New Gadget

Hey, look to the right here and check out that green box ---->  it's a link that will take you to the flickr page where you can click on the Virginia set or the Kentucky set (still in progress)  and see some more photos.  I think you can comment too, if you want.  Enjoy!

A pun...."she breaks the rules"

We’d been traveling around I-81 for several days, over it, under it (but never on it), along the frontage road beside it.  There was always the rumble of big, BIG trucks to confuse the ear.  But we made a hard left turn and dove south west not away from the interstate but toward Damascus.  We’d missed our planned arrival on the weekend and were now hoping for Monday.  A couple of good days and keeping the food bags light meant we were within range on Sunday and could have made it until we discovered that Trail Days was happening in Damascus that same weekend. 

Damascus is a hole in the wall deep southwestern Virginia town that would have died like so many others we pedaled through recently except for three things.  The rails to trails conversion park called Virginia Creeper Trail, the TransAm (our route) and the Appalachian Trail.  Of the three, the Creeper is much my favorite for its gentle grade, plush surface and tendency to stay near a lovely, rushing creek.  It is also a favorite of many, many less ambitious vacationers as the four bicycle shuttle services in town can attest.

Fortunately for me, the TransAm has an officially sanctioned alternate route along the Creeper for the final 11 miles into town to enjoy….but not yet.  Sam and I attended Trail Days many years ago and we both have a clear recollection of what a circus it is.  So we waited out the free eating contest, the Patchouli parade and general mayhem in favor of a two room, hiker/biker hostel in Troutdale (all services closed).  Approaching town, we saw an exodus of smiling trail-days-gladdened, slightly hung over, AT hikers who promised they had left SOME food and a very small quantity of beer (I would need it to be sorghum, of course).   The hikers neglected to mention that they had also left a town full of very irritated and tired citizens and shop keepers.  There are two hostels in town and one of them featured a  keeper who was stomping around the hostel yelling for people to, “Go hike somewhere!”… it appeared to be the sentiment of the entire town.

Nevertheless, we took a day off there so we could mail ourselves some equipment to Berea.  We are having a trial separation from another 6 lbs of gear and sent another 9 lbs to Sam’s parents to ‘hold’ including our cool weather sleeping bags (traded for summer weight).  That done, we jumped on our unloaded bikes and rode into Tennessee for a look at Backbone Rock (see pictures).  “The world’s shortest tunnel” (20 ft) blasted through a ridge of resistant rock by a long defunct timber company.  

you can walk across the top

It was nifty but the following day we blasted off for Kentucky and were pleasantly surprised to find the border to be The Breaks " Grand Canyon of the South"; one of only two interstate parks (Palisades being the other).  A break is an abrupt and dramatic change in the terrain.  Go to google earth and see how Pine Mountain range just drops into a maze of smaller and less organized hills.

After a half day tour of the major overlooks, we headed down the mountain and ate a very generous BBQ lunch and rolled to Freeda Harris Baptist Center who opened their gymnasium doors for us.  Little Red Riding Hood brought over some soup beans and corn bread (had to pass on the bread b/c I thought it might have wheat).   The only thing was the rules.....they had me on the spitting.

Natural Bridge and beyond

We’ve been hiding from the rain.  Mostly from lightening but wet gear is hard to dry out on the move so we high-tailed it to the Natural Bridge KOA on Mother’s day.  One room, ‘log’ construction with no bathroom (though there was a bath house) and I was tickled pink.  I couldn’t wait for the rain to begin…bring on the lightening too!  I wanted this storm to drop as much rain as possible while we were under cover.  It dribbled a little silent dribble until about 8am when rain began to fall in a more determined way.  I stalled as long as I could but we eventually moved out and pedaled three miles to the Natural Bridge Caverns.  We got to see the underside of a fault line and Sam was very excited.  From there we went to the Bridge itself and wow!  I had seen pictures before but this sucker was tall!  Pictures just do not do justice. But, I do think Jefferson was being a little grandiose when he went on about it being “the most sublime of natute’s works” but then I have the advantage of growing up in a world in which the Grand Canyon is a known landmark.  From there we went to the wax museum because Sam had never been and was curious.  I went along because it was dry in there.  I think it will be the only time.

So about 3:30 pm we struck out for Camp Bethel, whom I had found on the internet back at KOA.  I called the 800 number and made the reserves:  a ‘hotel style’ room with access to kitchen. Cool.  About 5:30 or so we arrived, cold and wet to discover that (a) the office closed at 5, and (b) the building our room is an adjunct of (the dining hall) could not be found and , after finally finding the staff residence, (c) we were at the wrong Camp Bethel.  Wait, that’s not exactly the truth…we were at the correct Camp Bethel, the one a few short minutes off our route, it was just not the one I had made reserves with.  How can there be two Camp Bethels you might ask and that is just what I did.  They were gracious enough to let us take up occupancy and resolve it all in the morning.

The next day we suffered some good natured ribbing and took off for Catawba.  We pulled into the 4 Pines Hostel about four o’clock.  There was a sign on the gate that said, "keep closed on account of the deaf dog" in hand painted script.  We were all set to shelter up in the garage with the AT hikers (3) when more arrived, then more, then a quite bombastic dude rolled in and we rolled out…out to the tent.  I hope it doesn’t rain…more.

love a nice even tan on the face...

We didn't tent solely because of Mr. Bombast, although he was  noisy in the way of a toddler who is being ignored but because of the smell.  I blamed it on a slightly underfed dog that was found on the trail but it wasn’t him.  Let me say here that I am aware that my 3 day jersey and I did not smell ‘fresh as a daisy’ but the collective funk was too much for me.  Besides, there were bull frogs outside and tin-ny Pandora played through a smartphone inside.

Two Grannies

 Well what can I say except that leaving Charlottesville beat the hell out of getting in.  We did get a little lost and ended up on the wrong road, but being the kind of person who’d rather stab myself in the thigh than bicycle up over a hill I just rode down, I started looking for cross cutting roads to get us over to the road we should be on.  There were none.  I should say, Google maps says there are several….they are all private and quickly end at a gate or onto a golf course.  So we climbed a big hill and were rewarded with a fabulous view of mountains in the background and grassy knolls in the foreground.  Horses on pasture, to boot! We lucked on to a sandwich shop and had a no bread sandwich with bacon!  The placard at the order counter was this:

Eventually, we reconnected with our intended route and made our way to Afton.   

Afton is a side of the mountain no services wide spot in the route up and over Rockfish Gap, past the junction of BR parkway and Skyline Drive, toward Waynesboro.  It is also the home of the Cookie Lady.  June Curry has been welcoming cyclist and AT backpackers with cookies and water and talk and tent sites since the 70’s.  She is a living legend to travelers.  I didn’t want cookies but I did look forward to a little hello and a tent site.

So I called ahead, spoke to someone other than June and made arrangements to get into the ‘hostel’ for the night.  It turns out that it is in the bottom floor of the building beside June’s house; it is what can only be described as a perpetually closed up slightly neglected shrine to bicycling. Inside what I will call the museum, are all manner of cycling related derelict (in its nautical sense) that appear to have been left there for memento sake but may have just been the final resting place of some things that east bound cyclists found that they could finish their journey without.  There were also dozens of Christmas cards, birth and death announcements and a little hand written sign on each window that read, “do not open, the wind blows the cards down”.

Having decided that this smelly, closed up, thin walled hostel would be an unhealthy place to sleep, we decided to ask about camping.  June met us at the door with a partially incoherent statement that began with jumble and ended with a flat “I’m sorry I can’t do more for you.” So, here we are, 7pm, haven’t had supper yet and nothing but uphill to Rockfish Gap.  So we trudged back into the stink and tried to settle down.  Shortly, we agreed to reload our bikes and move on.  This would require our headlights so some reworking of the packs was required and we were on our way just after dark.  Luckily the final leg up the mountain ended well, the Inn at Afton was open (I had been misinformed that it was closed) but almost as decrepit as the museum.  We checked in and cooked a very late supper on the breezeway.

The following morning dawned beautifully.  It was cool and clear and breezy.  In the daylight the Inn at Afton showed its age and neglect.  Sam and I have been staying at the Inn since our first trip through in ‘94 but age has not been kind.  Further, we were told that the Inn sits in two counties and there is some kind of tax dispute that has rendered the owner hesitant to put money into it.  I regarded this as our last visit to both old ladies.

Into Charlottesville

During a harrowing late afternoon trip along Hwy 54 into Charlottesville, I bonked.  If you don’t know bonking, stop reading now and look it up.  Anyway, bonking is never, ever pretty, always drags the trip way, way out and irritates your fellow travelers.

East of Charlottesville, Highway 54 is a two-laned affair that curves and rises along a lovely stretch of road.  But, most of its beauty was lost to me as I willed my noodle-y legs to keep Betty close to Sam.  They chose not to listen.   Traffic, as is typical when approaching a proper city, was thick in an ‘out-of-my-way, I-am-late-for-something-important’ way.  Just as things were reaching their dire worst, I was able to squeak out, I’ve bonked, I need food!  or something like that.  Looking at these words in print, they don’t seem to project the proper level of desperation, even with an exclamation point.  So, despite the fact that we were in desperate need of getting off this road, and only a mile from the junction, and feeling the pressure of the clock tick that signals the work-a-day liberation and feeds even more cars onto the road, Sam pulled over at the exit from Monticello and patiently waited, snacked lightly and waited more. He was tired too, of course, but was handling it in a much more graceful manner.

I had been monitoring our progress on google maps and had noticed that the recommended route by bicycle to our destination was just off the highway, not on it.  Now that I was slightly restored, I investigated further and found that google preferred that we use a greenway.  So did I.  

Hurray! We were saved.  It was so lovely to be away from the traffic and under the trees that we walked our bikes for a way and just relaxed.  Beyond the end of the greenway lay a short but tiring hill to our room and our day off.  After a nap and a shower we walked two blocks to The Local for an astonishingly expensive dinner of local pastured chicken and veggies plus a glass of wine to celebrate the first 50 mile day!  Found this on the hostel fridge door; evidence that someone understands.

Monkey off my bike

At last the much anticipated day off in Charlottesville, VA has arrived.  Between naps we will do laundry, go to Whole Foods (3.5miles), see as many C'ville sites of interest as possible and grab an extra nap in between.  I am not too proud to say that the effort to get to Charlottesville was great and I suffered exceedingly <sniff> as you will soon see.  But first, since its been a week, I will bring you up to date with a concise history:
Left Yorktown and rode to Chickahominy (~30miles).  The tent was nearly blown over by a squall that had us both out of the tent racing desperately to secure everything.  No rain.
Spent the next day in Jamestown and another night at Chickahominy.  Again, the squall but this time it was followed by enough rain to soak everything and more wind.  We spent some time in the ladies room at 1am.
After that, the days have gone like this:
Rise and eat breakfast of egg omelet and sausage, coffee.  Pack and pedal to a market en route where we stop , have lunch and buy something frozen (block o' veggie) and meat (usually ground beef and sausage), stow them in the small of competent cooler.  Ride to our destination and make camp or check in.  Eat, clean up, bed.  The cooler with a block o' veggie is cold enough to hold the meats and so far the eggs.  As the season progresses, we will probably have to modify this strategy, but we will see.

Map 146 of section 12 (yes...we are doing this thing backwards) has a "town" called Bumpass.  If  we are friends on Facebook, you will have seen the sign post.  Anyway, I had been eye-balling this section with interest and a little apprehension.  Interest due to the name, obviously, but the apprehension could only have been intuition.  So after our night of Mexican and Sleep Inn in Ashland, we stopped at the PO to send 7lb 6oz of 'superfluous' gear home (which Sam laments constantly) and headed west.  About 1/3 through the day's miles, I broke the cardinal rule of cyclo-touring....I cut too close to Sam's bike and my front pannier caught his back one.  This can happen when you get a little lazy, or are a little stupid, or haven't been sleeping well or any combination of the three.  In any case, the results are almost always the same....the person in back loses (that's me).  I managed to get the panniers separated but with 12 lbs of gear on the fork, I had no control.  Off into the ditch I went. The damage was this: I have a shiner (see below if not snacking) on my right thigh, an insignificant bruise on the left thigh, grass stains on my best jersey and a sore spot on my neck (hit my helmet but not on the pavement).  The bike fared much better. Sam had to turn the seat post and left side brake) back to the forward position and we soldiered on toward the Mineral VFD.  On a tour, you know these things are going to happen, statistically you cannot avoid them.  "Well," I said, dusting myself off, "At least that monkey's off my back"  NOTE: No Sams were harmed in the creating of this bruise.

Leaving Mineral, we headed out on our first 50+ mile day to get to Charlottesville.  Further insults awaited and are described in the very next post.

Yorktown as Sam saw it

Sam felt, and probably rightly so, that the previous blog was much more interesting than I made it sound.  What follows is his version with my voice at the end.  Enjoy!

Arriving in Williamsburg at 12:30 in the morning rendered me somewhat less than keen.  So when the key to the hotel room failed to make the door swing open I of course suspected the key of having an identity crisis.  Back to the office for another key.  The manager looked at me with true pity and had to come see for himself.  After he inserted the key and the door held fast on him too, he promptly shouldered the door with the efficiency of former cop.  How was I to know that the door-jam had been painted and the door closed on the fresh paint? 

After drooling over all the food at Trader Joe’s that we could not fit on our bikes, we reluctantly returned the stow and go Grand Caravan.  The rental agent took one look in the van which I was ferociously trying to unload and said, ---yes he said it, I can’t believe it but yes he said it---“ Y’all going on a bike trip”?  I said, “yeah” but thought  “Here’s your sign”.  OK, we’re in Williamsburg, the closest town with a dropoff to the east coast terminus of the TransAm and it is springtime and surely we are not the first people to do this.  So after cramming way too much stuff onto our bikes we wobble our way across the street to a grocery store called Farm Fresh which has a Starbucks in it.  I just did not want to face the rental agent in spandex so I left the motel in street clothes and now that the whole rental thing was done we needed coffee, food and to get into riding clothes.  The caffeination and refueling went fine but the clothing issue turned out to be a fiasco. 

Getting out of street clothes and into bike clothes has always been a challenge for me but this time was special. We took turns so someone could keep an eye on the bikes.  When I got my turn I went into the bathroom and found only one stall.  It was occupied with someone whisper-cussing and he sounded well practiced and endurance paced so I decided to go back outside and wait there.  On my next try in the bathroom, I found the stall empty, “OK, we can get this thing on the road finally”.  Just about the time I get my street shorts off a half man/ half giraffe walks up to the urinal beside the stall, I can see his entire head and neck, and judging by the look on his face he has just seen the hairiest ass in the world.     

When Lisa changed, things went only marginally better, I’ll let her pick up the story from here.

In the ladies room, all stall doors were ajar so I, of course, chose the stall with extra space and flung the door open to find a woman of late middle years perched on the throne.  “Sorry”, I squeaked and pulled the door closed.  Having arranged myself in the next (much smaller) stall, I soon detected the sounds of one who over indulges in something dry and bulking….yuck.  A woman who had been standing at the mirror said, “You okay Miss Edith?”  On a guess, I’d say no but I wasn’t prepared to offer any assistance.  In response, she got a slightly louder grunt.  I had to get outta there so I hurried along and made my escape. 

Once I was breathing again, I decided to check my clothes bundle and, while rearranging things, dumped my underwear onto the floor right in front of a sentry of cash registers.  Instantly, any superiority I could claim over Ms. Edith and the rest of the oddballs in this town vanished.

Matters culminated when the homeless lady who had been hovering around the side of the store took one look at my bike and said, "Bless your heart, honey".  When your heart is blessed by a homeless lady, you know you’re on the fringe.

Yorktown, VA

So we finally made it to Yorktown after a very late night arrival in Williamsburg.  This morning we returned the very comfortable and ample Grand Caravan with a little hesitation.  Let me just say now that any vehicle that can swallow Sam's size 58cm bicycle, 700c wheels and all in one bite has made it onto the extremely short list of candidates to replace Ruby-Sue when she 'dies'.

We pedaled straight across the street to Starbucks (inside the Farm Fresh grocery) for a LARGE coffee, no cream.  It was tasty but not nearly as exciting as the people we saw.  I do not want to disparage my fellow southerners so I will limit myself to a simple tally:

3 wheel chair bound oldsters with spouse at hand

2 obvious food thieves (they were staging a fight while one made frequent trips to the car and the other left 'with her hand in her shirt' according to Sam's eye witness account...hhmm)

1 extremely short-of-stature store manager
1 poor soul who dominated the men's room to 'whisper cuss' his frustrations away and
1 poor soul who is half man/half giraffe with a balcony view of Sam changing into his riding kit

1 homeless lady who took one look at my bike and said, "bless your heart, honey".  

When you get your heart blessed by a homeless person missing both front teeth, you know you are on the fringe.