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.
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.
