Lookout Mountain: take one

Sunday, 03/18/2018

Today Salem and I have decided to go on a bike ride to train for our upcoming bikepacking trip to Glenwood Springs, which we're planning for July. We've done a few jaunts together here and there around town, but haven't done any serious climbing yet... so we are going to tackle Lookout Mountain. I found it on Strava; it is popular with local cyclists, so it seems like a pretty good route to try.

We go to REI in the morning to buy a bike rack for Salem's car, which he's been meaning to get for a while, and then (after stopping for some coffee and chai at Starbucks) we put it on his car and get our bikes all loaded up. Since we're training for a bikepacking trip, we both bring two rear panniers; I also have my handlebar bag. We don't fill the panniers completely up, but we do put a little bit of weight in them--bike locks, full water bottles, that kind of thing. We'll slowly increase the weight on future rides until we're training with all of our camping gear and everything that we'll be taking with us in July. I tell Salem that the Lookout Mountain route is pretty popular, so we'll probably be passed by a lot of people on fancy road bikes. My excuse for being slower than them will be that I'm carrying a lot of weight on my bike. Yep. Always blame your equipment when you can.

We park near Crown Hill Lake in Wheat Ridge, then head west on 26th until Simms, move over onto 32nd, and keep to 32nd into Golden. We pass by the Coors factory on our way into town, and there is something ominous about the industrial buildings looming over us. I kinda like it and its spooky tunnel. It smells really bad around back, though--like rotten fruit or something. When we get to Golden proper, we cut straight to 19th, skipping the roads with bike lanes in favor of a more direct route. The sun is hidden behind clouds--which is probably a good thing, because I didn't bring any sunscreen or anything. I've got arm warmers on, but I'm still in shorts; it's not too cold (...........yet). The climb itself starts without much ado over on the southwest side of town.

Salem stays right on my wheel for the first 2/3 or 3/4 or so of the climb. I set a pace of 5 or 6 mph, sucking periodically on a water bottle full of a homemade sports drink (water, honey, electrolyte salts, and grape juice--it is almost sickeningly sweet, but I need all the energy I can get). I've never gone up this climb before; I think it lasts for something like 4 or 5 miles, so I try to pace myself. It's not a race or anything, after all. The scenery all around us is breathtaking. There's still snow lingering in the shadows of red cliffs, brindle with evergreens. I hope the footage I'm taking with my helmet cam turns out all right.

The gradient is manageable, though it isn't easy. Strava says it averages about 5% over the course of the climb. It gets steeper when the turns switchback up the mountain, but evens out on the straightaways. We are passed by a few cyclists--all of them riding fancy road bikes, as I predicted. Specialized, Cervelo, Orbea. Someday I'll have a bike like that, too--but for now I'm happy with Bike Rothar. She might be slow, but she's dependable--and dang comfortable to boot, and that's more important to me, anyway.

At some point, a bull terrier comes running up to me out of nowhere and keeps trying to jump up on me. He's not being vicious, but I have to come to a stop a few times to avoid running over his feet. We don't see his owner anywhere, and can't figure out where he came from. He has a collar on, but no tags, no identification whatsoever. At some point, a motorcycle passes us, and the dog goes chasing after it, leaving us behind. There's a cliff on both sides of the road--rising above us to the right, and dropping below us to the left. The dog is right in the middle of traffic, galloping around blind corners... I think to myself that he's going to be hit by a car and killed. He certainly has no fear of cars, which have to slow and serve around him. He comes back after a while, unable to catch up with the motorcyclist, and chases after Salem's rear wheel. Fortunately, another quarter mile up the road or so, its owners drive past, spot him, and stow him safely in their car. It is a relief to see him rescued.

I stop once or twice on the way up--to blow my nose, flip my map, etc.--but I try not to linger too long. I want to make it to the top without any serious breaks. Salem passes me and stays ahead for the last 1/3 or 1/4 of the climb. Toward the top, I can tell that he's slowing down to let me catch up. I take advantage of his kindness and sprint (...if you can call it a sprint...) past him so that I can be the first one to the summit.

Salem and I pose for a selfie together at the summit. Salem is snazzy in orange; I am a dork with a Bike Depot jersey and crazy hair.

Once at the summit, we take the required selfies and settle down for a quick lunch by the Buffalo Bill museum. It's really cold and windy up here, so I bundle up in a rain jacket and rain pants. Salem busts out the fancy cycling jacket he splurged on yesterday at REI. (We go to REI a lot...) I've forgotten to bring my full-finger cycling gloves, but am saved by the pair of gloves I accidentally stole from Margy when I last visited her and Dad in Alaska (I'd left them in the pockets of my rain jacket without realizing it). Thanks, Margy--I promise I will return them next time I visit!

All in all, the ascent lasted somewhere between an hour and an hour and a half (I wasn't paying super close attention). The descent takes, oh, idk, like 15 minutes? It is super fun, though. The speed limit on that road is 20 mph... we go between 25 and 30 most of the way down. I film the whole descent, so we'll see how that turns out, too.

When we get back into Golden, I take my rain pants and rain jacket off--and instantly regret it, as a cold front kinda rolls in, but I carry on without because I really don't want to stop again. We ride the gently rolling hills back the way we came, and the sky spits rain and sleet at us. Thunder rumbles in the distance. A pretty significant headwind forms, too, making the rest of the ride feel tougher than it otherwise would be. There's a hill, near Simms and 26th, that seems more difficult to surmount, in that moment, than the entirety of Lookout Mountain... but we push through. Salem lingers behind me a bit, due to the headwind (his bike setup is somewhat less aerodynamic than mine), but not by much. When we make it back to his car, it's gotten really cold, and the sky in the distance is a foreboding gray-black. One of Salem's brothers calls us as we head home, making sure we're not on Lookout Mountain anymore. Apparently Golden is now in the middle of a hailstorm, and we only just missed it. How incredibly lucky...!

We part ways after Salem drops me off, but not before he acquires some cake and protein shakes at a grocery store. (Cake is a very important cycling staple.) The first thing I do when I get back inside is take a long, hot shower to warm up, and then dig into a bowl of vegetable pasta that I made this morning.

Today was a great day. I'm so glad I have a cycling buddy in Colorado now. In all the terrible winters and emotional turmoil, I'd forgotten how much I love this sport...

--

Today's stats

Distance: 27.6 mi
Time: ~2.5 hours
Avg speed: 10.8 mph
Max speed: 30.6 mph
Elevation gain: ~1880 ft

Alaska, Day 6 -- jaunt into town

I originally was going to write a blog post for every day I spent in Alaska last August but... well, I mean, it's already January, and I've only got 4/10 days posted, so I really doubt that's going to happen. I do have a couple more written up that I never ended up posting, though, so I'm going to go ahead and post what I have. I'll just have to make another trip at some point for more material.

--

22 August 2017

Tuesday

Today I decide to take dad's mountain bike into town. My primary goal for this excursion is to make it to Blaire's Art Supply Store to get some fixative spray for the watercolor of Sourdough Mountain that I promised to Grandmother. Most of the dirt I rubbed into it while painting has come off by now, but I'm gonna try to save what's left of it with the spray. Grandmother slips me a little cash, as I head into the garage, to help me buy it. She didn't need to do that, but I accept it gratefully nonetheless.

I have to cobble together supplies from what I can find in the garage--I end up using bungee cords to strap a day-pack to the bike's rear rack, and filling an empty Dr. Pepper bottle with water for the trip. I spend a lot of the morning searching (in vain) for a tire pump. While gathering supplies, I keep going back into the house to look at the google maps directions again, in an attempt to memorize them before leaving the safety of GPS behind. Finally loaded up with raincoat, bike lock, notebook, pen, wallet, compass, a letter and a postcard I want to mail to friends back home, the aforementioned water bottle, printed google maps directions, two mandarin oranges, two boiled eggs, and two of those squeezy pouches of fruit and yogurt that I like to carry around when cycling, I head off.

First I try to patronize a bike shop google said was down the street--but though I find what I think is the shop, I can't find an entry door. I give up and head to a gas station instead to fill the tires there as best I can, lucky that the tubes happen to use schrader valves.

I know I'm supposed to turn onto Old Seward Highway, but I forget if it was a right or a left. Good thing I looked at the map a few times before I headed out, so I know that town is north of me. I use my compass to pick the correct direction. In Denver, the mountains on the horizon are always to the west--it is difficult to orient myself here, where going west takes one toward the sea.

I start out cycling in the road. I am used to Colorado, where riding on the sidewalk is not only dangerous, but illegal. People keep passing too close and honking at me here, even though I am as far right as possible. Eventually I give up and move onto the sidewalk. The sidewalks are paved with the same material as the roads; they seem to seamlessly transition from sidewalk to off-road multi-use path and back to sidewalk again. Riding on them is not so bad, even though crossing driveways and side-streets always makes me nervous. Anchorage is much more spread out than other places, though, so there is more distance between crossings, which makes it a little less obnoxious having to stop and yield at each one.

I blast past my first turn, of course. I've left my glasses at home, in favor of using sunglasses, so it takes me a little more effort to read street signs. I'm something like 40 blocks past the turn I needed when I realize the street numbers are decreasing and not increasing. I turn around and start to backtrack to correct the mistake, but decide that I don't really want to go that much farther out of my way if I can help it. Instead, I take an exploratory ramble through some side streets until I find a way to C street, then head north from there. After that it is a pleasant jaunt through lush, wet, forested parks and past quiet industrial areas and hotels until I reach my next turns, which I do not miss...!

The art store is cute, and has a cafe inside. I take a look around everything first, finding myself as tempted as usual when browsing this kind of place. I do pick up a field watercolor journal for future en plein air endeavors, but am able to talk myself out of buying a plethora of things I don't actually need. I find the fixatives and pick out a workable matte spray--partially because it specifically lists "watercolor" in its usage instructions, partially because it is small (I don't need a lot), but mostly because the brand name is my family's name, and I find this amusing. I then ask the barista for directions to a post office while she's ringing up my purchases. She gives me some convoluted directions to a place about 3 miles away that she'd looked up on google maps. I take the address she writes down for me, but when I head out I think I see a UPS store in the distance, so I wander on foot for a block or two, hoping to find some place that sells stamps and a blue post office box without having to go too much farther into town.

I try to reach the UPS store I saw, but after detouring around a construction site and a long gray building, I come across a Carr's, so I go in there to get a book of stamps and an additional snack. I ask them where the nearest post office is, and they point me to one right across the street--no more than two or three blocks from the art supply store. Not sure how google maps missed that one.

After mailing my cards, I drop into a bookstore called Title Wave, which I find on the other side of the long gray building. I wander the shelves, trying to find whatever I'm in the mood for today. Since I don't have my glasses on, I need to be a little more deliberate than usual--browsing for too long would give me a massive headache. I ultimately decide on poetry. When the poetry section yields nothing new or interesting, I wander over to the Alaska-specific section. One of the books I crack open here falls immediately open to a poem about Kennecott, and I think, well, this might be some kind of sign--but the poem itself turns out to be awful. The rhyme is forced and trite, the meter terrible--I can't stomach more than a few lines of it. The other poems in that book are equally horrid. I put it back and peruse a few trailside chapbooks before finally settling on an anthology called Alaskan Art & Writing, copyright August 1981, number 21/22 of the quarterly Northward Journal. It's a poem called "Splitting Wood" by Ann Chandonnet that sells it to me: page 55. I like most of what I read therein and pick it up for $4.95 (no sales tax?) and head back home.

The ride back home is much nicer--more off-road path, less curbside sidewalk. I don't miss my turn onto 104th this time. It is small--barely an alley over some train tracks--so I understand why I missed it the first time. After I pass the gas station where I fill my tires, though, I get lost... can't find the turn into the right neighborhood. I go back and forth over a decently steep hill before I finally have to call dad and get directions. Turns out I'd been second-guessing myself too much after my other mishaps of the day--I couldn't find the turn because I wasn't going far enough down the road. But wandering through neighborhood streets and climbing and re-climbing the hill is more exercise, which I really needed, and it feels good, though I'm getting hungry. When I finally make it home safe, there is spicy sausage and cabbage to eat, and all my errands have been done. All in all a successful day.

epilogue/bike review

Dad picked up the mountain bike for about $100, and it shows, though my complaints are not too bad: handlebars need adjustment, chain needs grease, gears need adjustment, too. Well, and the saddle is awfully uncomfortable, but that's more of a personal preference thing--I found the perfect saddle for me in Dublin years and years ago, and haven't found a better one since. I'm glad I only rode about 20 miles today; I'm too spoiled to the comfort of my Surly Long Haul Trucker, Bike Rothar. I'm not sure I would've enjoyed much more than that.

Video of my 25 mph wipeout from day 14

Finally started sorting thru the videos on my contourROAM since coming back early from KY after my injury.

The most exciting/frightening video is, of course, the video of my 25 mph wipeout downhill in VA. It's described, and my injuries are pictured, in my blog entry titled TransAmerica Cycle 2013, day 14.

Have a look at it below:






All I can say is, I'm really fortunate that I passed Jenn in the beginning of the video, so at least one person was behind me when I crashed. Everyone else kept cycling and it took me and Jenn like 6 or 7 miles to finally catch up to them at the bottom of the hill--and that's when I get the first aid from the 2nd half of this video. It would have been a lot more disheartening and difficult to proceed if I had been by myself for all of it.

Freaking gravel after a blind turn >:(

As for the rest of my footage, there's some nice downhills and things that I managed to film in VA, some of which may find their way to my youtube channel (jameverywhere). Mostly I think I will give the best clips to Dan so that when he makes his video of the entire trip, once they return from Oregon, he can use my clips in the beginning part.

It's a shame I won't be finishing this trip with them but I have a lot on my plate right now, physically and emotionally and professionally, and I just can't bring myself to get back on the road at this time.

I will, however, continue to cycle and continue to go on cycle tours every few years--but maybe not 3-month-long ones, maybe 2 to 5 weeks is a better time frame for it.

I will also attempt to keep blogging here. For those of you who came to this blog purely to follow the TransAmerica Cycle, I'm sorry that I will not be writing any more of it, as I will not be continuing the trip with my fellow Handlebarbarians. Perhaps I will explain why in detail in a later post. My blog will turn back to my life and my attempts to follow the Jam Everywhere philosophy described in Jam Everywhere episode 2 (which you can view here).

Thank you all for reading and supporting my blog during our cycling adventures. I hope some of you might stick around for what comes next.

pax.

Transamerica cycle 2013, day 19

When I get up in the morning, Jenn tells me that the nurse practitioner has actually come down here to see me, so I get up and stretch a little until I'm lucid and then go out to show her my wound. She decides that yes, it *is* infected, and takes me to her practice in her van to dress it and give me an antibiotic shot in the hip. They dress it with a clear dressing that should fall off when the wound is healed enough for band-aids alone. At least I don't have a fever. She also calls in a prescription to a pharmacy down the road for some oral antibiotics for me to take and I thank her profusely and offer to give her my insurance info but she says she'd rather not deal with the paperwork.

Back at the church I eat a banana and an apple and some scrambled eggs with garlic powder and pepper in them and a couple fruit punch drinks that are like Capri Sun but aren't. Me, Jenn, and Dan have a few arguments that involve shouting and almost-crying because of leftover stress from yesterday. I had been very paranoid, before this trip started, of feeling rushed and pushed too hard seeing as I'm a weaker cyclist than most of the others on top of having dietary and digestion issues with a compliment of pain and fatigue issues that crop up from time to time. All I wanted was to have a fun and challenging vacation but the past few days have been very difficult on me and I'm afraid, because if this pattern continues without respite, I'll be spending more of the trip miserable than not. Dan and Jenn think that I'm not acknowledging how accommodating and helpful and proactive they've been for me so far and take issues with the way I express and frame things. By the end of it, tho', I think we reach an agreement of a path to take--move a bit slower, take breaks more often, let me eat *before* sitting down in restaurants so I'm full and not pathetically envious of all the poison floating around me, etc. The others put in a few helpful comments as well and eventually everyone calms down so that we can move on.

Then it's, unfortunately, time to pack everything up and get moving again. Outside is a group of lifeteen people with vans and there's two girls who caught newts in a stream and named them Lizzy and Spot and let us hold them. They're here to use the building we're vacating. They're a church youthgroup thing, but I don't get to talk to them for long because I have to cycle down the street to the pharmacy to fill my prescription for antibiotics for my arm. I do so and it turns out someone else paid for them--I don't have to give them a cent and they don't ask for my insurance information or anything. We've hit a motherlode of kindness here in McKee, wow.

We do leave a thank-you note and a donation to St. Paul's before we go, at least!

After I've obtained my pills we start cycling again. When we've gone about 3 miles, we hit a bit of a traffic jam. Cars pile up behind us because the roads are bendy and there's a lot of oncoming traffic. Sometimes we pull over into driveways to let folks by. Other times, when we can see further ahead around a bend than the car behind, we wave them on to pass. There's a large truck at one point, like a small semi, and Dan who's in front waves him on because he has just enough time to pass us. He does so but there's an oncoming car and while he has time he still pulls in front of us again really abruptly and causes our whole line to slow down. I can't slow down fast enough because I wasn't prepared (I'm 2nd to last in the line) so I swerve, and hit Ben's left pannier, and start to spill onto the road. A red car which blindly followed the semi passing us (even tho' there wasn't time for 2 cars, only for the semi, to pass) is next to me when this happens. This red car didn't leave us enough space while passing, so as my left elbow hits the asphalt the car's rear tire smacks that elbow and the body of the car clips my shoulder. The car swerves to a halt as soon as the driver hears the THUMP of my body against it.

I get up off the road quickly, afraid of being hit by the next car coming, and shout something like, I CAN'T DO THIS TRIP ANYMORE as the stress of the argumentative  morning, misery of yesterday, and severe trauma and fear from what just happened fuse together in my brain. It is soon followed by, I JUST GOT HIT BY A FUCKING CAR. Someone helps me get my bike off the road into the grass and moves me as well. I'm standing and walking okay, my left knee is bloody again but that's nothing major--it's my left arm and elbow that's super swollen and in pain and I shout things like IT'S THE SAME ARM and I THINK IT'S BROKEN. It is some kind of cruel twist of fate for the same arm which got dressed up this morning due to infection to be almost run over in the road not 3 miles later.

Jenn puts down a yellow raincover on the ground and has me sit down as I sob and shout things and try to process all the fear and adrenaline running thru my body, holding my arm to keep it immobile. I remember Anna Faye telling me to breathe and after I stop shouting she keeps telling me that I'm doing really well and that I've calmed down quickly and that I'm handling everything really well. Travis and Jenn get out one of those tinfoil emergency blanket things and drape me in it and Jenn sits next to me and she's crying too and I say I'm so sorry I yelled at them this morning and she says they're sorry too. Dan and Ben deal with the other driver I think, who is a bit hysterical also because she thought she killed me at some point and someone calls the police and an ambulance and the cops come and get info from me and then the paramedics come and look at my arm and splint it and they apologize but they have to put me on one of those immobilizing board things with the head blocks and the big collar just in case of spinal injuries. And they do that and load me into the ambulance in a stretcher and Jenn rides up front, leaving the others to find a way to get themselves and our bikes 20 miles to the hospital in Berea, which is where they're gonna take me.

The lady in the ambulance gets all my info and my vitals and makes smalltalk with me while we ride. It's not super uncomfortable on the board except for a pain in the back of my head because of the pressure of the strap on my forehead. At some point I reallyreally have to pee but I can't so I hold it but all I can think about is how bad I have to pee. In the cab Jenn and the driver are talking about the Boone Tavern in Berea and how it is supposedly haunted.

We reach the hospital and all I see for the longest time is the ceiling. Eventually some nurses find me and I tell them I have to pee but they have to do an exam of my spine first before they can take me off the board. It takes a while but they finally clear my neck and spine and let me up to go pee. I hold my arm awkwardly out in front of me and take care of business and I feel a lot better when I get back. At some point they come and give me a tetanus shot since I can't remember when it was I last got one (but it was probably time to get another one anyway...).

Jenn talks to me and keeps me company while I'm in there waiting for x-rays. The x-ray tech is a nice guy, retired navy, makes me smile with some dad-jokes. He takes off the original splint and takes pictures and sends me back into the ER. Another wait and the results are in: no fracture! Just a really bad contusion. There is a chance that a hairline fracture can show up in a few days when the swelling starts going down tho' so they give me a CD with the x-rays on them and say if it doesn't improve by Monday, go get them re-x-rayed. they wrap my arm in a splint and a sling and put me in the hallway to wait. We wait in the hall a while for outprocessing and once I've given all my info for the 100th time and given my insurance information they let us go out.

And who should we see in the entrance but the rest of the Handlebarbarians! Turns out that Rebecca, our guardian angel from yesterday, just *happened* to be riding by the fire station where they were with all our bikes trying to see if they could hitch a ride with a pickup or something. She stopped to see how they were doing because she recognized them and when she heard what happened she summoned two volunteers and two vans to ferry everyone to the hospital. When I get outside she's brought me two slices of gluten-free bread (I confirm it's Udi's before partaking) and for the others, chocolate covered coffee beans. Dan gives me the pre-cooked bacon that was supposed to be tomorrow's breakfast and I have a bacon sandwich and some juice and feel better from that.

Rebecca then calls around to the catholic church of the area, St. Clare's I believe, for permission for us to set up camp in their backyard and she calls the neighbors to tell them what's happening and she doesn't leave us until she knows that we'll be safe and sound for the next two nights as needed. We take photos to remember her by (and to post on facebook) and bid her a warm and grateful farewell. The volunteers drive me and Bike Rothar over there while the others cycle. Cursory examination says BK is all right--she'll just need some new handlebar tape and some adjustment to the hoods/brake levers.

everyone pitches their tents, but I don't because I know that I'll need to sleep indoors tonight. there's a Knights Inn just across the street so I decide that I will sleep there. first thing we do is all walk half mile to Walmart where we get some more food and I fill my prescription for pain pills that I was given in the hospital. the people in the pharmacy are really great and they offer me a lot of condolences and heal soons. I buy an orange carrot juice because I'm really thirsty but I can't really think of anything else and I'm not terribly hungry so that's all that I get besides the medication. when we're all done with Walmart we walk back the other way past the church to go to a Italian restaurant that was recommended to us by Rebecca and the volunteers earlier. obviously I can't eat anything here but I'm not hungry so I just get a Dr Pepper and refill it a couple times. everyone else eats pizzas and bread slathered in garlic butter. I spend some time trying to find out where my uncles in Missouri live and if it is a good idea to try to go ahead to Missouri and wait there until the others pass through. they'll be there about 10 to 14 days from now and if my elbow is not fractured then I should be healed in time to join them. but my uncles in Missouri live kinda far out in the country, and it's looking like it'll be difficult to reach them, especially since Berea Kentucky has no train station no bus stop that we know of and no airport. I do call my uncle Danny and ascertain that he would love to have me over so it's just a matter of trying to get there. it is too late at night however to make any solid plans about Missouri. Ben calls an old family friend who is currently in Lexington, Kentucky, to see if she can give me a ride up to Lexington because I will be more likely to find rental cars, trains, buses, and planes up there than in Berea. She immediately agrees and says she will come first thing tomorrow morning. Our first instinct is to get me a rental car but we're not sure yet if that is feasible.

when everyone is done eating and drinking, we all walk back to the Catholic Church. it is now dark, as the Sun has set. Jenn and Dan help me walk my bike with all my stuff on it to the Knights Inn. I check in for one night and I'm given a whole room with two beds to myself for only about $50. Jen helps me change into sleeping clothes and rewrap my arm after I'd had taken the bandages off to stretch it a little and make sure the joint is still flexible. dan commiserate with me for a little while because one time he broke his collarbone in a accident with a car while he was cycling and he understands what it's like to have difficulty using one side of one's body. they make sure that I can get into an out of bed on my own and a few other things without help, and then they head back to the campsite for the night, saying that they will come back in the morning to help me get dressed and ready to go.

I then spend some time texting my friend nan and reading things on the internet and waiting for the pain pill to make me fall asleep. it takes a bit longer than usual because I was just drinking Dr peppers with caffeine, but when I fall asleep I fall asleep pretty hard. I definitely could not have slept in a tent with my arm this way.

I'm glad that my injury is not worse and if anyone had to be injured I'm glad it was me and not someone else. however, I am very disappointed that I won't be able to continue the trip with the others come tomorrow. hopefully, I will be able to join them again at some point. I don't care if I skip States, I just want to make it to the Pacific Ocean.

Pax.

--
today's numbers
distance cycled: 3 mi
riding time: 15 min
avg speed: panic
max speed: ambulance
odometer: ~920 mi
--

[ since today was so traumatizing & terrible how about a picture of my puppies? the brown one is 10 pounds and the black one with brown accents is 5 pounds and they're both Miniature Pinschers. here they are cuddling up together and sleeping.]

TransAmerica Cycle 2013, day 18

For breakfast I finish off my rice chex from before and most of the almondmilk, while everyone else goes back to the continental one. We actually manage to pack up our stuff and get out of this room in a semi-organized fashion, which surprises me. We leave a few dollars for the cleaning staff and are on our way.

The first part of our day is back along hwy 15 with 3 choices: ride in debris-filled shoulder, the rumble strip, or in the lane w/ scary traffic. At least this only lasts a few miles before we turn off onto another, smaller road. For the beginning of the day we ride in a pace line thru a not-insignificant headwind but Ben and Anna Faye in front of me are kinda yo-yo-ing in and out behind Travis and at some point I'm kinda volleyed out of the pace line and Jenn who was behind me gets into it and I'm stuck in the wind on an uphill and lose everyone. I lose them for a long time so I just ride at my own pace and we reach a place with a climb and a rocky cliff rising up on one side and it's overcast and I find a little black snake in the road so I stop to push it into the grass with a stick (so it won't become roadkill) after I take a picture and it bites my shoe. But it's so little that its fearsome figure 8s and strikes at my shoe are just cute and pathetic rather than scary. I don't know if it's even old enough to have fangs yet.

Then, as I'm photographing the snake, Dan cycles up behind me? I was like, I thought you were ahead of me! but everyone had stopped at a gas station or something and I was just trucking along and didn't even notice. I'm glad that I'm not as far behind as I thought I was but soon enough since it is a climb everyone passes me again. Travis finds another little snake, with a kinda giraffe pattern, and picks it up by the tail before tossing it into the grass. This one is super lethargic and doesn't even protest at all.

We decided a day or two ago that one of the reasons I'm slowest uphill might be because I have the smallest wheels out of everyone--26" while everyone else has 700cc or similar. It means that not only do I have lower gearing mechanically than everyone except for Travis and Anna (i.e. lowest number of teeth on granny gear), but my small wheel size makes my lowest gear even lower as each pedal stroke brings me less distance with less effort than the others. Add that to my natural weaknesses compared to everyone in fitness levels and also muscle/energy issues related to celiac and you have one fairly slow cyclist.

So naturally the others are way far ahead of me and there's this very ominous thunder and lightning way off to the left kinda making me nervous like I'm going to get left behind in the pouring rain. I feel a little abandoned and I have to stop and take a sit-down rest at some point before I even see the others again. A passing driver pulls over to make sure I'm okay, sitting there alone, but I say I'm fine, just taking a rest, and she continues on. By mile 45 or so I'm holding back tears. I find Anna Faye, Ben, and Travis at a gas station in I think Boonesville and I get a real-sugar sprite at a gas station. They lost Jenn and Dan but we find them at the next gas station over. Locals tell us there's a church that hosts cyclists around here and are we staying? But our goal for today is McKee. It's raining pretty hard by now... I vote to just stay here but the others outvote me so we just take a rest here, buying more food, eating snacks, and it's discovered Ben has a flat so we take some time to fix that, too. I start crying at some point so we also have to stop and talk about how I haven't been having a very good past few days and how all I want is a leisurely vacation but I feel pressed hard with these 70-mile days and I feel abandoned when I spend so much of the day out of sight of anybody and so we try to work out solutions to my issues and then 'cause I've been outvoted we press on toward McKee.

Since I cried Ben stays behind with me for most of the rest of the day which is really nice of him and helps cheer me a little, but my muscles are still overtaxed despite the rest day and I'm just trying to survive the next 25 miles. At some point I help a turtle cross the road and at another we stop at a church to ask for water (it's Wednesday night so a lot of protestant churches are having services)--the basement door's open but no one's there 'cause they're all singing upstairs so we just get some water from the kitchen sink and hope they don't mind. Dan gets annoyed with me because I won't climb back down this grassy hill to get the water bladder for cooking tonight but my legs don't work and I've gone over 65 miles which is all I thought we'd do today so I'm annoyed too. Travis ends up filling the bladder.

We finally roll into McKee and what we had planned on is camping in some national forest around here but we roll and roll thru town and can't find a spot of it. We do see  a sign at some point for a recreation area and turn to go there but after like 2 miles we're still passing houses so we ask a guy in his driveway where is it and he says it's like another 8 miles so we say screw that and go back into the main town. We decide to knock on the door of St. Paul's Catholic church and maybe they'll let us camp in their yard? A woman named Rebecca opens the door and we ask can we stay here and she doesn't even blink she just asks, are you hungry? The fact we can camp there is just a given. We pitch our tents under a pear tree and then go inside. She happens to have a lot of leftover food from some event they just hosted so she loads the others up with it and I go to take a shower first (they have showers too!) but before I do I sit on the toilet and just cry and cry to let out all the stress of the day.

When I unwrap my arm it looks really infected and swollen and gross and I think I need to see a doctor. Jenn comes to check on me and sees it and concurs and says we'll find a doctor in the morning. I take my shower and when I come out Jenn forces me to eat so I eat bananas and spam and Rebecca offers me almondmilk and juice boxes too. Turns out she has a nurse practitioner friend I can go see in the morning, but in the meantime she opens up this giant first aid kit and lets me raid it and re-dress my wound for the time being and take some bandages for later also.

I already pitched my tent but there are couches in here and she offers that we can sleep indoors 'cause it might rain tonight. The others refuse and say camping is fine but me and Travis decide to take her up on it. She even brings me a pillow and blanket; added to my sleeping bag liner, I don't even need my sleeping bag I'm warm enough. The couch is super soft and comfortable and I'm so happy not to have to camp in a wet stinky tent after such a difficult day. Sometimes I feel like I'm in boot camp rather than on vacation. But we'll work it out. We'll make it work. We're a team even when it really doesn't feel like it.

pax.

--
today's numbers
distance: 71 miles
riding time: 7 hrs 25 min
my avg speed: 9.5 mph
my max speed: 39.2 mph
odometer: 917.6
--

no picture today, sorry.

TransAmerica Cycle 2013, day 17

Today we sleep in as long as we can without missing the free continental breakfast but when the others get up I keep sleeping because I can't have any of it anyway. (They try to bring me back some fruit cups but without a label to read I don't feel comfortable eating them.) When I finally do get up I walk to the grocery store with the others and at Big!Lots I actually find almondmilk so I can pig out on cinnamon chex and just eat bowl after bowl of it. I also get chickpea chips, BBQ potato chips, canned ham, blood orange soda, and a regular 24 oz coca-cola for the caffeine. As soon as we get back to the room we all take an extended nap, 3 to a bed, except Ben who reads and drinks beer in a chair. Then we get up and all talk about the crazy dreams we had (Anna Faye's was a nightmare) and everyone goes out to get fast food for lunch while I eat chickpea chips and blog and read blogs on my phone while lounging in bed.

That's all we do, all day: nap, eat, and play on our phones. We also get one load of laundry done but it doesn't dry all the way before the laundry room closes so we have to hang our clothes all over everything and this room is an absolute mess with stuff by now... it'll be a confused and disorganized morning trying to clean up but, whatever, we deserve this laziness today.

Jenn and Dan go out to dinner while the rest of us stay on our phones. Travis sets himself up on the floor and goes to sleep first. I eat some fish for the protein and decide to hit the hay, too. We have five more days of riding ahead before we can do this again and I want to be good and rested for it.

pax.

--
today's numbers
distance: 0 mi
riding time: 0 hrs 0 min
avg speed: slug
max speed: snail
--

[pictured below is all of us sans Ben scrunched into the beds and napping]

TransAmerica Cycle 2013, day 16

The swelling in my arm has gone down by now, which is good. It was probably caused by a too-tight bandage and high exercising blood pressure; nothing major. I leave the same dressing on it and go into the dry bathrooms to change clothes. It's raining and it sucks to have to pack up our wet tents but the pavilion is dry so we don't have to stand around in the rain while getting ready and eating breakfast (bacon and boiled eggs again) so that's good, too.

It's a busy road for the first few miles of the day, but all downhill in the shoulder. At some point we pass a huge roadkill with bubbling skin melting in the rain and tho' we only see it for all of 5 seconds it's really traumatizing, like we all kinda shout what WAS that?! after we pass it. Three votes go toward big dog, and three toward mountain lion, but later people decide it might have been a bear. I still vote big dog, knowing how all dogs in Kentucky seem to run free for some reason.

There's a lot of debris in the shoulder and Dan gets a flat due to broken glass and then immediately another flat due to a staple. He, Jenn, and Ben don't have a pump but the rest of us already made it to the bottom of the hill and were waiting at the turn so we have to send Travis back uphill with a pump for them (but at least he can take the stuff off his bike to do it). While they're taking care of that Anna Faye and I go on to get a head start since we're the slower cyclists of the group but we don't make it far before we decide to pull over and buy lunch already (because really, whether or not we'll be remotely close to civilization and food at lunchtime is a gamble) and the others catch up. But then they go inside to shop when I'm done so I go get a head start up the next climb.

...except it's not much of one 'cause they catch up to me about halfway up. Then Jenn has a slow puncture which means her tire gets flat in like 15 min after being pumped and her and Dan don't have any more spare tubes between them so they have to borrow one from Ben to fix it. Jenn and Dan then decide to buy better tires at the first opportunity they get; 3 flats in a day is a lot.

After 20 miles we stop at a pizza place for lunch and while the others devour insane amounts of pizza I eat rice chex and maple almond butter and drink so much Dr. Pepper I can hardly hold it in. The lady who serves us is really sweet and helpful and fills up our water bottles for us before we leave. For the rest of the day we take no more food breaks so all I have on the road is almonds and skittles. It is a hard day today. We still have 50 miles left to go.

There are rumble strips on the edges of all the roads in Kentucky. Getting caught in one on a bicycle can break your teeth; dayum. Shaken Cyclist Syndrome.

We go into a nice valley past a rehab center and what looks like old folks homes and also a college, and then up thru Pippa Passes which isn't so bad of climbing but I'm still far behind. The sun comes out for a while and it gets hot but it's not so bad. The others wait for me at the top and then we go down for a long ways on a kinda busy road to where traffic will stack up behind us like 6 cars deep on the bends before we have a chance to pull over and let them pass. We stop for a short soda break in Hindman. I go into a little cafe looking for something and I see a Kentucky soda called Ale 8 and I ask them what it's like and they give me a can for free to try. It's pretty good, tastes like a cross between ginger ale and sprite I guess.

From there we keep a really great pace line for a long time, singing songs from the Labyrinth at the top of our lungs. Thru rolling terrain and flat areas I keep up pretty well and even stay in front some of the time. We reach Dwarf, KY at a nice clip and stop to take photos of me under the sign because I'm Gimli. Then it's onward to Hazard. We have to take a detour because an entire bridge from the route is missing--just, not there anymore. But the detour is actually a more direct route and it's still a pretty quiet road so it's not so bad at all. Except for a big hill on it, which contains a pack of like 7 dogs that chase us all in turn and at some point a stocky bulldog mutt that chases Anna Faye really viciously and scares her quite a bit, as she is climbing in her lowest gear and has a hard time getting away. Dan brings the bear spray down to where I am below her in case it comes back but when I finally reach the top it is gone.

When we reach Hazard there's 2 motels to choose from--one closer but next to nothing and another farther off close to food and liquor. We choose the latter (a super 8) and push on an extra 3.something miles to get there on highway 15 in the shoulder in busy traffic and actually uphill to where I walked my bike up some of it because I was starving and super tired from such a long day in the saddle. When we reached the super 8 FINALLY AFTER SEVENTY MILES OMG the first thing I do is go to a liquor store with Ben and while he buys beer for everyone else I buy a bottle of sweet citrus strawberry wine and drink half the bottle in the 5 minutes it takes to walk back to the motel. I then decide to go down to a grocery store Dan says is <0.5 mi away because everyone else is going to fast food places and so there won't be communal dinner tonight. But it's closed when I get there--everything in that strip is closed. I have to walk back up to a gas station, still exhausted, still hungry, to buy jerky and sardines and starburst and canned fruit cocktail which are like the *only* things in the store safe for my consumption. And I don't really want them but I don't have a choice so I buy them anyway.

When I get outside of the gas station I sit in the grass by a drainage pipe and just cry and cry, not gonna lie. Doing so much physical exertion in a day just lays your emotions bare, let me tell ya. If you're happy, you're giddy; if you're irritated, you're irate; if you're tired, you're exhausted; if you're sad, you're depressed. When I get back to the motel room and it's locked because everyone else is eating easy food I can't have, I start struggling with some internal demons that have been laying dormant within me for years--so I call my best friend Nan and thankfully he picks up and I can talk to him for a few hours to calm down to a point where I can start eating and stop feeling quite so terrible. When the others come back and let me in I keep talking to Nan but I retrieve my other half bottle of wine and drink the rest of it while I do so. When we finally say goodbye I come in and take the last shower, rinsing days' worth of dirt off of me--coloring the tub gray--and cleaning out my wounds again. The one on my arm is still full of pus and oozing but it's clean so I re-dress it with Vaseline and leave the other scrapes to scab up like my knee finally did.

Tomorrow is a sorely needed rest day. Gonna sleep in, yeah, yeah.

pax.

--
today's numbers
distance: 71 miles
riding time: 6 hrs 52 min
avg speed: 10.3 mph
max speed: 37.2 mph
odo: 846.6 mi
--

[pictured below is a sign we found in Dwarf, KY. It's on planks of wood, clearly handmade, and reads, "WELCOME TO DWARF, KY / CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE"]

TransAmerica Cycle 2013, day 15

Due to our late night last night we don't even start getting out of bed until like 9 a.m., which is fine by me. I replace the dressings on my hips with 3 band-aids each and decide to leave my knee open to scab up. Breakfast is boiled eggs only so I also have a can of sardines in tomato sauce and a real-sugar coke which I had bought at the dollar store before the tractor pull. The small amount of caffeine helps me get ready but I'm still really slow. The gentleman who had driven us to the tractor pull shows up to bid us farewell at some point and we thank him again for the indoor stay. Rolling start is after 10 sometime.

The first couple miles of the day is uphill and I'm really tired and fading so I fall behind immediately. There are times even that I have to walk my bike up steep bits, which I never did yesterday. Also, it's raining on us--nothing fierce, just a steady and relentless condensation--and that makes my pedals slippery, especially when I'm changing gears. So I have to stop and take a while to finally adjust the cleats in my shoes so that I can clip into my pedals and keep traction. When I finally reach Breaks Interstate Park the others are waiting for me, talking to some other touring cyclists who just finished a tour thru the Ozarks to here. They take a group picture of us at an overlook of the park, which has a fabulous view. A semi-circle of green mountains, suspended in mist and cloud, surrounds us, cut thru by a rambling river. We take our fill of pictures and then press on to the Kentucky state border, which is only a few miles down the road from here. We stop at the sign and take more pictures, saying goodbye to Virginia (whom we will dearly miss!) and hello to a brand new state.

When we reach Elkhorn City, KY, we stop at a little place called the Rusty Fork Café to celebrate. When I sit down and take off my cycling gloves I realize that my left forearm and hand are really swollen... I go into the bathroom to take off the bandage and give my wound time to rest. The others check out the menu and while I do order and drink a sprite I can't bear to hear them order or watch them eat delicious poisonous food in my exhausted and hungry state so I go outside to eat some potato chips and beef jerky under the awning of a bank across the street. Tho' it's still raining, it's actually warmer outside than inside with the air conditioning so I just stay out here until the others are done and I pay them in cash for my soda later.

(I finally figure out that the cause of my severe nausea for the past few days was probably all the ibuprofen I've been taking for muscle aches, so I go buy some generic tylenol to try instead. As long as I take less than the daily max amount and don't take it every day my liver should be fine and it's a lot better than throwing up all the time.)

Travis helps me re-dress my arm wound right before we get moving and the rain lets up for a little while. We have two climbs on very small local roads where dogs are generally left unchained and unfenced and they come and chase us way too often. Travis is in the lead and gets asked some creepy, suspicious questions by some hillbillies with thick accents so he turns around to meet the rest of us again and not travel by himself in the front anymore. The downhill is nice and then there's another spike of winding uphill, this time with a sheer drop cliff to the right for a lot of it. At some point I move too slowly to go up a steep bit of hill and I can't unclip fast enough to save myself so I fall over in slow motion onto the knee I already banged up yesterday. My knee hasn't scabbed yet due to the rain so it's oozing yellow and falling on it opens up another bleeding wound beneath the first. I walk BK up the rest of the hill because I don't want to fall on my knee again or off the cliff. I'm fading really fast and feel awful and grumbly and then it starts raining really hard and as we descend on a narrow bendy road the sky lets loose and drenches us and actually I start laughing at this point because it's just funny I guess and we all howl and shout with absurd glee until we reach the bottom of the hill.

At the bottom is an ice cream stand and the others are like, it's raining buckets on us, why not get ice cream? So they get various flavors of soft serve and milkshakes and I eat dark chocolate peanut butter and marshmallow fluff by the spoonful out of my handlebar bag. We don't even know what town we're in and we've only gone 35 miles but because of the weather and late start we're kinda ready to stop for the day. We do some iPhone and google searches for nearby things but a gentleman whom I'll call J.G. comes to get some cheeseburgers and fries at the stand and we ask him if he's local and he is and does he know of a place anywhere nearby that we could camp for the night? He says there's a community park about 2 miles up the road but why doesn't he go drive up there and make sure it's okay for us to camp there before sending us down on our bikes in the rain, and while they cook his cheeseburgers that's what he does. When he comes back he says we have permission from the guy who lives on and takes care of the park so we thank J.G. profusely and cycle uphill for another couple miles (which is really hard since we're so close but I'm moving so slow) and then we're there.

It's small, two pavilions and a playground and a bathroom and a community center. We put all our bikes under the roof of the bigger pavilion and during a break in the rain we put up our tents in the horseshoe pitch behind it. It's nice to have our bikes under shelter overnight and we lay some things out to dry on the picnic tables too (even tho' we know in this humidity they'll still be wet in the morning anyway). The boys use a firestarter our dad gave us to make a fire with damp wood on the barbeque grill and it works splendidly and they use it to cook sausages while we use Travis's camp stove for the rice, beans, and greens. Immediately after dinner I retire into my tent to sleep, because my everything hurts and since today was a short day tomorrow is going to be extra long to make up for it.

At least there'll be proper toilets in the morning.

pax.

--
today's numbers
distance: 35 miles
riding time: 4 hrs 17 min
avg speed (for me only, of course): 8.1 mph
max speed: 36.3 mph
odo: 775.7 mi
--

[pictured below is Ben, barefoot and still in his cycling clothes, retrieving a piece of firewood longer than he is tall]

TransAmerica Cycle 2013, day 14

I am NOT a morning person, you guys. I understand how important it is to get up early so that we can make our mileage goals without riding or setting up camp in the dark, but still. Mornings are the worst part of the trip for me. I'm the last up and the last packed again but it's not that bad because I don't have to pack my tent. Breakfast is once again boiled eggs and pre-cooked bacon, which I supplement with a pack of skittles and a juicebox-sized almondmilk.

Anna Faye injured herself yesterday at some point to where she can't sit on her saddle due to bad bruises, so what we do is call the elder that let us into this church (we find his number in the phone book) to ask if someone could possibly give her a ride to our next destination? That way she'll have an extra rest day and time to heal up and hopefully be ready to go tomorrow. He sends us two members of his congregation with a pickup truck and they arrive between 9:30 and 10 a.m. to pick her up. They're really sweet people and they load Anna Faye in their cab and Christopher Robin in the bed and then they're off to Haysi (pronounced hay-sigh), VA. We've got all day to catch up to them, but it's over 50 miles so it's time to get going now.

There's some downhill and rolling hills until we cross a river and pass thru Hayter's Gap, then it's a long curving uphill that seems like it'll never end. I slog up it at 3 mph with frequent breaks and of course am farthest behind. At least we are passing thru shady forest and the road is quiet. Pretty, even. When I reach the top, the others are waiting for me and Dan lifts his arms up and shouts, you made it!! We're over 3000 ft high, I know that much.

We stop for elevensies at this point and then it's time for a steep, bendy downhill. I turn on my helmet camera and go for it, passing Jenn right away. There is apparently a sign that says "loose gravel" at some point but I miss it and when I have to get over to the right for a string of cars going up the other way I hit the gravel at 25 mph and lose control of BK and go sliding on my left knee, elbow, and hip, shouting obscenities all the while. Jenn stops to help me gather my wits and inspect my injures: road rash on one knee, half of my forearm, and both hips for some reason. Small holes in the hips of my shorts and dirt everywhere but otherwise no more damage. I ride the brakes the rest of the way down the hill and we have to pedal 6 more miles thru rolling terrain before we catch up to the others and I can get some first aid. (While I do carry a personal first aid kit, my injuries covered more surface area than I carry gauze for, unfortunately--I'll stock up when next I can.) I strip down to bra and shorts by a busy road so that we can reach my hips and tape everything up. While we're taking care of me, the sweet couple that gave Anna Faye a ride comes back our way and pulls over to chat and tell us that she's fine and has even found us a police- and mayor-approved indoor place to stay, too. We just have to reach it is all.

So, yeah. Our first wipeout. I think I caught it on camera, too...

We reach Rosedale shortly and stop in a valero gas station for lunch. I eat turkey spam straight from the tin, mesquite BBQ potato chips, and two lemonatas while the others eat hot dogs and drink fountain sodas. Ben tells us that it wasn't 'till this trip that he realized what "hillbillies" means--now that we're rolling thru all these hills where people live tucked up in the nooks and crannies, sheltered from civilization at large. It's a lot more literal than he realized before.

There's one more climb after Rosedale, this one on a busier road and with hardly any shade. Big A Mountain. It's not as tall or as steep as the last one and has flat bits for respite but I think this one is worse because of the baking sun and lack of shade or breezes. I'm dripping with sweat and run out of water by the time we reach the top. But we reach it, and I don't crash coming down the other side, either. From there we ride at a good clip to Haysi, me falling behind on a few small rises but staying above 11 mph pretty much the whole way.

We find Anna Faye waiting for us on main street and she tells us about what a good day she had. There was a festival and a mile-long yard sale and ponies and kittens and peeping little chicks. She talked to the sheriff and was put up in a newly renovated theater--it's empty and echoey but it has a roof and bathrooms so we're happy. They want to encourage cyclists to stop in Haysi so they're going to put a hostel for cyclists on the upper floor, but it's still under construction. We're the first cyclists to stay there and they take our picture to put in the local paper and everything.

After this we're invited to the local truck and tractor pull and the gentleman who set us up in the theater gives us a driving tour of Haysi (Dan, Travis, and I sit in the bed of the pickup) and then drives us up to the tractor pull and gets us in for free. The others get food at a booth there but I can't eat anything so I just get a Dr. Pepper. Then the tractor pull starts and it's actually a lot of fun to watch when they get that weight moving really fast--I like watching the modified diesel trucks go at it. There's a super souped-up truck called Nuthin Fancy that pulls with its huge back wheels with its front wheels off the ground and fire shooting out of its engine. That one is our favorite. It's hard to explain what a tractor pull is so you might wanna google it if you're not familiar--Jenn had to do that on her phone as it was going on so she could explain it all to us. This is definitely redneck country, yeehaw.

The tractor pull lasted well past midnight but we are beat so we hitchhike back down into town rather than wait for a ride back from another guy who was staying till it ended. An older gentleman with a pickup lets us all climb in the back and I climb into the cab and talk with him about the weather and the tornadoes in Oklahoma and then we're back in the theater and setting up our bedding. It's a late night, which means a late start tomorrow, and I haven't managed to eat anything tonight and now I'm too tired to so I have a feeling tomorrow will be harder than today. But, onward into Kentucky it is.

...OMG WHO IS THAT SNORING THAT IS REALLY LOUD YO

--
today's numbers
distance: 55 miles
riding time: 5 hrs 26 min
avg speed: 10.1 mph
max speed: 43 mph
odo: 740 mi
--

[pictured below is me, in pink sports bra and cycle shorts, all bloodied up with the wounds described above]

TransAmerica Cycle 2013, day 13

In the morning our tents are soaking wet with dew, and inside with condensation; when we pack them up the footprint/tarp things are again crawling with slugs. For breakfast there is boiled eggs and pre-cooked bacon. I'm the last one packed up but Dan has to change a tube due to a slow puncture so I'm not the last one ready to roll, which we do at something like 9 a.m. We stop after only 6 miles at the first gas station we find for an ice cream and soda break, which takes way longer than it should but hey whatever today's gonna be a shorter day than yesterday at least.

The first part of our day is mostly uphill, but it's thru a national forest with plenty of shade and the gradient is very gentle. Yellow butterflies flutter like early autumn leaves amidst the green of spring. (Their carcasses also, sadly, litter the road. At some point Anna Faye and Ben witness one get creamed by a passing truck.) I'm the slowest up the hill but the alone time in the lush forest is quite nice. At some point we pass the hill-walking cyclists again, as they stayed in Wytheville last night and passed us early in the morning. They're only going as far as some campground in this forest today so it's doubtful we'll run across them again--but, hey, you never know.

It's a long and wonderful downhill after that climb and for lunch we pull over by a stream and eat on its banks, sometimes dipping our feet in the swift, cold water. It's another climb after that thru similar roads and another luxurious downhill. At some point we're passed by a group of motorcyclists but we catch up to them at the bottom of the hill where they'd stopped at an old, abandoned gas station for a snack break. They offer us ice-cold sodas (I take a sprite), cookies, and candy, and we stay with them and chat for a while. Their kindness makes our day. Turns out they're from Kentucky and some of them actually live right along the route we'll be taking. They give us phone numbers and say to call when we're a few towns over, and they'll come out to meet us with more food or something. It's people like these that make this trip worth it. Should be seeing some of them again in about two weeks!

There's a nice coasting downhill thru a small town and then a winding, curving uphill thru another forest. The gradient is gentle enough that I can take it at 7-10 mph. Dan shoots up ahead of me on the climb but I stay ahead of the others all the way until the wicked-awesome downhill starts. It's bendy and all downstream; I go something like 30-35 mph, taking a few turns a bit too fast and having to be careful not to scrape my pedals on the ground while leaning over for them. I didn't manage to film much of it at all but I will say that was my favorite stretch of road so far, and it's gonna take a lot to top it.

When we reach Damascus the first thing Dan and Jenn do is get ice cream, and I get a 24 oz sprite and down it quickly. We sit outside in the shade for a long time, talking, me writing up day 12 to post. We take a nice, long, leisurely break, buying a few bits of gear (sleeping bag liners for Anna Faye and Ben, serving spoon and spatula for chef Travis, etc) and chatting with shop owners. We spend some time trying to find a place to camp tonight either in Meadowview or Hayter's Gap, but nothing pans out. We consider staying in Damascus but ultimately decide to press on to Meadowview and see what we can find.

The hills roll thru sun-stained, stereotypical farmland from Damascus to Meadowview. The first stretch is on a kinda busy road but once you turn off onto a little 1.5 lane county road it's really nice. We string out along the road quite a bit, Travis, Dan, and Jenn up ahead where I can't quite see them, Ben and Anna Faye behind where I can't see them, either. At some point we almost stop and knock on someone's door to ask if we can camp in their field but a bit of intuition tells us to press on to Meadowview proper. Sure enough, when we're cycling thru their little downtown a truck passes and a gentleman leans out the window and asks if we're tired and ready to set down for the night. We say yes, and he offers up Mount Carmel Christian Church to us, telling us how to get there before driving off to get a key and come back to open the door.

He's an elder of the church and says he usually offers their building to cyclists when he sees them and we thank him profusely as he opens it up to us. There's a covered pavilion outside to leave our bikes in and inside there's bathrooms and a kitchenette. We hang our tents out to dry while we eat supper at the pavilion--hot dogs, rice, peas, carrots, and black beans--and the boys have a philosophy discussion I'm too tired to really join in on. My stomach is still bothering me something awful and I actually throw up a little at some point, so I go in to lay down before my whole dinner comes back up. Can't afford to lose calories like that on a trip like this.

While inside I discover a tick on my ankle and yank him off. Scary stuff.

We put our dry tents away instead of setting them up and decide to sleep inside so that we don't have to pack up wet gear in the morning. We set up in one of their classrooms, rolling out our sleeping mats and bags. I go to type this blog and my word processor on my phone crashes and deletes everything, so I get really upset (that's the 3rd time it's done that) and give up blogging for the night. I've now downloaded a new note-taking app so hopefully that works better.

There's a pretty steep, tough-looking climb coming up tomorrow--wish me luck.

pax.

--
today's numbers
distance: 53 mi
riding time: 5 hrs 5 min
avg speed: 10.4 mph
max speed: 37.2 mph
odo: 684.4 mi
--

[picture below of mount carmel christian church, a one-storey brick building topped with a cross]

TransAmerica Cycle 2013, day 12

We get up pretty early in the morning with the goal to be rolling by 8 a.m. It's made a bit easier by not having to pack up tents and sleeping bags first. Breakfast for me is almond milk and fruit; the others eat leftovers from the potluck last night and things like that. Carla watches and helps us pack our bikes up, and Brian rolls up at 8:05 on the dot. After a few more pictures and farewells we head off.

Brian escorts us for our first 20 miles--probably the best part of the day. The hills are gentle and there's shade and running water. Brian usually stays up front with Dan but finds time to chat with each of us before peeling off back home. After we leave this last representative of Radford behind, we stop for second breakfast at the abandoned and kinda creepy-looking Pulaski Motel. All the doors are locked and chained and it seems like no one has been here in years; the sidewalks are crawling with little red bugs that Travis thinks are harmless spider mites. I make a dent in my new jar of chocolate peanut butter and put it on rice cakes. I'm starting to feel a little nauseated, but that won't become a big issue until later.

After 2nd breakfast we press on, and there's hardly any shade for a very long time. The predominant smells of the day are cow poo, skunk funk, and roadkill. Our path crosses over the highway several times because we follow county roads that parallel it to keep out of traffic, but quite a bit of traffic finds us anyway. There's long strings of gas stations and trucker stops all in a row here that's why. We pull into one at some point and I have a grape soda which is super refreshing on a boiling day like today.

At some point we come across two other touring cyclists, who are on their way to San Francisco, where they're from. They walk their bikes up any hill that I'd be using my granny gear on, and I find myself wondering, how are they going to make it over the Rockies and thru Nevada etc if they have to walk their bikes up Virginia hills? But their whole thing is "Cycle Slowly" (the name of their blog on crazy guy on a bike, iirc). They only do about 30 miles a day, they say--provided there's a place to stay; otherwise, they press on. (Such as doing the whole blue ridge parkway and then some, something like 80 miles, in one sitting!)

After I while a start to have serious muscle pain/weakness and I slow down way behind everyone in the breezeless heat. I'm worried about heat stroke a little bit, so I drink a lot of water and rest in the shade periodically. Still, tho', the nausea and muscle pain persists. It's related to my autoimmune disease, I think--it's not muscle soreness or muscle burning like working hard, it's something that happens to me from time to time and usually on those days I just stay in bed until it's over but I can't because I have to cycle. The hills today aren't quite as steep as what we've been doing but they're taller and last longer so I can't ride my momentum up them, and there's no breeze and no shade and the sun is boiling us so it's really hard. At some point I pull over by a duck and goose pond and just cry until I can pull myself together enough to follow and find the others again.

We finally stop for lunch in Wytheville, pulling into the shade of an abandoned shop front. All the stores we need--bike shop, camping goods store, gas station conbini--used to be here but are closed down now. I try to eat some clams for protein but they taste like fish poop and have the consistency of phlegm (ordinarily I like clams, but today my stomach won't have it) so I force down half the can, toss the rest and keep eating chocolate peanut butter on rice cakes. I take a really long time to eat because I'm dazed and in pain so while I eat Jenn, Dan, and Travis go to the post office to mail the key to Radford back home for safekeeping, along with some other things they'd been carrying but didn't actually need and didn't want to carry anymore.

Turns out we've just done 500 miles as a team, so we decide to go out for a couple drinks to celebrate. We only have about 20 miles left to go and it's only like 4 p.m. so we have time for a longer break. We find this log cabin restaurant place down the street and wait 10 minutes for it to open and go in and sit down. Everyone gets beers except Dan, who gets a Pepsi, and I get a hard cider. The decor of the place is really interesting and rustic and we have a nice time sitting there, me trying to gather some strength to continue without throwing up or giving up. I try to order another type of cider but when it comes it's just an apple-flavored beer, which is disappointing, but I don't want to deal with sending it back so I give it to Anna Faye and settle down with water.

I don't remember anything of the cycle beyond this except for latching on to Dan's back wheel as he acted the wind break for me, pulling me into Cedar Springs. I tuned everything else out but that wheel in order to actually make it to where we decided to camp that night. Except that where we thought the national, campable forest started wasn't and all we can see is POSTED: NO TRESPASSING signs. We go another 6 or 7 miles beyond where we wanted to stop and finally pass another abandoned, creepy, ivy-conquered house and decide to just camp in the flat area behind its barn because, well, who could possibly mind? The grass back there is tall and full of spiders which is hard for Jenn to take but we get our tents up and start on supper well before the light starts fading. We don't have water to cook with so Dan cycles down the street a bit to an inhabited house to beg a gallon of water off someone. Turns out it's an old lady living alone and Dan is pretty sure she's super scared of him but she does fill up our canteen in her kitchen while he waits outside on the porch. Hot links, canned spinach, kidney beans, and rice it is. We eat our fill and then all retire to sleep. There's no phone signal and I'm exhausted so I crash pretty hard, waking up later only as it gets colder so that I can wiggle into my sleeping bag.

Tomorrow hopefully my muscles will calm down and I can actually enjoy myself.

pax.

--
today's numbers
distance: 67 mi
riding time: 6 hrs 37 min
avg speed: 10.1 mph
max speed: 37 mph
total trip: 631.3 mi
--

Today's featured guest cyclist:

Brian riding Flagondry

TransAmerica Cycle 2013, day 11

Today I roll out of bed at the sun-ripened hour of 9:30 a.m., and end up being the first up and moving about downstairs. For breakfast I eat three bowls of apple-cinnamon chex with almond milk. The others filter into the living room while I sit typing out the blog for day 10, and Carla comes at some point and makes coffee and we all drink some and relax together. Dan cooks the biscuits and sausage gravy; Travis and Dan look ahead at the maps and try to plan our next week's worth of mileages and camping spots. We're a touch behind schedule but not too badly, and we think we can make it with an average mileage of 60 miles a day and once-a-week rest days if we make up some distance once we hit the flat plains in Kansas and eastern Colorado (pre-Rockies). We won't have any more climbs like the one onto the blue ridge parkway for a while. While we're discussing our plans, Carla comes in and gives us each a little present: for Anna Faye a rose, for Ben a smiley face, for me and Travis two clownfish, for Jenn and Dan a sunflower. They're little stuff sacks that unfold into shopping bags. They weigh nothing and take up very little space; they're perfect for a trip like this!

When we finally find the will to move about, we pull out our tents and set them up in the sunny backyard to dry and air out. Then we introduce Jutta to our bikes before loading up her dishwasher with all our camping dishes and gathering three piles of stinky laundry to be loaded into the washing machine and later hung out to dry.

We have the keys to a six-seater SUV courtesy of Jutta, who is using another vehicle today, so we go to Wal*Mart to buy a few clothing items (a 2nd sports bra for me, off-day sandals for Travis, etc) and food. I get some more dark chocolate peanut butter and marshmallow fluff, and rice cakes to eat it on, and the rest of us get food for our next two communal dinners and breakfasts because there won't be much civilization for the next few days as far as we can tell from the maps. We try to find a bike shop but the one google gives us is only open on the weekends and the one across the street with a bicycle hanging above its awning moved to Blacksburg and their old space is now apparently a church. (Inside they tell us we can have the bike if we can get it down from there, haha. They haven't taken it down yet 'cause it's so hard to reach.) We don't have any other errands to run so we head back to the house and finish up our laundry, re-pack our tents, snack, and nap.

Brian comes over for a spell later in the afternoon to ask when we're headed out in the morning and we chat a while. Then at 7:00 the mayor of Radford, Bruce Brown, and his wife Karen come over, along with a big group of people who arrive bit by bit, bringing food and fellowship with them. There's a bucket of fried chicken and chocolate-peanut-butter buckeyes and a whole host of delicious-looking things that I didn't really pay attention to since I can't eat them due to my allergies. (I ate supper before everyone arrived.) Turns out Mayor Brown came over to present the Handlebarbarians with the key to the city of Radford. We graciously accept, with a little bit of fanfare, awed by the gesture. It's pretty special to me, considering I was born here. We all agree to mail it to Grandmamma and Granddaddy for safe-keeping when we have the chance, considering that without them we would never have known Jutta and none of this would be possible.

Everyone who came over is friendly and kind and we mingle and chat and talk about our trip so far and our plans for the trip ahead and our backgrounds and, well, a little bit of everything. I wish I could remember everyone's name but I'm not so good at that. I'll remember their faces, tho'. Maybe someday I'll come thru Radford again and see them. I really am touched by everyone's well-wishes and encouragement and camaraderie--that's a big part of what trips like this are all about.

When everyone has trickled out the door back home we look at some footage we've taken of the trip so far on Dan's GoPro and my ContourROAM, then bid goodbye to Jutta, who won't be here when we're stirring in the morning and preparing to go. There's no words to express our gratitude for this rest day, for our Rivendell. Hopefully Jutta--and Carla, too--understand the depth of our thanks, even if we can't say it enough. We wish nothing but the best for both of them, and for the entire town of Radford, VA. It's sad to leave so soon, but we've got 90% of our trip yet ahead of us.

Tomorrow will start early and last long. But I'll be ready. One more sleep in a real bed will be enough to get me thru another week of camping.

pax.

--
today's numbers
distance: 0 mi
riding time: 0 hrs 0 min
avg speed: 0 mph
max speed: 0 mph
odometer: 564.3
--

[below is a picture of the key to the city of Radford. It's about twice the size of a regular skeleton key with an "R" as the key part and the city's corporate seal in the handle; motto is "sic semper tyrannis"]

TransAmerica Cycle 2013, day 10

We had set our alarms for 6 a.m. but of course don't get up till like 7:30. Breakfast is chili beans and mandarin oranges out of cans, which I supplement with some gluten-free blueberry muffins I had picked up at Kroger in Lexington. We make sure everything inside the church is clean and tidy as we use their bathrooms one last time and then get going again. It's mostly downhill thru the Catawba valley until we reach a gas station and go in to get lunch there. Mostly everything is poisonous to me in there but I find starburst (there were no skittles... sadface) and a bag of BBQ cornchips labeled "gluten-free" so I grab those things and also a tub of cotton candy which I eat right then and there all at once because I can. For protein I'll have some canned herring in tomato sauce that I've been carrying around for a few days now.

We keep on cycling thru gentler rolling hills for 20 miles, me and Dan in the front with Jenn sometimes with us, powering up the small hills rather than gearing down to climb them. As long as you still have momentum by pedalling down the last hill in a higher gear, it's easier to crest the top of the next that way as long as they're not too tall. Dan gets in front to cut the wind for me and Jenn for a while and it's really easy to just tootle along in his slipstream at like 18 mph. At some point we see a live snake on the road and take pictures and Jenn gets a short video of it crawling thru the grass. Dan and I want to pick it up, but we're not sure what species it is so we refrain. Now that I think about it, tho', I think it was just a harmless corn snake. We'll look it up later.

After those 20ish miles it's time for lunch so we settle down in the first bit of shade we find, in-between a wooden fence and the quiet road we'd been on. There's a farmer a field over mowing grass--I assume for making hay. When we get back on the road the hills start rolling a bit taller and it's harder to keep up with Dan on the uphills. At some point a deer jumps in front of me and I inadvertently chase it down the road a ways because it decides to run along my trajectory before panicking back into the woods on the left. Poor thing.

Later on, we decide if we were all members of the Fellowship of the Ring which person everyone would be. Ultimately we decide that I'm Gimli, Dan is Legolas, Travis is Aragorn, Anna Faye is Frodo, and Jenn and Ben are Merry and Pippin, respectively. We don't have a Sam or a Boromir but none of us has a personality like them, so.

Before the significant uphill into Christiansburg we stop for another soda break and I get a sprite in a glass bottle from a tub of ice and pop the cap with a bottle opener attached to the tub and it's the most refreshing thing. They give us tap water for our water bottles too but it's really sour and tastes even more like minerals than most Virginia water so it's hard to drink. We then go up the hills into Christiansburg, passing straight thru on Depot & College streets and not stopping at all. A school bus passes Jenn just to try and turn right immediately after which is annoying 'cause if it had waited another 30 seconds behind her it wouldn't have had to come to a complete stop mid-turn to avoid running her over. When we reach route 666 (yes, yes, I know; it's actually a lot of really well-manicured 'burbs tho') the traffic lightens up and we press on to Radford.

The sun burns us all a little but we make it to Radford at a reasonable clip (the hills are a bit taller so I can't keep up with Dan and Jenn anymore) and follow the map onto the bike path in wildwood park. It's a nice bike path, mostly downhill until a small tunnel, and then when it ends we turn around and have to climb an obnoxiously steep hill to get onto the bridge to cross the New River. When we cross the river it's time to deviate from our trail in order to find our Rivendell--also known as Jutta's house.

Jutta (the j makes a y sound) is a close friend to our grandparents--the ones me, Jenn, Travis, and Anna Faye share in common--since before I was born. Last time I saw her I was a senior in college and Mama and I had come out to Radford to see where I was born (oh yeah, p.s., I was born in Radford, VA) and to see Blacksburg where she grew up and to hike the Cascades. Jutta put us up in her house and we had a wonderful weekend. Jutta then found us all on facebook, and since we started this trip has been the Handlebarbarians' biggest fan. When she discovered that we were going thru the New River Valley she offered to put us up for a rest day. Turns out her house is only something like 3 miles off our course. We gratefully accepted and decided that her house was our Rivendell--a place to rest and obtain provisions and make plans, but still really near to the beginning of the journey with the hardest parts of it yet to come.

We put in Jutta's address and follow the iPhone directions from the river to get there. As we approach, everything looks more and more familiar... then, miraculously, we're there! We knock on the door and there she is, Jutta, in all her gracious, welcoming glory, telling us to put our bikes on the back patio and to come inside and have orange gatorade and showers and a nice sit-down rest in air conditioning and it's the best thing. We all get clean and sit and chat and relax, meeting Carla, Jutta's sister visiting from Germany (also a lovely and kind and wonderful person to be with) and neighbor-friend Brian who's a racing cyclist and brings us an air mattress so that we all have a soft place to sleep and we talk about racing and he says he'll join us for a while in the morning on Thursday when we get started again. Jutta brings me two giant packets of skittles because she's been reading my blog and knows how addicted to them I am and it's the sweetest gesture (pun intended) and then we go out to a gourmet pizza place in Dublin, VA so the others can pig out on pizza and sandwiches and fried mac-n-cheese and I can drink wine and talk nonstop because everyone else's mouth is full of food, haha.

After dinner Jutta and I go grocery shopping for tomorrow and she gets the groceries as a donation for our tour, including zebra cakes for Jenn in honor of her bicycle being named Zebra Cake. I get some apple-cinnamon rice chex and almond milk for breakfast tomorrow and for the others we get biscuits and the stuff to make sausage gravy with. I also get a bit of stuff for dinner tonight, and eat it when we return. Then, it's bedtime. Time to sleep in a real bed and get up whenever I feel like it and lounge around eating and talking and blogging and whatever else needs done.

*Insert long sigh of relaxed relief here.*

pax.

--
today's numbers
distance: 51 mi
riding time: 5 hrs 21 min
avg speed: 9.5 mph
max speed: 35 mph
odometer: 564.3 mi
--

[picture below is of me climbing a hill on bike rothar, in a bit of blessed shade from the trees overhanging the road]

TransAmerica Cycle 2013, day 9

[author's note: if days are posted late or multiple days posted at once, it's due to lack of cell phone reception when the blog posts are written... we're gonna be passing thru a lot of low- or no-coverage areas so I apologize in advance for posting delays]

This morning for breakfast we have eggs, sausage, and a mix of cubed potatoes, onions, and peppers. It is hearty and wonderful, especially compared to yesterday's lack of breakfast. We're ready in an hour and a half and bid adieu to the haunted house but it takes another hour to wash our dishes at the gas station down the road. While there we meet a group of folks from Maryland who were just coming back from seeing car races in North Carolina, if I remember right. They're really friendly and ask us all about our trip and we chat for a while before we get going. Rolling start is still pretty early tho' which is good.

The 20 miles into Buchanan is super easy and mellow. It follows both a railroad tracks (altho' it can't decide which side of them it wants to be on) and a creek thru 1.5 lane country roads and lovely scenery. At some point on our way a cyclist coming in the other direction warns us about an unchained pit bull about a mile down the road. Fearing a confrontation, we get our can of bear spray ready, and I carry it in my back pocket. When Travis spots the dog, we all make a sprint for it, but it doesn't even make chase. That's a huge relief to everyone. It's pretty scary to be chased by a dog while on a bike, even if it isn't vicious, because of how easily it can knock you off.

We stop in Buchanan at a dollar store to grab lunch and supper and breakfast because there won't be much civilization for a while after this.  We cycle another 10 or so mellow miles after that and stop in the tiny parking lot for the Bethel Church of the Bretheren by a creek to sit and eat lunch and relax by the water. From there the hills start getting steeper, pastureland on each side and a ridge of wooded mountains beyond on the left. We pass the Roanoke cement factory (NO TRESPASSING, MINING AREA) and just go until it's time to stop for a breather again and try to talk to the cows. They look confused but Jenn says that's just what their faces look like.

Eventually we pass by a church Catawba and we look for people but no one's there but the door is unlocked so we figure they won't mind if we use their bathrooms as long as we don't make a mess of it. We're pretty tired so we decide to camp in a slightly angled field behind and to the left the church, right in front of some wild-lookin' woods. It's a good spot since it's not visible from the road so we pitch our tents. I accidentally drop Bike Rothar in the parking lot and crack all the eggs I've been carrying so we're forced to eat those now for dinner instead of for breakfast. We mix them with hotdogs, rice, and peas and it's actually pretty good. I also eat a few spoonfuls of marshmallow fluff for dessert which I've been hoarding for a while but now it's all gone :(

There's basically no cell phone service out here. There's not much to do so we all go to bed at like 8 p.m. I slide down in my tent due to the slight angle of the field but it's not so bad. Tomorrow we're gonna reach Jutta's house ~

pax.

--
today's numbers
distance: 41 miles
riding time: 4 hrs 23 min
avg speed: 9.4 mph
max speed: 37.7 mph
odo: 513 miles

TransAmerica Cycle 2013, day 8

When we get up in the morning there is a woman there who works for the Appalachian trail; she says we look like an advertisement for REI--we kinda do, me with my quarter dome, Jenn and Dan with their limelight, Anna and Ben with their half dome plus, lots of REI logos. She and the others exchange pleasantries while I try to wake up and get ready. Due to the wind and the bump under me I didn't sleep so well. When we finally go to put our tents away there are little slugs all over the bottom.

The blue ridge parkway has a lot of long, difficult climbs, even tho' the worst of it is behind us. Being able to see out over the mountains like this makes it all worth it, tho'. Wooded hills as far as the eye can see, all shades of blue and green under an aquamarine sky. It's sunny but there's plenty of shade and the downhills are actually kind of chilly. There are little pink flowers all over the sides of the road that are the perfect shape, the epitome of the word "flower," like something a kid in kindergarten would draw.

There are lots of cyclists out today on their racing bikes. Most of them talk to us, and have done touring themselves. When we reach the junction with state road 56 we take a turn and it's a long, steep, windy downhill to Vesuvius town. My brakes aren't too good by now and that means I have to take the curves a little faster than is comfortable lest the front wheel wobble uncontrollably under the brake. Tho' the others were WAY ahead of me I pass or catch up to them by the bottom. I got that descent on film so hopefully it turns out.

Supposedly according to the map it's all downhill to Lexington so we take only a short soda break at Gertie's country store (I have a proper Coke in a glass bottle with real sugar) and then get going again. Truth is it's only all downhill to Riverside, and even then due to a headwind it's not a particularly relaxing downhill. It's beautiful tho', mostly along a river with clear, cool waters, and it's a green, quiet road.

In Riverside at the bottom of the hill we find a small gas station and have a quick break there too, eating candy or ice cream or just sitting for a little while. We still think it's downhill to Lexington so we get going again but it's actually mostly uphill. Since we skipped breakfast and barely ate at the snack breaks we all start getting really crabby and tired. Food makes a big difference on trips like this. You have NO idea.

We take a wrong turn at some point, following the river instead of crossing it. We pass some cool houses built on stilts due to periodic flooding (there are signs that say, ROAD MAY FLOOD). When we find out it was a wrong turn it's really disappointing because it was a big hill we climbed and we didn't need to. When we finally roll into Lexington we pass the Virginia Military Institute which has a lot of cool buildings and reminds me of Dad, and we have to take a detour around a giant pit in the middle of the road to get to a grocery store to eat (Jenn and Dan go get Dominos). We're all completely knackered so we take a really long, hazy lunch in the small amount of shade afforded by for-sale patio furniture. There's a really friendly cashier from Jersey who talks to me as I go in and out getting things. She says she'll pray for us, which is nice, and I give her our facebook group and the address to this blog.

The road after Lexington rolls real easy and is full of cows and sunshine. We still find some things to argue about tho'. It's one of those days I guess. When we reach Natural Bridge there's a gas station where we take another potty/water/snack break and the sun is getting really low in the sky so we ask the guy if there's a place to camp anywhere around since after all we have gone 60 miles today already. He says there's a field down the road a ways that nobody owns so we could prolly camp there. We head to it and there's an old, creepy abandoned house attached. Jenn vetoes camping inside it but we all get flashlights and go in to explore, looking for ghosts. The floor is full of broken glass and there are half-packed suitcases in some of the rooms like someone moved out in a real hurry. There are even filled-out checks scattered across the floor, half of them filled out to the signer, from 1994. We ponder the mystery for a while then go out to pitch our tents in the last sliver of light left before the sun is completely gone. For some reason everyone pitches their tents really close together but mine is far away and lonely. Closer to the haunted house. Jenn thinks that she'll be scared of that house whenever she gets up to pee at night.

We have to cook supper in the dark but we have the front lights off our bike and we also build a small wood fire under our little grate dad gave us. Dinner is great... black beans, sausage, rice, mustard greens. The others drink some Pabst Blue Ribbon and I have a cream soda. Fireflies flit around us and all the stars come out--all of them. The little fire is just enough to warm our bare legs as we stand and talk. We'll get up earlier tomorrow so we can stop for the night with enough light left to have a proper camp.

pax.

--

today's numbers
distance: 60 mi
riding time: 6 hrs 1 min
average speed: 9.9 mph
max speed: 40 mph
odo: 471.7 miles