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.