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.