getting late and it's time for bed.
For the first time since I left Yorktown, I have no cell signal, no data service. The steep mountains have defeated my cell antenna and amplifier mojo…I get an intermittent one-bar signal, but can’t complete calls. I haven’t even bothered with the EVDO modem, there’s no point. So, I'll write this in Word, and post it later.
I’m at my campsite in the Raccon Branch campground. Although I’ve got no cell service, I’ve got a site with electric hookups…but they’re too far away from the picnic table, so now my ride has become a rather expensive camp chair.
Today was a difficult day. About thirty miles, medium to medium-tough riding, and my legs are still reeling in the aftermath of Sunday’s 50-miler. I started the day with a pleasant round of gagging in the motel room – my stomach was not at all happy with its Aleve this morning. I almost didn’t leave, flopping onto the bed and thinking hard about my choices while waiting to see if my guts would stop warbling. But I knew what awaited me if I stayed in that room: all of the anxious nonsense that I avoided yesterday. So I left at around 8:30
As the day developed, it wasn’t the riding the made things difficult, it was my head. I finally got to do the Standing By The Road Surrounded By Fields And Mountains Yelling “Why Am I Here?!” thing. You shoulda been there, it was quite a...moment.
I had made myself listen to my Cocteau Twins albums…of all my music, that stuff is the most fraught with memory and emotion, both because of the music itself and because I’ve listened to it so often. It’s a music that easily transports me, fills my head and heart, sending me to airy cinematic places. I remember listening to it in the car on the day I left Queens for the last time almost four years ago, after I cleaned out my apartment. I was driving to our new house, beginning the whole adventure of home ownership and cohabitation. By the time I reached the Bear Mountain area, night had fallen, and I drove along Seven Lakes Drive with all the windows and the moon roof open, playing one of the Cocteau Twins tapes that were always floating around in the car.
And yes, today I thought of that night, as I huffed and puffed up hills, surrounded by rolling green Virginia countryside and watching the high clouds slowly pile up and break over the mountains like a cascade of darkening, high-altitude foam. But the music didn’t really send me into the past, and I didn’t really reclaim it as a soundtrack for this present journey. Instead, it just made me emotionally weary, to match my physical state. I wondered – not for the first time – why I’m doing this, whether I can do it. But I plodded on, and when I finally reached the forest, and the air became cooled with the scents of trees and rushing water, I felt better.
I’ve got the campground all to myself – there’s no one here at all, and the on-site hosts are away for the week. I put my $16 in the permit envelope and dropped it into the lockbox, as an honest camper should. I’m not isolated in natural bliss, mind you…there’s a road about seventy five feet up the slope from me. The car traffic and occasional logging trucks remind me that I’m not hiking, I’m triking, which means I’m always going to be near asphalt of some kind.
The host of a neighboring Forestry Service campsite stopped by an hour ago, to check on the site and take a look at the trike. We chatted a bit...I was still in my suffering climber mode, and he agreed that around here, anything with a trailer on it was bound to be tough going. “Once you get out of the hills, you’ll be all right,” he said, with an understated assurance that is much more obvious and meaningful in retrospect.
Later, I dug out some small bits of Dove chocolate that Pea’s father donated to the adventure back in May. They’ve been bouncing around in the food bag, enduring the same frying that I have, and are no longer quite the same as they were four weeks ago. They've sort of been melted, frothed, and re-solidified into an entirely new form of chocolate. Each one comes wrapped in a blue foil wrapper which has a “Promises™” affirmation-style blurb printed on its inside. The first one reminded me to smile at myself in the mirror. Um...OK. I opened another one, so that I could have more mutant-Dove chocolate goodness. The wrapper read:
Coincidental, really, like the fortune cookies slips that are so vague as to be applicable to almost any situation. And yet for me, right here, right now: appropriate, and meaningful, like the host’s blithely reassuring words.
By the way - if you'd like to see what I've been riding through (and up) recently, I recommend opening the map, clicking the Satellite button, and zooming in on the last two or three points.
Today was a day on par with the Blue Ridge Parkway ride. I slept fitfully last night, as I often do when I'm camping. I took my time getting ready, repacking the trailer to try and get rid of the annoying bounce it developed after I rearranged things a couple of days ago. I finally rolled out of Raccoon Branch at a bit after nine, and immediately started the first climb of the day, up Route 16 to Troutdale. I had been considering making for the church hostel in Troutdale last night, and this morning I was glad that I could never get anyone to answer the telephone there: I never would've made it at the end of the day yesterday. This morning, though, I powered up the hills, listening to Mark Isham's earlier works and reveling in the shade of the forest. I didn't even mind the trucks: full of logs, they grumbled up the mountain, while other trucks full of finished lumber blatted down it, leaving a wash of freshly-sawn woodsmell in their wakes. I didn't mess around; when I heard the telltale engine noise or spotted a truck in my mirror, I pulled over into the gravel on the shoulder and just got out of the way until it passed. Safer for me, and safer for oncoming traffic if the trucks didn't have to swing wide to give me room.
At 3,450 feet, I rested and wolfed down some newtons before sailing downhill into Troutdale. Then it was back up on Route 303, to about 3,750 feet. I discovered that a key motivating factor was replacing the miles per hour readout on the GPS display with an altitude readout. I don't really care how fast I'm going up hill anymore, only that I reach the summit. And I did: a long ride along the Elk Garden Ridge, following the course of Laurel Creek. I crossed the Appalachian Trail, and had conversations with the horses who were hanging out in pastureland and at horse camps.
Then: a glorious, nine-mile downhill into Damascus, through the best scenery I've ridden since the Blue Ridge. There were no sprawling valley vistas, just mile after mile of coniferous hillsides, the rushing waters of streams and waterfalls near the road, and the sheer joy of letting gravity do the work. Just outside Damascus was a section of roadway that look alarming on the GPS map - switchbacks so sinuous that they almost doubled back on themselves. Usually, that means either steep uphill or downhill travel, but in this case, it meant a modest gain of altitude, followed by a plunge into Damascus proper.
Damascus lies at the intersection of the Appalachian Trail, the Virginia Creeper Trail, the TransAm cycling route, and lots of little local trails for mountain biking and horse riding. Fewer than 1,000 people live here, and many of them have made it their business to cater to the needs of through-hikers, cyclists, and other outdoorsy types. I pulled into the parking lot of Sun Dog Outfitters, where I bought a slew of Clif Bars, 25 feet of line for bear-bagging (more on that later, when there are actually bears about), and 20 ounces of white gas. That last item was what let me know I was truly in a camper friendly town. White gas normally comes in gallon or half-gallon cans, and I was able to serve myself from one of those and buy just what I needed for my fuel bottle. Earlier in the day, I had attempted to buy regular unleaded from a gas station, but the pump wouldn't read my credit card. My stove will run on unleaded, but it's a dirtier burn, so I was glad I wasn't able to buy it.
Now, I've checked in to the Dancing Bear, run by transplanted Floridians Bob and Diane Smith. I was able to pedal the rig right into the garage, to which they gave me a key. I took myself to the Baja Cafe around the corner, enjoying a perfectly folded steak burrito and a couple of post-ride Coronas (it's the lime that makes it, you know). From there, I stopped in at Mount Rogers Outfitters up the street, which is a candy store for folks like me whose current lives revolve around their gear. I'll have to go back there tomorrow...just perusing the place has given me ideas about how to consolidate and streamline how I pack the trailer. Later, I walked about a mile up the road to the local Food City, and as I was walking back with my purchases, a nice fellow named Mark pulled over and gave me a ride back to the Dancing Bear.
This is a good place. I'm going to spend the day here tomorrow: I've got some maintenance to do on the trike and the trailer, the battery could use some charging and the yard here has great exposure for all-day sun tracking. Mount Rogers runs a hostel, and I'll stop by to see about dropping off a book I've finished and picking up a new one from the community bookshelf.
There's a lot going on besides the practicalities of travel, but it's getting late, and (as always) I'm a sleepy fellow. More tomorrow.
I'll leave you with another road picture. The composition of these shots is becoming distressingly similar, but then, this is what I spend most of the day looking at.
What you're looking at is Clinch Mountain (4,208 feet). I rode up it.
OK, I didn't ride up all of it, I topped out at 3,130 feet. To get an idea of what that means, check out the map. See that evil squiggly bit across the top there? That represents a climb of 1,470 feet in 3.7 miles. This was accomplished with one Powerbar, five Clif Bars, and four packets of Gu20. I neglected to take into account that by making powdered electrolyte replacement drink with my Camelbak water, I'd go through it faster, and I ran out somewhere near the top edge of this map-slice. Fortunately, Gu20 has almost four times the Sodium that Gatorade does, otherwise I would've been in more serious trouble than I was. Sucking the salt out of my jersey helped me through the rough spots. Then, at the bottom of the wicked downhill on the other side of the mountain, the guy driving the sag (supply) wagon for the three blissfully unencumbered cyclists who passed by me on the way up stopped and asked if I had seen his people up there. Turns out they stopped at the campsite on top of the mountain, while he thought they were heading for one in the valley. We chatted for a bit, and he gave me a bottle of water, which I turned into more Gu20 and chugged posthaste.
Damascus was a tough town to leave. Bob and Diane, proprietors of the Dancing Bear, were excellent and unobtrusive hosts...Diane knocked quietly at my door the afternoon I arrived bearing wunnerful homemade oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, and Bob - an Appalachian Trail through-hiker - was happy to share bits of hiking lore that were applicable to my venture. The room was nice and cozy, Mount Rogers Outfitters had so much nifty stuff I went back three times (hence the Gu20), and, all in all, I was low and sad when I pedaled out of town this morning. Homesick, for lack of a better word, and seriously questioning my self, my journey...just everything. Very blah.
My mom's a big John Denver fan, and I grew up listening to alot of his music. So, reaching for anything to keep me from collapsing into a ditch in numb despair, I put JD on the iPod...and sailed through the day on the aural wind of my youth (although I did put on Led Zeppelin III for the big downhill later). I hooked up the big cell antenna and called Pea from outside the elementary school in Hayters Gap, just prior to the big climb, and it was good to talk to her for a bit, rekindling my sense of connection to something other than the road, the mesh seat of my trike, and energy-dense foodstuffs.
Altogether: 31.3 miles, at an average speed of 7 miles an hour, which, considering the climbs involved and the weight I'm hauling, is pretty damn good. My maximum speed was 43.7 miles per hour, no doubt achieved on the way down from the peak on Route 80. The climb, as brutal as it was, as hard, sweaty, and hot as it was, was less a matter of faith than of assurance. I knew I'd make it. At one point, after a steep switchback, I confronted another set of switchbacks stretching up the mountain and out of sight, and I burst out laughing. "It just won't stop!" I yelled into the trees, then stopped in a patch of shoulder-gravel to rest and eat some energy before pushing on.
At the end of the ride: the Elk Garden Methodist Church, which opens its doors to cyclists. I'm here alone, and the pastor hasn't stopped by. I've stuffed myself full of ramen, and I'll sleep on the nice flat floor with my sleeping pad and bag, happy to have a roof over my head. Shortly after I arrived, a thunderstorm blew through, so intense that a pair of motorcyclists took shelter under the church's front porch until it let up a bit. There's a chance for more of the same tomorrow, but I'm going to push about 44 miles to a campground near the Kentucky border. It's mostly downhill from here, with one or two 500-foot climbs, so I should be OK even if it decides to rain a bit.
What a day. It started off so dreary, headwise, and as I climbed the mountain my spirits rose even as my body strained and pulled against gravity and the heat. Now, sitting here with only the sound of a ticking clock for company, I feel content. I am able to do things, apparently, that I didn't know I could do. I can look at the contour lines on the next few days' worth of map panels and know that I will be able to go up those mountains. The ease of mind and soul that comes from that knowledge is simply sublime.
This last photo is the first thing I saw after I shot out of the downhill between the mountain peaks and the fields opened up on all sides of me. The picture doesn't do it justice, of course...the digital image has made more out of the haze than was actually there. But seeing that mountain splashed across the horizon was a wonderful bit of joy for the eyes after being closely surrounded by trees and steep hillside for much of the afternoon.
I've made it to Breaks Interstate Park. Today's ride was about 45 miles, including climbs that resembled yesterday's, only broken into two or three 500- to 800- foot climbs instead of one 1,400-foot climb. And there was rain. Lots of it.
It's dark, and I'm sitting in my tent listening to the sounds of drops hitting the fly while bluegrass fiddle echos through the well-populated campground. That music I don't mind so much. The air is so humid outside that my breath formed great glowing clouds about my face as I walked around, illuminated by my Petzl headlamp.
I'll be staying here tomorrow, because the Knee Department has filed all the proper paperwork and formally requested a break.
I'm proud of myself: there's a Lodge here, with cozy rooms and showers and beds and so on. I resolved: I hauled this stuff up this mountain and I'm damn well going to make camp with it, rain or no rain.
And so, here I sit, a few miles from the Kentucky border, close enough to Elkhorn City to get online without the big antenna or the amplifier.
But it won't, not until the day after tomorrow, at least, and probably not even then. I've managed to avoid getting wet for a month (yes, today marks one month on the road), so I suppose I'm due. I had four ,choices for tomorrow: stay here, get rained on and remain damp; pack up, go to the Lodge and pay $50; pack up, pedal 1.7 miles to the Gateway motel in the rain and pay some unknown cash quantity; pack up, pedal 7 miles to Elkhorn City in the rain and stay at the only motel in town which sounds like a cross between a motel and a hostel, and pay $30. On balance, stayiing here seems like the best choice, and it's only $11.
For awhile, those choices all seemed pretty dismal to me, and made me moody and mopey. But my tent is mostly dry, except for the damp that inevitably intrudes during a day-long soak, and I've got a book (Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air), and there's this here computer-thingy, which I can actually recharge in the rain using the electric hookup and a cunning arrangement of plastic bags and candle wax. Unfortunately, it's difficult to spend much time on the machine because I can't sit at the picnic table with it, and my legs do not like being crossed at all in the close quarters of the tent. I was going to post a lovely picture of the mist-shrouded gorge for you...but apparently the batteries in the camera have died, and the fresh ones are outside in the trailer. I'm not going back out again if I can help it, so the pictures and post of yesterday's ride (tentatively titled, Great, Kid...Don't Get Cocky) will have to wait.
You know, there's really only so much dampness a guy can take. I put in a good faith effort: two nights camping with the gear I hauled up the mountain. In the rain. In lots of rain. And when there wasn't rain, there was mist. Thick mist. Mist you could make a sandwich with.
This afternoon as I stood in the shelter of the camp's laundry shack doing my laundry with quarters scraped together from various random pockets and change from the Pepsi machine, I noted with interest that it had stopped raining. I had my laptop with me, and I also noted with interest that the NOAA weather forecast had changed again, upping the chance of rain tomorrow from 50% to an unprecedented 100% (it has since been lowered to 60%, of course). And I knew that I didn't want to do a 60-mile ride with climbs at the end of it in the sort of weather the NOAA hooligans were predicting. So, I packed up (in the rain, which started up again), and high-tailed it off the mountain and seven miles across the state line into Elkhorn City, where I write to you now from a somewhat dingy but reasonably-priced motel room that has every piece of my gear strewn all over it, drying out.
In order to get online, I had to solve a vexing technical problem: I accidentally turned on the Black Box switch that powers the cellular amplifier, and drained the big battery over the course of my stay at the campground. No power for the amp! Because I had only designed the Box to charge the battery with solar panels, the cloudy weather meant that I would be without a crucial piece of communications gear for several days, just as I was entering a state where cell signals are elusive. However: I have a big bag of AC adapters for all of my various gizmos and gadgets, and after a few minutes of experimenting I discovered that the adapter that powers my AA battery charger fits into the sockets on the Black Box that accept solar panel input. Success! Now I'm charging the battery, and powering the amplifier. The big antenna is actually outside the motel room door, with the cable running through a gap at the door's bottom, and with that setup I can eke out the bare minimum signal required to get online. There's a certain satisfaction in that.
Geeeeky satisfaction.
By coming here, I get to dry out, and I've shaved just a bit off the long haul I need to make to Pippa Passes. I also met four westbound cyclists. Two couples, one on a tandem and the other on singles. We ate dinner together at the restaurant next to the motel (I indulged in my cheeseburger thing, as I'm not riding tomorrow). Two of them - Katie and Mo - started out in New York City, came down through Pennsylvania and Maryland, and are headed west until Kansas. There, they'll hang a left and end up in Austin, Texas so that Katie can start grad school.
The old man's words stuck with me all that day, though, and they echoed in the motel room where I stewed and fretted and yakked up bits of Waffle House hash browns. Elizabeth's excitement and parting blessings were certainly a counter to that, and the sight of verdant mountains broke through my cloudy mood a little...but I still had to force myself to turn around and pick up a quart of sweet cherries from the roadside stand at Chile's Peach Orchard, knowing I'd feel like a dreary fool if I didn't. I wouldn't have even known that the cherries were the thing to get if I hadn't met a local cyclist, who pulled up next to me to chat, sweating, with road-snot on his upper lip. I didn't mind the goo...just meant the man was working hard, that's all. Originally from Germany, Christian told me tales of the bike paths along the Danube and other major rivers, and had the familiar complaints about local scenery being chewed up and spat out by developers. He also told me about the orchard, so know I've got yummy rubies of cherry goodness to snack on, and life is good.
Still: it didn't seem good until I got here. It might be because my campsite overlooks a stream...I've always had an affinity for water, and the more it moves the better I feel. There are fretful thoughts that remain...namely, the Blue Ridge Parkway, which promises some wicked climbs over the next couple of days. I'm concerned about my endurance, my right knee, my trailer. But that's tomorrow, and the next day.
I’ve gone 233.8 miles so far, give or take a few miles to allow for plotting difference between the GPS and the laptop, little fractions of miles traveled in campsites and so on. That’s about eighteen miles a day if you do the math proper-like, which isn’t so great, but if you take out the four rest days it works out to a slightly more respectable 26 miles a day…still not enough, just over half of what I need to be averaging. That’ll improve as my legs grow stronger and the terrain gets flatter, he said hopefully.
Then, as I was bracing myself for the 1.7 miles my GPS insisted I had left, I saw the sign with the red arrow and the spinning wheels of a yard-art bicycle. I had arrived! When I called the Cookie Lady this morning, I said that I’d be there between noon and one – it was only 11:30, and I was early. There was also a sign on the Bikehouse door, and I did what it said.
The Cookie Lady is somewhere around 85, and as she told me, she’s having to get used to not moving as fast as she once could because of her stroke last year. She still does what she can, but has someone who comes in to help her out. This morning, she said, she was particularly tired out as the group of nine cyclists who had stayed in the Bikehouse the previous evening left it a bit of a mess. Just refolding the blankets and sweeping up was enough to put her in her easy chair. This was somewhat baffling to me – that these people, presumably adults, couldn’t muster up fifteen minutes to clean up after themselves. They didn’t sign the registry book either, so presumably they were either ignorant of or just weren’t on board with the whole Cookie Lady thing.
After a demonstration of the life-size animatronic Santa in her living room (laughing, June said he was given to her by a cyclist who told her she "needed a man in the house"), we chatted more about this and that: the dry weather, stories about folks who’ve passed through, and her strict no-alcohol policy. Again, an occasion to be puzzled by adults who can’t grasp the simple concept that when you’re a guest in someone’s house, you do as they ask…and if you haul heavy bottles and cans up a hill to drink at a house where you’ve been asked not to, in addition to being a lout, you’re an idiot.
I travel in a bubble of faith...which usually has as its immediate focus the topping of a mountain. Its longer gaze is fixed upon the west coast, but I can't really look that far ahead. Right now, it's still too much for me to encompass.
After that, the rest of the climb up the Afton mountain road. Apparently, it wasn't finished with me just yet: about a mile of the same switchbacks I encountered yesterday. Then a long, steady climb on Route 250 until I finally reached the Blue Ridge Parkway. 
OK, here's another small thing I have learned: when you have an opportunity to eat pasta, do so.
It's one thing to get rained on when you're already underway...quite another to leave when it's already raining.
After fermenting here for...four days? I had to look at the site to check, it's easy to lose track of time these days. At any rate: tomorrow I was going to saddle up and pedal a shade over 50 miles to a KOA Kampground in Wytheville, VA.
Well, that's about enough of that. I got enough work done to feel like I've done something here other than sleep and eat canned pasta, so tomorrow morning, I'm off to pedal 52.7 miles to Wytheville VA and an overpriced tent site at a KOA Kampground. Fortunately, I'm starting to move into the area of National Forestry Service campgrounds and other, cheaper alternatives - hostels, churches and the like.
At 3,450 feet, I rested and wolfed down some newtons before sailing downhill into Troutdale. Then it was back up on Route 303, to about 3,750 feet. I discovered that a key motivating factor was replacing the miles per hour readout on the GPS display with an altitude readout. I don't really care how fast I'm going up hill anymore, only that I reach the summit. And I did: a long ride along the Elk Garden Ridge, following the course of Laurel Creek. I crossed the Appalachian Trail, and had conversations with the horses who were hanging out in pastureland and at horse camps.
Damascus lies at the intersection of the Appalachian Trail, the Virginia Creeper Trail, the TransAm cycling route, and lots of little local trails for mountain biking and horse riding. Fewer than 1,000 people live here, and many of them have made it their business to cater to the needs of through-hikers, cyclists, and other outdoorsy types. I pulled into the parking lot of Sun Dog Outfitters, where I bought a slew of Clif Bars, 25 feet of line for bear-bagging (more on that later, when there are actually bears about), and 20 ounces of white gas. That last item was what let me know I was truly in a camper friendly town. White gas normally comes in gallon or half-gallon cans, and I was able to serve myself from one of those and buy just what I needed for my fuel bottle. Earlier in the day, I had attempted to buy regular unleaded from a gas station, but the pump wouldn't read my credit card. My stove will run on unleaded, but it's a dirtier burn, so I was glad I wasn't able to buy it.
OK, I didn't ride up all of it, I topped out at 3,130 feet. To get an idea of what that means, check out the map. See that evil squiggly bit across the top there? That represents a climb of 1,470 feet in 3.7 miles. This was accomplished with one Powerbar, five Clif Bars, and four packets of Gu20. I neglected to take into account that by making powdered electrolyte replacement drink with my Camelbak water, I'd go through it faster, and I ran out somewhere near the top edge of this map-slice. Fortunately, Gu20 has almost four times the Sodium that Gatorade does, otherwise I would've been in more serious trouble than I was. Sucking the salt out of my jersey helped me through the rough spots. Then, at the bottom of the wicked downhill on the other side of the mountain, the guy driving the sag (supply) wagon for the three blissfully unencumbered cyclists who passed by me on the way up stopped and asked if I had seen his people up there. Turns out they stopped at the campsite on top of the mountain, while he thought they were heading for one in the valley. We chatted for a bit, and he gave me a bottle of water, which I turned into more Gu20 and chugged posthaste.
My mom's a big John Denver fan, and I grew up listening to alot of his music. So, reaching for anything to keep me from collapsing into a ditch in numb despair, I put JD on the iPod...and sailed through the day on the aural wind of my youth (although I did put on Led Zeppelin III for the big downhill later). I hooked up the big cell antenna and called Pea from outside the elementary school in Hayters Gap, just prior to the big climb, and it was good to talk to her for a bit, rekindling my sense of connection to something other than the road, the mesh seat of my trike, and energy-dense foodstuffs.
You know, there's really only so much dampness a guy can take. I put in a good faith effort: two nights camping with the gear I hauled up the mountain. In the rain. In lots of rain. And when there wasn't rain, there was mist. Thick mist. Mist you could make a sandwich with.
In order to get online, I had to solve a vexing technical problem: I accidentally turned on the Black Box switch that powers the cellular amplifier, and drained the big battery over the course of my stay at the campground. No power for the amp! Because I had only designed the Box to charge the battery with solar panels, the cloudy weather meant that I would be without a crucial piece of communications gear for several days, just as I was entering a state where cell signals are elusive. However: I have a big bag of AC adapters for all of my various gizmos and gadgets, and after a few minutes of experimenting I discovered that the adapter that powers my AA battery charger fits into the sockets on the Black Box that accept solar panel input. Success! Now I'm charging the battery, and powering the amplifier. The big antenna is actually outside the motel room door, with the cable running through a gap at the door's bottom, and with that setup I can eke out the bare minimum signal required to get online. There's a certain satisfaction in that.