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June 01, 2006
The Haw-wuh...The Haw-wuh...
"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.
See This?
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.
June 02, 2006
Rest Day
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.
June 04, 2006
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).
June 05, 2006
I'm Off (Finally)...
...to the Misty Mountains Camp Resort in Greenwood, VA.
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 think I'll have another cherry...
June 06, 2006
Ha!
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.
At The Bikehouse
 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.
June 07, 2006
I Would Just Like To Say...
...that I am now on top of a mountain. Viz:
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.
Oh...So That's Why I'm Doing This
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 Am Trikeman
 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.
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