Bike Trip - Day 24

This morning I guess Tim had a hard time waking me up. We are in a new time zone, so it's really 5 am, not 6 am! The fact that I had fallen asleep really early did nothing to help. Tim decided after various pokes and tickles that Mr. Nice Guy was going to leave and he deflated my mattress. Sad.

So about 20 or so minutes after everyone woke up, we finally emerged from our tent. We were really slow and lethargic but we're better at packing and getting on the road and before 7 AM came around, we were on our bikes and the first ones on the road! It was kind of neat because it's interesting to see how we are slowly transforming into this lifestyle. Yesterday, we noticed that there was a family doughnut store that was open from 6:30 - 11:30 AM so we biked up in hopes of a breakfast....but they weren't open. We continued on our way. The mornings are really cold so I was bundled up in long sleeves, and rain jacket and pants and as it warmed up I had to stop every 5 minutes to take another layer off. We had a long day ahead of us; there were places to stay after a 50 mile ride, or an 80 mile ride. We are tired of not biking more than 67 miles so we decided to go for an 80 mile day. The terrain was actually pretty fun; short quick uphills and downhills and some flats in between. I was a little pee-pants again and had to stop at every gas station. I searched for Ale-8-1 everywhere but couldn't find any. We had a nice breakfast sitting in the sun outside one gas station. When we got back on the road, the terrain stayed nice throughout the day. I really enjoy days like these where the ride is nice, the roads don't have a ton of litter and junk on the sides, and where it is sunny with blue skies yet not too hot. We stopped for lunch at a diary bar after around 32 miles and I had another double cheese burger and Tim got a chili dog. We shared spicy fries and a hot fudge sundae, YUM. It was well priced, so we were content. I had to be a pee-pants at another bathroom. It's weird because I don't drink nearly as much water as Tim, but I have to pee a lot more often. Oh well. Later in the day, in the search for more Ale-8-1 at another gas station, the lady at the counter informed us that Ale-8-1 is a local, eastern KY thing, so we were out of it's range. Sad! We got Mountain Dew Voltage instead, which is raspberry and citrus flavors. It was also good. I guess they made three new flavors and you have to try them all and vote on which on you want. We got back on the road....and of course, pee-pants struck again. We were really close to our destignation so we stopped at a gas station to get donuts, and melon ring candies. They were bland, so peach rings are much better. We got back on the roads and 10 miles later we pulled up at a really nice church. We were greated by the pastor who led us around and said we could stay in the youth section of the church, which has a shower, bathrooms, kitchens, rooms to sleep in, ping pong, etc. He said his wife would make us and Marc and Dennis dinner at 6 PM. We cleaned up, showered, checked our email, got startled by loud trains, and around 6 we all headed over to the pastors house for dinner. His wife's name is Violet and she is a really nice, personable person. She made some delicous ribs, mashed potatoes, butter beens, steamed veggies, butter beans, fresh onions and strawberry pie. It was nice to have a well made home cooked delicious dinner with lots of fruits and vegetables. She also made some good sweet tea, and did our laundry for us. Tim played the piano in the church, and he was very happy about that.

Time with Tim!
We managed to leave camp first this morning, even though we woke up 45 minutes after everyone else. I deflated Perry's air mattress, which she wasn't thrilled about, but she wasn't waking up otherwise. Today was rather routine until we got close to the Church at Sebree. Their church is beautiful and they have a youth area that they open to Cyclists for free. There is a shower, ping pong, full kitchen, everything! We get to the church and the pastor comes out to greet us. He shows us around and then said to come to their house at 6 PM with an appetite and dirth laundry. So while we are eating, his wife does our laundry too! Dinner was real good with potatoes, ribs, veggies, cornbread, strawberry pie, and butter beans. On this singular table I saw more food groups than I had seen at all the grocery stores in the state of Kentucky combined. After dinner, I played the piano in the chapel, which was a nice Yamaha baby grant. I then annihilated Perry in fooseball and then took Dennis on in ping pong.

Bike Trip - Day 23

This morning, I wanted chocolate milk so I walked next door to a general store and bought some. When I got back to the hotel I discovered the milk was rotten. I had to go back and complain, and exchange it for two fresh chocolate milks. I'm so used to grocery stores in NY and New England that don't have spoiled milk or expired products, so I need to pay more attention to that around here. The guy was nice enough and didn't cause a problem when I traded the bottles, though. After a round of group photos we all set off on our way. Somehow, the other three ended up behind us so when Tim and I were eating an early lunch around 10:30 AM, Dennis once again pops out of nowhere, soon followed by Johnny Mango and then Marc. Tim and I really liked the pulled pork sandwiches we were eating, so we went and bought two more to eat later in the day. We also found a caramel drumstick ice cream cone, and since Dan Summers is ga-ga for them, we figured we'd give it a try. It was good, but not spectacular. Later that day, we stopped at a gas station to buy some cold drinks, and I grabbed a bottle of Ale-8-1. It sounds like "A Late One" when you say it, which I guess is the reason behind their name? We also bought some vanilla float soda. The Ale-8-1 was a fruity ginger ale and delicious. The float soda was revolting. Oh well. You win one, you lose one. Later that day, we were trucking along to our campground when Dennis comes from behind without his panniers. Someone had told him that the campground we were headed to was seven miles off the route so he'd biked to catch us. He knew of some campgrounds so we backtracked a few miles to a gas station where we caught Johnny Mango. We later found out that the campground we were initially headed to was in fact on the route, but didn't have showers. We decided to go to a closer campground and share a site. Tim and I went swimming in the lake and it was the most fun I've ever had swimming. The lake was dammed so the water was high and there was a playground on shore that was partially submerged. As a result, there was an underwater see-saw that I stumbled over by chance, and we played on that for a while. We also stumbled across those little animals on a spring that you swing back and forth on. We played on those for a while. We also found some water guns, and ran around shooting each other and trying to hide. The best part, though, was the slide. It was one of those wavy slides. It wasn't submerged, but if you went down it, you ended up in the water. One of us would go to the top of the slide, and the other would splash water all over it. Then you'd go down, and you'd skyrocket off the first bump, get some air, smash back onto the slide, and go off a second bump, and SHOOT off the slide at all sorts of funny angles and splash resoundingly into the water. It was good fun. We played for a long, long time, but eventually our butts hurt so we wandered back to our campsite, giddy with excitement. We set up our tent, showered, and the whole gagng walked to a newly opened restaurant with subpar food. We ate, and a thunderstorm struck, so we all hurried back to our tents and went to sleep.

Time with Tim!
Nothing too much to report here until evening time. Perry and I were headed to a campground at a good distance. When we were about 4 miles from it, Dennis flies up behind us unladed and says our campground is 7 miles off route. We go back and find Marc. Then Johnny Mango rolls up. We all went to a campground on a lake. Since Johnny Mango has a golden age pass, we got a site for 11 dollars, split 4 ways. Perry and I swam for a while, which was cool. At the "beach" there was a sign that said "Kids don't float, so give them something that does!" Good advice until their water wings pop and they are down like the Lucitania. We had a fun thunderstorm and I finished reading 1421.

Bike Trip - Day 22

This morning we quickly packed and were on the road by 7:45. Slow, but not as slow as our first few starting times. The terrain was still hilly but it was such a nice break after the mountains. About 20 or so miles out, who else but Dennis appears! Apparently, the newer maps have a different route so he didn't even go through Springfield. Marc eventually caught up while we were talking so we went to grab lunch at a Burger King. Tim and I won another double stacker and croissantwich. BK is a good deal right now because of all the free food that you can win. Marc was upset because his rear derailleur keeps jumping, but it is a quick fix so I don't know why he didn't just fix it on the spot or ask someone to help him fix it, rather than being upset.

Thirty minutes later we were all back on the road enjoying the nice terrain. Tim and I stopped at a gas station because I am a pee-pants and the other two continued on their way. The day ended up being really long so when we saw a fresh produce stand after 67 miles or so, we stopped. The woman running it gave us free fresh grown strawberries and they were amazing! We devoured them, so she gave us more. It really put a more positive spin onto a long, tough day. We headed over to a nearby gas station, because I really am a pee-pants, and grabbed some ice cream. After biking 5 or 10 more miles we reached a hotel and saw Dennis, Marc, and a stranger standing around outside. We got a room. The new biker was Johnny Mango and he seems very nice. His eyes are outstandingly blue and he has a bounce to his step. After everyone had showered and settled in (and after Dennis had figured a way to cool his beer on the a/c) we went to a nearby italian restaurant and had some interesting food. I didn't like it too much, but I did like the garlic bread. On the walk back to the hotel, we found some wifi so we checked our email quick. After that, we passed out as soon as we got back to the hotel.

Time with Tim!
Halfway through the morning, Marc and Dennis caught us. The new version of the maps saves about 7 miles on a short-cut I had been considering yesterday. It started raining after lunch. Awesome. Right when we were about to get to our motel, we scored some free strawberries. There was another guy named Johnny Mango (with a business card to prove it!). He was pretty cool and does about 50 mile days which is why we caught him. We all went to get some food. Overall, today wasn't too exciting.

Bike Trip - Day 21

The next morning, we packed up and carried our bikes outside. A group of motorcyclists was also getting ready to go riding and they were really interested in our trip. We chatted while packing our bikes, and when we were ready we got on the road. We took a detour through the olde town so Tim could look at a music shop with handmade banjos but they were closed since it was Sunday. He contented himself with looking through the windows. It was a cute area of town, but we soon got on the road again. The terrain was hilly but so much easier than the past few days. We felt great and after about 25 miles or so I saw some tour bikes at a gas station. I called to Tim and we decided to eat lunch at the gas station. We met the touring touple and their names were Lynn and Jerry. I guess Jerry used to weigh 300 pounds and went on some reality TV show called "The Biggest Loser" and lost 110 pounds over 10 months. Now he and his wife are biking the TransAm to Oregon and they started on May 1st in Yorktown, VA. It was kind of sad because Lynn looked absolutely miserable. She was not having fun at all. She dreaded every mountain and looked like she just wanted to go home. We all took photos and Tim and I were back on the road. We met two Belgians who had started biking with recumbents in Guatemala, and biked through Mexico, Texas, Florida, Virginia, and were now in KY going to San Francisco! Tim asked them what they would do when they arrived in San Francisco, and the man responded that he was thinking to hop onto a plane when they arrived in SF and go ride around Australia. Wow. They had been biking for seven months so far! They stank to the high heavens. and the man had a very very thick, bushy beard that I doubt he has shaved in the seven months. By the time we finished biking, we were in Springfield. The police let you camp in the town park so we called them up to let them know we were there and they said we could camp anywhere. We chose to camp under a pavilion because its nice when you can pack up a dry tent in the morning. Tim cooked up some food while I walked to the nearby grocery store to pick up some drinks. I ended up getting a carton of peach mango Dole juice and half a gallon of chocolate milk. The food was ready when I got back to the tend so we ate, drank, cleaned up and went to bed. I fell asleep quickly but I guess kids came to that park late at night so they kept Tim awake for a while.

Time with Tim!
While reading Marc's blog about the trip, I saw that they went to some little old music store in town. It was basically on the way so I hoped it would be open, but 7:30 AM on a Sunday kind of killed that. They had some swanky banjos made out of gourds and other such instruments as found in "Deliverance." Incidentally, Dennis had a friend biking NOT on the TransAM trail through KY and a store keeper told him "You better watch out, the boys play a little.....different out here." That would be the second I bought a bus ticket to Indiana. At lunch we saw two tour bikes so we go in to talk to the folks. The guy was apparently on the "Biggest Loser" (season 4?). I've seen four minutes of this show one time when Dan Summers was flipping channels and all I remember is some huge people standing on scales with more lights than a vegas casino and more capacity than a CAT scale. It's cool he went from 300ish to 190 or so but the guy acted like Paris Hilton and then criticized MY drink of choise for having 72g of sugar....back off my food! His wife was horribly unhappy with the trip and had fancy jewelry on and only about five pounds of stuff in her trailer; she was making Jerry carry it all. Someone mistakenly told her that this was the last day of hills, but they actually don't end until you leave Missourii. She has many days of misery ahead but I didn't want to burst her bubble. While we were chatting in the parking lot, two Belgians on recumbents cruised by. Their english wasn't great, but they stopped to chat. It was 7 months of biking for these days and their equipment and their persons were looking pretty beat. We camped that night in a city park under a pavillion. All was going well until the local kids came by (after curfew and park closing, mind you). The first set decided to knock on the top of my tent. I gave them a ten second grace period and then was like "Could you stop that?" They did and skedaddled. The second set was backlit so I could see them creeping around to our open fly-door (it was hot) like "RAWG, WUT IZ INSIDE THIS TENT?!?" They managed to scare themselves and shoved off before investigating further. Silly small town kids.

Bike Trip - Day 20

The next morning at 6 am, Tim woke me up and we started packing up to go. We managed to get on the road with no major problems and we were excited because we were only supposed to have one large mountain climb that day. Or rather, that's what the day's terrain would have been until Tim subconsciously decided that the terrain was not difficult enough and navigated us up a huge mountain climb to the highest elevation of the day. Then, when we got to the summit, he bikes us another mile or so until the road split. Then, he stared at his GPS and map in confusion until he realized we weren't even supposed to bike up that mountain! We were supposed to turn right onto a new road before the climb. The mountain was called Happy Top Mountain, but I wasn't very happy at the top. On the bright side, at least we had to go downhill to return to the trail. The turn that we had initially missed ended up being a road that wove through meadows. As we were riding, we would startle flocks of hundreds of butterflies, so they were swooping and flying around us. It was really nice. I was super exhausted so we kept having to stop and rest but the ride, except for the two mountains, was much flatter than the previous days. It was actually a beautiful ride and ever since we crossed into KY a few days ago, its been nothing but blue skies.

We haven't had any dog problems. I don't really understand why everyone said the dogs were so bad. They mostly leave you alone, or wander out to say "hi!" We've had a few dogs chase us, but they are herders trying to tend their flock. We also had four beautiful german pointers chase us down the road for at least a mile. They were baying up a storm, and it seemed like they felt they were hunting a fox! Every guard dog we have seen has been well chained or kept from the road, so we haven't had to worry about them. We've also seen a few obese little dogs waddling after us, but they are nothing to worry about. They annoy Tim, though, because they bark up a storm. I guess Jim was just a really negative man and I shouldn't have taken his words to heart. Dennis has taken to calling Jim "negative man," and it's become a source of humor. If there is a lot of wind, someone will say "negative man says there is too much headwind" or something along those lines, which makes all of us laugh. It helps to remind us to enjoy the good things and forget the bad ones so we won't be like Jim.

We got to Berea, KY at a somewhat late hour. It is a really cute town with Berea College, and the college area is very quaint. We stopped to get a coffee and a smoothie at a cafe and went to the library to use the bathrooms and wifi. Tim took so long in the library that I'm pretty sure he managed to write a novel, too. We started biking to the campground we intended to stay at, but on the way we saw a super 8 motel sitting next to a mexican restaurant. It was also really close to a walmart and other food stores, so we decided to stop there for the night. The night before, Marc had been excessively worried that since it was memorial day weekend, we would not be able to find a place to stay. It ended up not being a problem at all. We both went to our room, showered, and then hastily headed to the mexican restaurant. I ate pollo loco and LEMONADE (yay!) and Tim had a plate with a wide variety of mexican foods. It was great but you could tell they had to americanize their food because it was much more bland than we are used to. I guess their food needs to be less spicy to please their southern customers. After dinner, we walked over to walmart to grab some sandpaper (we stopped at another walmart earlier in the day to pick up a patch kit, and it didn't come with sandpaper), some apples, and other essentials that we needed to restock on. We grabbed a McFlurry on the way back to the hotel in order to fill my insatiable desire for ice cream, and then spent the night playing with the ipod and watching tv.

Time with Tim!
Today had one hill in the morning that was flattish, other than a minor navigational error that sent us up some 800 feet steep climb and added 7 miles to the day...oops. In the morning, a pack of four german pointers came chasing us down the road. I cruised by, thinking after another house or two, they'd turn around. Instead, like a fox in an english hunting excursion, I ended up kicking it as all four woofed along for about half a mile. Fun! Today, we saw the only somewhat-aggressive dog. It was a big german shepard making a beeline at my leg with hackles raised. I set my water bottle to "stun" but the burst of water only slightly fazed him. I said "NO. SIT!" and he backed off a little. The owner was standing in the yard and gave me a little sneer and "y'all told 'er!" Perry then went by and said, "No! Stay!" which was the magic word. She stopped and petted it for a while. The owner stared slackjawed. Perry then pushed it back to its yard and it went and growled at its owner. We got to Berea, I got new sandals, and we had the healthiest (mexican) food we've seen for days. Hooray!

Bike Trip - Day 19

In the morning, we all checked our email with the free wifi for one last time, and David gave us 7up cake and orange juice for breakfast. The cake was great, but the orange juice was something else. The water David made it with was "natural" meaning it had an insane amount of minerals. In other words, it tastes and smells like the world's most disgusting fart. As a result, the orange juice was disgusting. In order to drink it, we would have to stop breathing, attempt to gulp the orange juice down, and then shove some cake in our mouth. I felt bad for Dennis because he left his glass almost empty in the kitchen because he didn't want the last swallow, but David brought it back out for him to finish! Dennis looked so disappointed. I really hated the OJ, so I gulped it all down immediately and finished it off with the cake, but both Tim and Dennis drew theirs out and had to gulp it down after they ran out of cake.

When Tim was setting up his bike and trailer, he realized that his trailer tire had gone flat. He was really sick of repairing and replacing inner tubes but his bike was sure not cooperating. Then we discovered that somewhere we'd been replacing flats, we had left the patch kit behind! Luckily, David had a patch kit because he houses so many cyclists, so we still have a spare tube for the trailer in case this newly patched tube decides to die.

By the time we fixed everything, Dennis and Marc had already left. We biked to the gas station so we could get a gallon of non-farty water. We also grabbed some chocolate milk, which is always a yummy morning treat. We set off for the day's ride after Tim took a few incorrect turns. We had quite a few big mountain climbs that day. When we finally passed the mountain range, we stopped for a well deserved and late lunch at a hamburger type place at the side of the road. I had the most delicious double cheeseburger I have ever had. It was well done and very juicy. Tim had the southern version of a stromboli; instead of a pizza that is rolled up, their version of a stromboli is a meat patty, italian herbs, spaghetti sauce, and maybe some cheese and veggies on a sub. It's not as good as the Northern version of a stromboli, but it's still good. We also had curly fries, a milkshake, and a hot fudge sundae to split between the two of us. Yum! The best part of this was that the cashier was really nice so we sat and had a fun conversation with him.

After a long day on the bikes, we arrived at a presbytarian church that has a shelter for cyclists with a cold shower, a bathroom, and water. It was a real relief to arrive, and we ate leftover pizza from the night before. Dennis bought a 4 pack of klondike bars so we all had one and they were extra delicious after a long day of mountains. We all set up our tents and fell asleep for the night in order to get an early start.

Time with Tim!
So all those dogs people whine about...they are kind of whiney babies. We've had some herding dogs running with us, and some other odd little dogs, but nothing mean or aggressive. I really think its just people really bad with dogs mace-ing the poor things. As a result, the dogs then fear the next guy. Today a tripod dog chased me and it was just as fast as I was! None of them were vicious, though and my dog-stick has remained sheathed. Today the terrain was like yesterday. Some brilliant Kentucky engineer figured that they should carve rumblestrips all up the whole shoulder, so we have to ride in the car lane. Cars don't like this. Sometimes little plants grow in the divets of the rumble strips. I applaud their ability to break up the roads and show KDOT the error of their ways.

Also today some guy in front of me in the left turn lane put his right blinker on and slowly turned left. I guess it's true about Kentucky intelligence. I feel like I'm just ripping on everyone. I actually really like how pretty the state is, it's just the people that are kind of weird.

Today we were taking a break from a steep climb, and some mountain woman starts screaming at us from her porch. A dude comes out of the trailer waiving a pistol like a chinese near year dragon-puppet-controller. We decided our break was over and continued biking. About two minutes later, two mountain children on a four wheeler pull up besides me and Perry shouting things. There was then a steep downhill and they went away.

We slept at a little free campground with Dennis and Marc. Dennis showed me how to true my wobbly wheel.

Bike Trip - Day 18

Another morning denial began at 6 AM but Tim poked me out of bed so I sleepily packed up and prepared to start biking. We went outside and Marc and Dennis were also getting ready. I made friends with a cute kitty cat and then we set off for the day. The four off us stayed close for a while and climbed our first mountain together. Then, Dennis and Marc went up ahead and Tim and I took our time. The day involved lots of climbing uphill for infinitely long periods of time and then whizzing fast downhills around switchbacks at breakneck speeds. We bumped into Dennis and Marc again at the bottom of a mountain and Marc told us he'd booked a room at a B&B that evening. He said that the B&B also offered camping to bikers. Tim and I never really plan where we stay until we really have to, but the idea sounded good. They set off and we followed but stopped at a gas station a few minutes later to grab cold drinks. We were about to get going again when some people asked us what we were doing. They went slack jawed when we told them where we were biking to, and one man said that you couldn't pay him to do that. We laughed and started biking again, and were soon confronted with our next mountain. There were 4 or 5 large mountains that day, which was really tiring. To make it worse, Tim got a rear flat tire, so we were on the side of the road unloading the bikes and fixing it. Then, Tim realized the skewer for the b.o.b. trailer was bent so the tire was stuck. He was really irritated because the b.o.b. trailer is a source of never ending and ridiculous problems. He unbent the skewer and got the wheel off somehow. He had a snakebite on his inner tube, so we fixed that, repacked the bikes, and set off again. 30 seconds later, Tim was shaking his head in irritation. Now his left crankarm was loose. We pull off on another side street to fix this problem, and I see Dennis biking the other way. Tim gets his attention and apparently when Dennis was resting at the top of the mountain, a car had stopped and told him that we had our bikes taken apart on the side of the road. He had biked down to make sure we were ok. How awesome is that?

Tim fixed all his problems and we biked up the next mountain. It was a really gradual slope, but neverending. We fell behind Dennis because he is super speedy, but on the other side of the mountain we stopped for milkshakes and lunch. Later in the day, Tim got a second flat tire, so he was really, really annoyed. He threw out that tube, replaced it with a new inner tube, and once again we were on the roads. Later that day, after some navigational difficulties, we found the bed and breakfast in Hindman KY run by a man named David. However, the B&B was located at the top of a steeeeeep hill so we dismount and started pushing our bikes up. When we were almost at the top, Dennis saw us and came running down to help. I really like Dennis; he's enjoying every day, always seems happy to see us, and we're always pleasantly pleased to see him as well. When we got to the top, we met David, who had iced tea waiting for us, and a lot of cats. Apparently they are relatives of Hemingway's cats and have six toes. He had a cheeseball appetizer that he'd made that was quite tasty. He also was a baker, so he showed me some of his favorite cookbooks and I looked through those with a kitten sleeping on my lap. We all ordered pizza together and some were interesting flavors. One had grilled chicken and cheese with ranch sauce instead of pizza sauce. I liked that one a lot. After staying up and chatting, Dennis Tim and I retired to a huge tent that David had set up for cyclists.

Time with Tim!
Left Elkhorn and made out for Hindman today. This was potentially the worst day of biking yet. Here's how I think they surveyed and built the roads over the mountains:

Foreman: "Well, ya'll need to git over that thur hill. What we gotta do?"
Surveyor: "Hell boss, s'a lotta work to plan it all out, ya know?"
Foreman: "Well she-it its drinkin time. Run 'er straight over the damn thing and throw sum curves on the way up."

There are also coal trucks on the way. I've heard they are big and scary, but I've seen scarier. It is just a large truck that excels in pollution. The drivers are pretty courteous and the worst part is smelling the pollution. On today's ride, the graph on my altimeter looked like a sawtooth blade with continuous ups and downs.

We camped behind a bed and breakfast with a cool guy running the place. He had lots of kitties. During the day, I had gotten two flats and one loose crank, so I fixed these before turning in. The bed and breakfast guy gave us ice cream and a tasty cheeseball. During the night a small to medium sized critter skedaddled by our tent. I ignored it and went back to sleep. I assume it was a dragon.

Bike Trip - Day 17

At 6 AM, I refused to believe it was 6 AM and tried to sleep through Tim's pokes and tickles, failing miserably. It was therefore time to wake up. We couldn't even get the motel door open from the inside, so Tim had to climb out the window and smash the door open from outside. Very kung fu movie. I packed up my bike and went outside and saw Dennis feeding a cute little cat leftover pizza. Dennis had seen how nervous Jim had made me about the dogs, so he gave me some Halt! since he had other methods of protection. I really don't want to use the stuff, but I'm relieved that I have it because of all the scary stories I've heard. At least now if a dog tries to kill us, I have some defence. We all set off around 7:30 AM. I love the early morning starts because it's so nice to have 30 to 40 miles under your belt when you sit down for lunch, rather than a meager 10 miles. There were some really tough mountains where it would be a steep switch backing journey up the side of the mountain that fools you into thinking the summit just has to be at the end of the next turn. It never is. Finally, when you feel like you've climbed all the way to heaven, the it ends, and you have a huge rushing descent down the other side. It always feels amazing! It was pretty tough riding today and we got about 47 miles out and realized that the motel on our left was the last place to stay for 40 more miles. The next 40 miles had four large climbs, so we decided to stay. All of a sudden we notice Dennis and a second biker riding up the hill. They had also decided to call it a day so we all got rooms and settled in. The new biker was Marc Deluca, who is a retired police major from North Carolina. We all decided to walk into town for dinner at a cafe. I wanted pulled pork, but they were out. I had a burger instead because everything else was deep fried or sea food. After a nice dinner, we all wandered back to the hotel and retired for the night.

Time with Tim!
It rained last night, and the motel door froze up. I couldn't open it from the inside because I only had the knob to pull on. I climbed out our window wondering if I would have thought of the window had there been a fire at 2 AM. Once outside, I dropped a shoulder and hit the door like it owed me money. It opened and we were on our way. Perry found me a dog-fending stake today. I sheathed it in my trailer so I can reach it with either hand in case of a dog attack. We are both kinda scared about dog attack. Today we had some wicked hills and we stopped at 48 miles because the next campground was 40 miles away over more wicked hills. We are at a motel with two other cyclists, Dennis and Marc. They informed us that the last group going our way (2 days ago) a pig attacked a girl's bike and ripped up one of her panniers. I guess our next to days will be dog (and pig) ridden, my stick is ready. We had gobs of fried, greasy good, but the shear quantity of shrimp consumed more than made up for this.

Bike Trip - Day 16

This morning, Tim woke me up and told me that I slept through a violent thunderstorm that was apparently throwing lightning bolts really close to our tent. ("1000 yards!! It was flash BOOM!") I couldn't get myself to leave my warm sleeping bag but I eventually crept out and we started packing up. A camp staffer stopped by with his yellow lab, and after finding out that I was deaf, he told me his dog was deaf, too! That was cool, and he was nice. We seem to have the worst turnaround times and if we wake up at 7ish, like today, by the time we're on our bikes it's 9:30 AM. Ugh. The day started out amazingly, though, because we practically had a 20 mile downhill!

Since it had just rained, it smelled like wet forest and the air felt really clean. It was wonderful. We came really close to a town that we had thought to eat lunch at, and out of nowhere, Dennis appears from behind! He had stayed at the campground we'd considered before biking to the next at the top of the mountain, and he had managed to catch up to us again! He has mountain components on his bike, and much less weight, so he can spin faster on the uphills. We decided to eat lunch together at an italian restaurant for lunch that had a constnatly flow of backpackers, free wifi, and food that ended up being delicious. After a long lunch, we all paid and Dennis continued on his way while Tim and I visited a bike shop with hopes of finding chamois butt'r...which makes a long day of biking a good amount less painful on the butt. We found some, and bumped into a guy who used to bike a lot and lives near San Francisco. He gave us his information so we can call if we have a problem near CA or want biking information about CA, we can give him a call. We eventually got back onto our bikes after we both peed for the hundredth time at the italian place. About 20 miles later, passing rain showers hit and we saw a touring bike at a small deli. We figured we'd stop in and get ice cream, and a tourer named Jim was quietly eating a well balanced meal inside. They didn't serve ice cream, but I saw a chocolate cake, and that looked just as good. The woman are the store was really nice, but verged on crazy. She loved our "accents" but she was the one who talked funny. She howed us photographs of her dog on her phone and talked about several random things. We started talking with Jim and found that he is a professor in nutrition at the University of Tennessee. Last year, he had biked from Oregon to somewhere in Kentucky, and this year he figured he'd pick up where he left off and bike to Yorktown, PA. He was really polite, but he seemed to be a little debbie downer and was somewhat negative about his trip. He told us that we had a really difficult three days ahead of us and that the last two days would be filled with vicious dogs. He asked if we had any Halt! which is a mace for dogs. We didn't, so he told us to put stones in our pockets to throw at them, and to carry a big stick. He kind of scared the living daylights out of me. After a while, he paid for his meal and left, and then we used the restrooms and got ready to leave. The woman there ended up liking us quite a bit, so she ended up giving us our piece of cake and glass of milk on the house! Yum! We continued on our way and finally stopped for the day at a motel run by a very sweet old man, and out jumps Dennis from his own motel room! Our room wasn't ready yet so the three of us went across the road to grab some pizza and went back to the motel. The older man let us eat in his old restaurant (closed now, and it's just his own space to hang out) so we sat around, ate, and chatted for a while. After a while, my eyelids started drooping, so we all retired to our rooms and after showers and brake pad maintence, Tim and I passed out.

Time with Tim!
We got to bike down a mountain all morning, which was nice. Another cyclist warned us that there are vicious dogs ahead, he really put some fear into us. I guess after getting maced and tasered by so many cyclists who fear dogs, they are now truly hateful to cyclists, sad! I pondered why my GPS sometimes freezes today. I figured out that it happens occasionally when you don't follow its directions. I feel kinda bad when I blow by it's suggestions but I know its for the best when I follow the cycling maps instead. I guess it's so sad that it just gives up. I think I'l give it some powdered prozac and see if it helps. Dennis gave Perry some HALT! for the dogs because he has for-real mace, too.

Bike Trip - Day 15

Really late in the morning we finally got all of our clothes dried and checked out of the hotel by giving the cleaning lady the key since the man at the desk was nowhere to be found. We set out on our bikes and immediately had a nice-to-see-you/good-morning climb. The terrain was really hilly and the weather was really windy so we were trucking along and a speedy tourer came from behind. He turned out to be Dennis, a guy we had been hearing about for days from tourers coming in the other direction!

Dennis started out at the Statue of Liberty in NYC and will travel through Denver, CO and Yellowstone and up to Seattle, Washington, then down the coast to San Francisco, CA. He was surprised that Tim and I biked 71 miles yesterday through the pouring rain - he had stayed in a hotel. We eventually set off again, and Tim and I stopped for lunch. When we started biking again, I was really tired. At around 45 miles we came to a campground. Our options were to either call it quits or bike up to the highest elevation of our appalachian section of the trip (4000 feet or so). Even though I was really tired, we decided to keep going to 10 or 15 extra miles to the next campground. The mountain had a pretty gradual slope, but it was really long so I was dead exhausted when we got to the campground. We stared at the self pay atation for 15 minutes until we managed to make sense of it and found ourselves a campground for the night. After setting up the tent and eating some disgusting chef boyardee, we showered, threw out all our trash, and passed out for the night after biking 55 miles or so.

Time with Tim!
Today was hard, but relatively dry. We hit some wicked hills, and climbed a huge mountain and camped at the top. We both wondered if there were bears here, but neither of us know much about bears. We threw our trash out before bed, though, in case bears smelled our tasty chef boyardee can and decided to add some ventilation to our pretty tent. That night, there was a wicked thunderstorm with one bolt that hit within 800 feet of us. I hope it hit a bear.

Bike Trip - Day 14

We woke up the next day with a desperation to get as far away as possible from Catawba, VA. To make things worse, it was rainy, and the terrain was still hilly. We were feeling much better than the day before, though, so there was some improvement. The day had a lot of hard hills, but it was pretty uneventful. We stopped at a burger king for lunch because it was a Sunday, and nothing is open on Sundays. I won us a free double stacker burger! We dried out in the restaurant, and it stopped raining...and then we walked back outside and the downpour resumed. Boo. We passed a really haunted looking Days Inn and decided we'd bike to the next motel. When we got to the next motel, we walked in and a frigid lady cried about her newly shampooed floors being "destroyed" by our bikes. First off, why would you put bright white carpets in a hotel? That's asking for problems. Second off, at the end of the day, I am MUCH dirtier than my bike. We decided we didn't like this lady and weren't going to give her business, so we kept biking until we found a Motel 8 with free wifi! We checked in, showered, and realized the only food around was Burger King...so we had dinner there, too. This time, we won five french toast sticks, and a whopper. I also discovered that BK's Mocha Joe is pretty awesome. We returned to the motel, threw all of our clothes in the tub, and for that we spent the rest of the night trying to dry our clothes to avoid it in the morning.

Time with Tim!
More rain :( It rained all day and we still went 71 miles (the other guys we talked to all sat this day out in a motel). It was pretty miserable and hilly. While biking through this sad, poor area, I began wondering what these people do. There are no companies to work for here, but I targeted 4 booming businesses. The first is the junk trade. People here love junk more than a fat kid loves cake. They can't get enough of it! Their yards are FILLED with broken cars, pieces of metals, beer cans, tacky yard things, pieces of wood, toys, pieces of cars, broken tractors, old sinks, you name it. It would be a prettier place if these people would pack up and move this stuff to a junkyard. Business 2 is NO TRESPASSING/NO HUNTING/KEEP OUT/WE SELL METAL ROOFING signs. People love those things. On one gate, I saw six different NO TRESPASSING signs within inches of each other. I guess they want people to stay out of their junk stash. A side effect of this business is the pro-junk-hauler. These working-age men seemingly load their pickup bed and junk trailer with more junk than humanly possible, then transport it to unknown whereabouts every day. Business 3 is metal roofing. This one is a mystery to me, but apparently the metal roofer monger is of high social importance here. They proudly display their generic "WE SELL METAL ROOFING" signs everywhere. What is confusing is all the different mongers have the EXACT same metal roofing sign. Is there some club of metal roofers that distributes these? Does the union of sign-printers (see business 2) rorce them to use this? Finally, me being from the North, I have no idea why these people want metal roofing so bad. It's kind of tacky, and gets all rusty looking. Business 4 is the pro-lawn-mower. I estimate 23% of people in the western part of VA are pro-lawn-mowers. They mow the lawn when they should be at work. Oh well. At night we got denied a room from some crusty old woman at an empty motel. She claimed our bikes would get her new carpets dirty. After staring incredulously at this woman, I realized that some people really do need to major in "Hospitality" in college. Hospitality is a major at RIT. We biked 6 more miles and stayed at a chain motel to dry out.

Bike Trip - Day 13

In the morning we woke up and the other family was already awake. They offered us more marshmallows, hot chocolate, and coffee. We accepted and had a few toasted marshmallows and shared a mug of warm hot chocolate. We stood around and chatted with the couple for a while and it turns out that the husband, Bradley Spain, was a civil engineer and that his wife was a math major. She said her favorite subject was abstract algebra ("the only numbers in abstract algebra are the page numbers!!") which made Tim and I cringe in horror. We like numbers, and we really like them when they apply to real life situations. They were both scuba divers and recommended that we learn because there are great places to dive in CA. They looked at our maps and told us that if we went half a mile off course we would get to a nice plaza with food, a cafe, and a backpacking store. We were low on denatured alcohol, and fatty had popped his inflatable mattress pad so we decided it was a worthwhile detour.

Eventually we realized it was getting late in the morning so we returned to packing. Tim kept hearing a lot of dogs barking and we found out that there was an agility dog show at the campground. We headed over to take a look and Tim took a lot of photos with his telephoto lens of dogs jumping over hurdles, through weave poles and all that jazz. We talked to some dog trainers who said the hardest part was to train a dog to be aware of their back legs. They don't pay attention to their back legs; they just kind of follow the front. The trainer said that you put ladders on the ground and teach them to walk through, and sometimes you put bells on their legs. Then we realized, again, that it was late, and we should head off. We were losing time so we set off and started the day's bike ride. About two or three miles later, we bumped into another couple named Mike and Joan and stopped to chat.

At this point, we seemed doomed to a short day. They were really nice, and warned us that if we didn't stay in Catawba, there would be nowhere else to stay for quite a long time. They were biking from Cincinati, Ohio to Washington, DC and they warned us that we might see some pretty vicious dogs. We eventually got back to pedaling and about ten miles later we took the detour to the plaza. It was now noon and we'd only ridden 13 miles or so. It's somewhat frustrating not to have 30 or so miles under your belt when you stop for lunch, but it was worth it this morning. We got a strawberry fluff smoothie that was .... interesting and a delicious key lime milkshake at the cafe. Tim purchased a new sleeping mat and some denatured alcohol at the backpacking outfitters. There were a lot of hikers from the appalachian trail. We ate a fatty lunch at Wendy's where the locals gaped at us and our bikes in horror.

We kept biking and finally, after many tiring rollercoaster hills and roads and unfriendly kids racing by us on belching tractors made it to Catawba, VA, which is not my favorite place in the world. Both bed and breakfasts that were supposed to be there had apparently shut down, and in my opinion, it's because nobody wants to be there. There was also no hotel. We kept trying to ask people for help, but they would drive by us, flat out ignore us, or scream at us. A really rude farmer was really unclear with his answers and clearly wanted us to leave him alone. We were really exhasuted and we decided we had nearly no options. There was nowhere to stealth camp and we could not for the life of us find the appalachian trail (it's public land so you can camp there). We finally found a nicer (yet not nice) farmer whose wife told us we could camp at the General Store, which was 5 miles back where we'd come. She could tell we were really tired so she ended up being nicer and having her husband put our bikes in her truck and driving us back to the store. When we got to the store, we unloaded and met four appalachian trail hikers. They were going to stay somewhere else that night though, so we got subs at the general store and sat with them to chat for a while. When dinner was over, we retired to a room in the garage with a fooseball table and just fell asleep.

Time with Tim:
Awoke to the sound of what sounded like a bark-off. I was ready for a team of sled dogs to blow over the hill with some crazy person riding a sled on the dry ground. Instead, it was a dog agility show! We went over and watched people make dogs do silly things. I always wonder what the dogs are thinking when they go over see saws and through tubes. Do they like it or are they all, "Fine, I'll do it just this one last time!" I liked it best when the dogs didn't obey at all and the owners are furiously gesticulating. So when you are biking, you have mad time to think. My mind picks one topic to obsess over and today it was silly little caterpillars. Theres this kind that seem to like just walking on roads. I kept seeing them. I wondered if they could see well enough to know what they were crossing until I wathced one go from walking perpendicular to the road to parallel. Incidently, there were larger numbers of squished caterpillars walking parallel to the road. I wondered how long they had been walking before the tire of doom go them. I didn't really conclude much from this caterpillar study, but there sure are a lot of them. Also, Catawba, VA, named after a tasty wine, is a shitty place.

Bike Trip - Day 12

We woke up and discovered that it had rained hard overnight and that there were flash flood warnings. Luckily, none had occured over the night, so I had a coffee at Gerties and we packed up and set on our way. It was a really pretty ride, but it's a little sad how poor the region is. It's also a shame how many people are careless enough to throw litter out if their car or truck windows onto the side of the roads. At one point, I saw a suspension bridge and I like those, so we stopped to wander across it and take photos.

We laughed at the thought of how much Navi would have hated the suspension bridge. When we set off again, we soon bumped into a man named Mark Reed. He knew sign language since he has a deaf nephew so we chatted for a while about bike touring. He had biked from his home in VA to Asteria, Washington last year so this year he decided to bike in the other direction from home to Yorktown, VA. He was very nice and was a pleasure to chat with. He told us that he regretted not taking photos of people he met on his trip last year, so we started taking photos and started with him!

He said we were 7 miles away from Lexingon, VA so we recommended he stay at Gerties and started off biking again. When we got into Lexington, we discovered that it was graduation weekend at the Virginia Military Institute so we bounced off a few cars by accident in a traffic jam and I almost got murdered by a bus side view mirror. We don't really like biking on city roads so we quickly navigated to a bike shop where Tim purchased a smaller rear tire (his tire was too big and the brakes would collect nasty substances including dead bees) and we both bought handlebar bags. I didn't like how I had so much weight in my backpack; I had 2 L of water, both of our passports (for Germany!), both phones, both wallets, our ipod, and other valuables. I put the camelback bladder in the handlebar bag, and kept our valuables in my backpack and it works much better. My shoulders and back don't get so sore. We were pointed to a good restaurant to get burgers, and on our way there I fell in love with a boy's 12 week old black lab puppy. I played with him for a long while and then eventually went to order some burgers. While we were waiting for the burgers, a man came to talk to Tim. He had a drawl, but Tim told me he goes on 100 mile day rides on the blue ridge parkway. Finally, our burgers were ready so we picked them up and sat down to eat in a little park. Another man excitedly came up to talk about he and his wife toured to Oregon last summer. Eventually, we finished our meal, and all these conversations, and headed for some ice cream. The first man who we had talked to had recommended a good ice cream parlor called Sweet Things, so we wandered over to give it a try! We tasted many original flavors such as Guiness ice cream, and I ended up buying mocha chip ice cream and Tim got mint chocolate chip, and to our surprise the man who had recommended the parlor came in and paid for our ice cream! We chatted with him and the ice cream baristas for a while and then realized we had many more hours to go. We biked through hilly terrain until we found Camp Bethel which was down a gravelly road. When we got to the campground office, it was closed so we stood on the porch awkwardly staring at the bulletein boards at somewhat of a loss at what to do. A few minutes later some staff came by and said we could camp at a pavillian for 4 dollars a night. We were really relieved, paid, and biked to the site to set up camp. It had become really cold and windy so we put on warmer clothes and our rain clothes and went about setting up the camp. There was another family of four setting up three big tents and chopping wood for a fire..and you're not supposed to chop wood at campgrounds so we were a little baffled. Eventually, they invited us to enjoy some toasted marshmallows and hot chocolate. It turned out they were having a camping birthday party for their son, which was why they had the extra tents. We prepared a minestrone soup for dinner with cheezits for extra flavor, fixed our bikes, and eventually fell asleep.

Time with Tim:
Pack up and start biking. It's deliciously flat compared to our huge climbs of the day before. We met a dude biking to Yorktown who knew sign language! He was cool. In Lexingon, we got to bike by lines of traffic for the VMI graduation. We then got a new tire for my back wheel because the gap was too small with my fire and frame combination and my back wheel was like a grinding wheel in the rain. Fortunately, my rear stays look like its an aluminum mandrel at the intersection instead of carbon fiber. Hooray! We got burgers for lunch and spent about three hours chatting with folks in Lexington. We camped at a religious campground that night.

Bike Trip - Day 11

The morning was wet with dew, sunny, and pretty. We packed up and set off on relatively flat terrain. Suddenly the terrtain was no longer flat, but vertical. We climbed higher...and higher...and higher. Eventually, Tim suffered some navigational difficulties and claimed the map and GPS wanted us to take a gravel road. Well...OK...I guess... So we keep climbing, higher and higher, on this gravel road when it suddenly ends. A local who was out for a hike said that we had two options. We could either ride back down and ride up the same hill via another (paved) road, or push our bikes a third of a mile up an old stagecoach trail. Neither of us was interested in reclimbing Mt. Horror so we got off our bikes and pushed for quite longer than either of us would have wished to. We eventually found the appalachian trail, pushed our bikes along that for a while, and this brought us to the Blue Ridge Parkway. It was noon or so. We'd been biking for 3 or 4 hours...and we'd probably only traveled 5 miles. We were really hungry so we ate some beef jerky, peanut butter, and granola bars before we started pedaling again. The mountains wanted to destroy us and we climbed higher..and higher...and higher...up to around 3000 feet, where Tim declares "on the plus side, I think this is the highest we climb!"

Then we climbed another 200 feet...and kept climbing and climbing and climbing. We were so hungry and tired and around 2:00 PM, we found a deli in Love Gap. We devoured two subs, an entire bag of doritos, and some iffy tasting cookies. The son of the deli lady was very nice and sat to chat with us for a while. He told us to visit a place called Gerties if we stayed in Vesuvius that night. We continued south on the Blue Ridge Parkway and surprise, surprise, we kept climbing and climbing and climbing. Our max elevation for the day was 1018 meters above sea level, and we had started around 213 meters above sea level. Then we turned off the Blue Ridge Parkway and we were met with the most daunting downhill ride I've ever experienced. We were practically riding the brakes, racing downhill at 40 mph, and going around hairpin turns in a rapid semi-controlled descent down the mountain. We dropped 1500 feet in two miles of riding. It was 6:30 PM or so, and we had spent 8 hours or so climbing 30ish miles and less than 15 minutes descending it. We were looking for the campground we saw on our map, and it ended up leading us to Gerties! It turned out that Gerties let you camp behind their store! Inside the store, there were millions of signatures all over the walls from motorcyclists and cyclists! We camped out back, had delicious pulled pork sandwiches from Gerties for dinner, gotfree water, and fell asleep very happy.

Time with Tim:
We were (stupidly) excited to begin climbing mountains today. We started out climbing normal switchbacks, which turned into gravel trails, which turned into a dead end deader than Vanilla Ice's career in music. A local pointed us up a little trail that led to the appalachian trail, when then led us to the Blue Ridge Parkway. We had to push our bikes about half a mile through all of that. Then we had a pleasant climb on the Blue Ridge parkway. Some tourists gawked openly at us and our bikes at a rest stop. We slept at a country store and had some tasty food. It rained all night (like usual). At this point I've come to consider rain as the natural state that VA likes best.

Bike Trip - Day 10

We woke up at the firehall and since we didn't have to pack everything (tent, etc), we were off to an early start by 8 am! Our good luck didn't last longer than 5 minutes as Tim realized that his back tire was loose. He tightened it, and we set off again....and 5 seconds later the tire of the b.o.b. trailer went kaput! We chilled on the side of the road replacing the tube, and some guy gave us a free pencil. Then we off to really start our day. We were in the appalachian foothills so the terrain got increasingly hilly. We passed through Monticello which is where Thomas Jefferson lived, and we met two credit-card tourers named Mary and Mike. They were very nice and they were biking to Oregon. We bumped into them repeatedly throughout the day because of random stops on both parties part. They were planning to stay in Charlottesville that night, where is where the University of VA is located. When we were passing through Charlottesville, we were in search for a bike store on our map that ended up being nowhere to be found. Confused, we got some cold drinks from Starbucks and sat on the curb for a while. I stopped at a weird hippy-dreamy style bookstore and picked up a book and two postcards; one for Nene and one for Tim's grandmother. We decided we weren't ready to call it a day yet, so we kept biking and after a while we stopped to take some photographs of the mountains. A bike mechanic stopped by and was very enthusiastic about our trip and told us about some touring couples ahead of us. He also gave us some tips for the upkeep of our bikes. We set off again, and finally we founded a campground called Misty Mountain, where we exhaustedly set up our tent. We opened the bottle of strawberry wine that we purchased the day before, and neither of us were fans of the wine. Tim ended up drinking the whole bottle, became somewhat drunk, and passed out in the tent after wandering to and from the showers. I wrote the postcard for Nene, and after showering I fell asleep too. We biked 73 or 74 miles!

Time with Tim:
I started the day wondering how I could cause some excitement. About 0.2 miles into the ride, I somehow broke the b.o.b. trailer so it started hopping with each wheel revolution. Good thing I wasn't going down a hill. I needed to replace the tube and reattach the wheel. While fixing, a friendly dude in a truck gave us a pencil with the greeting, "Now you can remember Mineral, VA!" I'm writing this entry 5 days after the fact and I have no idea where the pencil is now. Oh well. Nothing else out of this day merits much discussion, but we passed Monticello and couldn't find the bike store. The wine we had was not very good, and Perry made me drink the whole bottle. I needed to tune up the bike derailleurs so I clumsily did that. I then decided to take a shower and went back to the tent and fell asleep.

Bike Trip - Day 9

This morning we woke up in the cabin and started preparing to set off. The day was looking very nice and the weather was promising. We checked out, left the campground and spent the day on sweet back roads and fun rolling hills with nice scenery. The sky was really blue with a few cute fluffy clouds and the trees seemed so much greener than usual since we've seen so little nice weather. About 20 miles into the ride we stopped at a small grocery store in the middle of nowhere and bought some more food including bread, ham and cheese for lunchtime sandwiches. We sat outside eating and that grocery store was surprisingly busy for being in the middle of nowhere. All of Virginia seemed to be flooded; when we were biking, there was one section where the road was flooded with inches of water. When we biked through, all the water splashed into our shoes. All the riverbanks were flooded, and woods had turned into swamps with two feet of standing water. We continued biking and stopped at a church around 2:00 for a quick break to give my numb foot a rest. A cute old man was staking a horned goat out in a grassy area - a natural lawn mower! We eventually started biking again and came to a small grocery store. We stopped for cold drinks and ice cream and the store owner was especially fond of bikers. He was very nice and gave us water and had a logbook of bikers that he asked us to sign. We stayed for a bit and then wandered off on our way...and five miles later, Tim realized he had left his camelback behind. We found a shady place for me to wait and write while he went back to claim his forgotten camelback.

When he returned, we set off again and camp to the campground we had planned to spend the night at, only to discover it was a firehall that regularily houses cyclists! The first fireman we met was very nice and showed us to the room where we could stay. He also said we could use the showers, kitchen, refrigerator, TV, and laundry machines!! I was really happy to do some free laundry because all of our clothes had been damped and confined and as a result, they were disgusting and smelly. We took a trip to a local ice cream store and then returned to shower and do laundry. Now we are waiting until we can move everything into the dryer so we can go to bed.


Time with Tim:
GORGEOUS! After sick rain, it was all sunny and nice. We set off in higher spirits. We are in Boondocks, VA, but it is empty and pretty. Empty is good because there is no traffic. A good day of riding. I left my camelback in a store and realized it 4.5 miles later. Then I rode back and got it. While waiting for my dinner pizza, I was examining the scratch of lottery cards. Whats kinda messed up is that you have a 1:408000 chance of winning a tax-free million dollars on a 20 dollar ticket. You only have a 1:507000 chance of winning 15k on a 5 dollar ticket. Who in their right mind would even go for the 15k when you only get something around 6k after taxes? I almost bought one because so far in life I'm about $7 ahead on scratch-off lottery cards. I refrained because if I won nothing, I'd be down $13 dollars. I guess I need to just suck it up and hope to win big, or never play again. Sleeping inside at another fire station with really nice people. They gave us an air conditioned room with free laundry, showers, and TV! Better than a motel. Firefighters rock. I should be one; they said it's only three classes, at 6 weeks and 2 nights a week. Anyway, go Mineral, VA Volunteer Fire Department!

Bike Trip - Days 7 and 8

Morning came and it was wet and cold and miserable. We went to warm up with hot showers and stopped in the KOA store on the way back to the tent. The lady at the desk said that the storm had been so bad that most of the power in the area was down and most local schools were closed. She said it was a bad night to be in a tent and that if she had known, she would have put us in a cabin. She offered that we could stay in a cabin with a heater for free that night if we wanted to get warm and dry, but we said we probably wanted to keep going. She said the offer was still open if we changed our minds, so we went to pack up and look at the maps to see what was ahead. When Tim looked ahead, the only motel closeby was really far out of the way, and neither of us wanted to bike on a gloomy day to spend another night camping in sleeping bags that were already soaking wet. We ended up taking the lady on her offer, and moved all of our stuff to a cabin and hung it out to dry. The rest of the day was spent reading our books and eating food. We were hoping that the day of rest would help ease the numbness in my foot, but I could still feel the numbness throughout the whole day.

The bright side to all of this miserable weather is that I really, really love my rain clothes. I've never had good rain clothes before. The cannondale Morphis jackets that Tim and I have are designed for biking; the arms are a bit longer than usual so when you lean over to the handlebars, your wrists are still covered. The back is also a bit longer to cover your back when you're leaning over on the bike, as well. The collar fits my neck well, and the whole design is very nice. The jacket is made so that you can zip off the sleeves so they come off as one piece of fabric. This is nice on a hotter day when you want a vest. The back portions of the sleeves snap to the jacket with magnets when you assemble it so the back portion doesn't flap around. Clothes don't usually fit Tim well since he had a fit body with really broad shoulders and long arms, but this jacket fits him really well...perhaps maybe a bit tight in the shoulders. My jacket is a really nice vivid green and it attracts caterpillars and makes them fall in love with me. When we were waiting for Nick on the DC bike trails, thsi one caterpillar kept crawling all over me. I'd fling him some distance away, but he'd would determinedly turn around and trudge right back towards me. He did this at least 7 or 8 times.

Time with Tim:
There were eight tent sites at this campground. Of the eight, only ours was in use. Of the eight, only OUR tent site was a pool of water. The tent did quite well with only minor wet-infiltration. Downside was that it was 40F, 20 mph winds, and still raining. The campground lady couldn't believe we had slept in a tent, and offered us a free cabin and heater to dry out. I initially said "Nah, we'll keep biking." When I walked out I realized I was a stupid moron, and went back inside to accept the offer. We spent the day sitting inside hoping for better weather.

Bike Trip - Day 6

We woke up at the inn, the weather forecast was rain, and all the clothes we had washed in the bathtub the night before were all still soaking wet! Operation dry our clothes begain. We put stuff on the heater and sat around blow drying other wet clothes. To achieve maximum efficiency, we ate breakfast in shifts; Tim ate while I sat around blow drying clothes, and then we switched jobs. I love the free breakfasts at motels; there are always bagels and a nice assortment of cereals and then all the pastries. I also like the milk and juice because we don't drink any on the trip since it spoils, and we seem to get soda when we buy cold drinks at the store. After about two hours of blow drying our clothes, we packed up, checked out of the motel, and set off on our way.

My left foot had started going numb while biking, but usually felt better after an hour or so later. However, today my foot was still numb when I woke up so we were somewhat concerned. The combination of this and the miserable weather forecast made us decide to do a short day of 30 to 40 miles and camp. We found our way back to the Atlantic Coast Trail and soon after the weather became miserable. It started raining...then rained harder...and harder...and eventually became an outright downpour where I could almost picture cats and dogs falling out of the sky. We finally arrived at the KOA campground and paid for a tent campsite. We set up the tent under the fly and got everything inside. We were wet and cold so we went to take hot showers, and then we miserably hunkered up inside of our cold, wet tent. We'd bought a bag of double stuff oreos and those quickly dissappeared so we decided we'd cook something hot with our stove made from Heineken cans. We didn't want to sit outside in the rain so we decided we'd cook in the vestibule of our tent and hold the fly away from the flames. It wasn't the most brilliant of ideas, but we managed not to burn our tent down and had a nice meal of beef pasta with bacon that we threw in. It was still storming like crazy outside, so we just set up our sleeping bags and fell asleep. Over the night, water seeped into the bottom of the tent because the shower curtain we were using as a footprint was too small (we bought a tarp the next day because of this) so the bottom of my sleeping bag was soaked through. I huddled into a ball in the dry portion of my sleeping bag but it was just an awful night.

Time with Tim:
...BUT THEY AREN'T DRY. Forecast says that it will be rain free until 2 PM, and we wasted two of these rain free hours drying stuff with the heater and a hair dryer. It was getting close to noon and I think ours was the last room needing to be cleaned so the cleaning lady set up camp outside our window. I closed the window blind and set the chainy-thing lock, which will teach her. 20 miles into our ride, it started POURING. We rode in this for 10 miles to the next campground. We ask for a tent site and the guy just looks at us (forecast was 1-2 inches of rain with severe flood warnings). So, we set up and get in our somewhat dry tent, and sleep.

Bike Trip - Day 5

We woke up to find that it was still raining out and we were both really sick of rain. The weather channel's forecast looked bleak so we headed out to eat some breakfast. When we finished, we moped while packing up our bikes, checked out of the hotel, and started another day's journey in the rain.

The sky eventually cleared up, and the weather wasn't quite as dreary. However, by the time the weather had cleared up, Tim had heard gunshots in the woods. We weren't exactly comfortable with that fact, so we kept pushing on until we had biked 60 miles. We decided we weren't comfortable camping in the area, so we routed the GPS to a nearby hotel. To our surprise, when we arrived where the GPS said there was a hotel, there was nothing there. We were quite confused, and after ten chilly miles of wandering around in search of a hotel, we found a Days Inn and got a room. We were starving so we immediately went to eat. On the walk back to the hotel, we met three frenchmen who were amazed that we were biking across the country. We eventually arrived back at the hotel and laid around reading our books. 69.92 miles.

Time with Tim:
RAIN STILL. As we set to depart in the rain, Perry decided to see if pulling her tube valve out of the little hole would make it inflate faster. It didn't. I then replaced said tube with our only spare and made a mental note to buy more. Biking was uneventful, the weather cleared and showed us some sun. The truck driving masses were exerting dominance over the deer in the region, so we decided to motel it. The marked hotel on the map was non-existent so a 5 mile detour was required to find a hotel. The highlight of the evening was hot-tubbing outside the windows of a family restaurant! Perry thought we could wash our clothes in the tub and hang dry them but....

Bike Trip - Day 4

Nick woke us up this morning to let us know he was headed to work soon. Tim and I laid in bed a little longer, but we eventually got up and found our clean clothes had already been folded and brought downstairs for us. We changed and when Nick came downstairs to brush his teeth, we hugged and said goodbye until Germany! Tim and I packed our clothes, got ready, and went upstairs to pack our bikes. Nick's aunt offered us breakfast, so we had some cereal and tropical punch. Tess was home sick from school, so she ate breakfast with us. They had an old australian shepard and a very energetic 2 year old husky-shepard mix that is so fast and excitable that it can apparently catch birds out of the air. Both dogs were very nice, and we spent a little time playing with them. Eventually, we prepared our bikes and started off for the day. The weather was really gloomy and it started raining by the time we got on back on the rail trail. We brought out all our waterproof clothes and covers and then kept on trucking. The rail trail was actually really nice and well kept; there was no litter, and every so often there was a trailside playground. There was even a trailside outdoor hockey rink! It made Tim comment that he now understood where all of our tax dollars went. The trail was nice and flat, which was a nice break from the hills we have been struggling over. If it hadn't been rainy it would have been perfect, but at least we had the trail to ourselves.

Eventually, the trail ended, and the bike trail that it was supposed to intersect with was absolutely nowhere to be found. To make matters even more confusing, we were in the middle of a sketchy looking city. Tim routed his GPS to find the Mt. Vernon trail and we took a deep breath and set off again. We were on busy city roads with grumpy drivers but after some confusion and a nice fall on Tim's part, we found the trail again. The only problem was that the section of trail that we found was under construction and closed off! We followed some detour signs, but then these signs disappeared and we were lost on crazy city roads again. After circling around for a while, a woman walking her dog straightened us out and we found the trail again. At this point, we were really wet and tired and wanted someplace dry and warm to stay. Tim found a nearby hotel with his GPS and we set off in search of this hotel. Along the way we saw a bike shop, so we stopped in to see if they had any front pannier racks for a little more storage room on my bike, since my back tire was pretty loaded. They didn't have what we needed, but they did manage to clear up our confusion about why the bike trails hadn't intersected...apparently, we'd followed the wrong trail at the end. Good thing we had a GPS for when we go wrong. We set off again and finally arrived at a Quality Inn and booked a room. Two warm showers later, we spread out all of our disgustingly wet clothes and read our books after a filling meal at McDonalds. We biked 52 miles that day.

Time with Tim:
RAINING. HARD. Today had so much potential, like hearing a brief clip of thrash jazz before you realize cats could make better music. The trail was awesome, as the felonious DC officials have somehow finagled mad bank for building awesome stuff in their district of residence. We ended up in the Arlington bad-section that Dan Summers warned me about. Trying to find the trail, I decided to try biking on the right side of my body. It didn't work but I escaped relatively unscathed. Only problem was the hard, cold rain. Also, after we finally found the next trail (a bridge closure prevented our first try), THE TRAIL WAS CLOSED. And to rub salt into the wound, the detour signs dropped you into a crazier place where DC residents were performing an experiment to see whether honking their horns made traffic move faster. Fortunately we could bike through this gridlock. Anyway, after a day of frustration we found a motel to dry our stuff.

Bike Trip - Day 3

6:20 AM on day 3 I was disturbed from sleep by something poking me in the side. I rolled over to discover Tim poking me awake. We sleepily rolled up our sleeping bags, airmats, and started packing up. We were planning to stay at our friend Nick's place in Leesburg, VA that night, so we called him to try to get in contact. Tim's phone is antique and his battery is special, so we had to use my phone. We still have a really long morning turnaround time so we were on the road around 8 or so with tummies full of leftover chinese and my brilliant invetion of granola bars smothered in peanut butter and raisins. The terrain was nicer than the past two days but was still hilly. We eventually noticed signs saying NO BIKES but we ignored them and pushed onward. The shoulder closed a while after these signs and there was construction everywhere. To make matters worse, the road was heavily trafficked and was pretty close to being a highway. We got off our bikes and tried pushing our way through the grass on the side but soon saw that the side of the road also wasn't clear. We decided to bike on the shoulder on the opposite side of the road, but that eventually closed, too. We didn't want to backtrack, so we decided to get on our bikes and book it, I mean, BOOK IT, down the road while construction workers gaped open mouthed at us. Our hearts pounded until we could get off the road and we laid on the grass to still our hearts. We were near a pizzeria, so we decided to devour a yummy sausage pizza and take a little break. An hour later we packed up and set off again. We survived being yelled at and honked at by angry truckers and country men in pickup trucks and found a nice haven in the bike trails of the Washington, DC area. These trails are awesome but unmarked and slightly confusing, so we kept asking people to help us determine which way we needed to go.

Eventually we lost the trail, but a friendly woman waiting for the schoolbus with her children showed us how to find the trail again. We called Nick and had a very confusing time figuring out where to meet him. DC has awful traffic, so it was going to be hard for him to pick us up. We eventually figured things out and found the trail again and found the place where he planned to pick us up. We had biked about 52 miles for the day for about 142 miles total over the three days of biking. We wanted to learn more about the bike trails, so we asked an older couple who were walking on the trails with a child. They were visiting from Germany and didn't know the area well, but they said that their daughter in law was a local, and that she would come around soon. While we waited, Tim conversed with the couple in German and discovered that we will be visiting Germany close to their hometown this summer. Their daughter in law eventually wandered along the trail with another child. She said she wasn't completely sure about the bike trails, but invited us to her nearby house to look up the trails on her computer. We went along with them, figured everything out, had a nice chat, and eventually wandered back to our meeting place in wait for Nick. He was stuck in bumper to bumper traffic, so we read books and Tim fixed his ever finicky bike. Eventually Nick arrived, and we all drove to his aunt's house. We didn't get stuck in any traffic and arrived around 8:30 PM. We met his aunt and youngest two cousins, Tess and Taylor. They had just gotten home from gymnastics. Tess is really cute and spunky and can talk your ear off if you let her. She showed us their turtles when we were doing our laundry, and showed Tim up at the piano. We had nice, relieving, warm showers after a somewhat depressing and rainy day, and then we met Nick's older cousin Tanner. He was a little spacey and out of it because he had just hit his head in a baseball game and most likely had a concussion. Eventually, Nick, Tim and I went out to eat at the Mighty Midget which had german style sandwiches that Tim really liked and yummy french fries as well. Eventually we returned to Nick's aunt'shouse and since we were all exhausted, we headed right to sleep.

Time with Tim:
RAINING, WHY IS IT RAINING?! Morning was wet. Afternoon was OK, and we got to a DC bike trail that was very poorly labeled. Other things are poorly labeled, like vanilla extract that tastes nothing like vanilla, but this was worse because we got mad lost multiple times. The friendly DC residents (after an initial fear of weird psychos on bikes) guided us to our trail, often in broken english. Then we found Germans! I talked to them in German, and they liked my German! Wunderbar?

Bike Trip - Day 2

Day two of the trip found Tim poking me awake at 6:45 in the morning. Both of us were really sad and somber as we broke camp and got on the road again. The first "hill" (150 vertical meters of hill) had us walking our bikes uphill already, and our spirits were as low as they could go. A few more hills and an ascent of about 200 meters found us at one of the highest points of York, PA. It felt great to be on top of the landscape rather than at the bottom looking up. While the terrain was still hilly, it was much easier than day 1 so we managed to struggle through. At about 4:00, we started looking for campsites but there were so many horse farms and no tresspassing signs that we were discouraged. We couldn't decide whether to turn back and bike eight miles backwards off the trail. We couldn't stand the idea of back tracking, so we decided to keep going and see what was up ahead. We were so tired and another hill had us off our bikes and walking. We had to stop often to take breaks, but the beautiful weather made it less horrible. We had a nice lunch of ham sandwiches, strawberries, potato salad and juice so our tummies were full...but it was surprising how quickly we became hungry again. Tim saw that there was a chinese restaurant ahead, so we hungrily biked there and got general tso's chicken and fried dumplings. When we got the food, I ran over to a grocery store to grab a few things, and the store manager inquired about my biking clothes. When I told him we were going to bike to CA, he gave us a free bowl of mint chocolate gelato. Yum!

We were still without a place to stay so we biked to a nearby firehouse where Tim asked a fireman about cheap motels or campgrounds. The fire chief said nothing great was nearby and saw how tired we were, so he said we could camp on their land out back and help ourselves to their bathroom, shower, and water. One of the younger firemen was a biker, so after we had both eaten (in bliss!) and showered (in bliss!) we sat with the firemen for a while to chat. Then we hunkered up in our tent and quickly fell asleep.

Time with Tim:
Nice weather, and to say hello the terrain greeted us with 150m of climb right off our pseudo-stealth camp. Perhaps karma was unhappy with our free-ability at said campground to give us this fate. After climb one, we turned a corner, and 50m more of climb said, "what now bitch?" One time in cross-country my coach told me to say "down doggie" when we had to run up big hills. It was the stupidest advice I've ever heard. After miles of farms of stupid horses and no stealthy camping, we came to the town of Glyndon and set on motelling. I saw volunteer firemen washing their truck, and I like firemen as much as I deeply loathe police. Talking to said firemen netted us a backyard firehouse camp - cool.

Bike Trip - Day 1

Day 1 of our bike trip across the country did not go as well as I had hoped. It involved packing, realizing we had more stuff than we had originally expected, and the discovery that this weight had to be very carefully and strategically placed on the bikes if you didn't want to wobble precariously down the road even at speeds as low as 1 mph. Tim's bike shuddered visibly on the first downhill so we had to stop on a quieter road less than one mile away from his house to figure out how to solve the first of many, many problems we would encounter on the trip. Tim's mom, Joyce was following behind us in the car and I am convinced she was thinking we'd bike back home and call it quits. She patiently helped hold the bikes as we moved weight off of Tim's bike and into Navi's trailer, and arranged the remaining weight until we had two stable bikes. It was a beautiful day but it must have been 98 degrees outside with 100% humidity and by the time we got started again, it was probably around 2 pm. None the less, we started out feeling like superheros as we wound our way through Lancaster to pick up on the Atlantic Coast Trail. Suddenly, there was a large hill that wound its way around and around so we couldn't see the top but we forced our way up this monster. Every turn around the hill revealed even more of the enormous monster and when we finally reached the top, we were absolutely exhausted. A quick downhill later, we were faced with another monstrosity. We were either climbing a horrible hill at 3 mph, or descending another at 35 mph. We were realizing as the day wore on how much weight Navi was adding to our load. We took a break midhill to catch our breath and have a bite to eat, and when we started again, hell resumed. We were devastated, and our morale was lower than low. We eventually realized that bringing Navi along would make things very difficult for all three of us. We sadly found a campground and after sobbing for something like an hour, we handed Navi off to Joyce to take care of until we could have her again. Feeling quite defeated, we biked to a campsite, set up our first camp of the trip, and quietly and sadly made dinner and headed to sleep with the heaviest hearts.

Time with Tim:
It started an easy ride that I knew, then things quickly went downhill. The trail routed us through the apparent "York Rockies." Ick. We decided bikey with puppy was bad, and sadly parted. We snuck into a campground with nobody noticing, and never paid for it.