Virginia, West Virginia, and back to Virginia

I got out of Claypool Hill, VA, at a pretty decent time, even with a stop at a little diner for breakfast. The morning was relatively cool and there was patchy cloud cover. According to my GPS, it was not going to be a climb-filled day like the past several had been. It was basically a straight shot through a valley to get to West Virginia. At the start of the day I was about 95 miles from a Mennonite Your Way home that had agreed to host me on Tuesday night, so I knew I was breaking that 95 miles up into two days. Knowing that there wasn't as much climbing to do, I was a bit energized. I moved quite quickly towards West Virginia and entered the state at the town of Bluefield. The sign welcoming me to West Virginia was actually in town. I suppose they were technically two different towns, since they were in different states, but that's where I crossed. I stopped only long enough to take my picture, then I kept going.

So, a while back I thought my GPS was trying to kill me when it was routing me through some hilly cities. I think that it may have learned it's lesson, and now I'm the idiot. I saw a road on the map that was more of a straight shot to where I was going (south of Princeton, WV), so I thought I'd take that and shorten my mileage a little bit. As soon as I started descending into this valley, I knew it was a bad idea. I've learned that the further you go down, the further you have to climb back up. It wasn't the worst climb I've ever experienced, but on a day when I thought I was going to have none, it was not a pleasant experience. I climbed out of this valley to a point where I crossed with Interstate 77, then descended into another valley. I would really like to know the last time a bicycle rode on this road. I can't imagine they get many cyclists, being in the middle of nowhere and all. I came upon some construction, which was just a bunch of dump trucks dumping rocks off the edge of the road into the river to help prevent erosion from taking the road out from underneath. The truck drivers looked at me like I was a novelty. Another reason I think cyclists are rare around here.  The picture here is not even of the construction zone.  There was nobody working on this one, they just marked it off with orange barrels.  This is what happens if they don't dump loads of rocks off to prevent erosion under the road.  Nebraska doesn't get pot-holes like this.  At least not where I'm from.  Another short climb later I was out of the valley and continued for another few uneventful miles before crossing back over to Virginia. 

Just after crossing into Virginia, I found a small campground by the river in Glen Lyn, VA. It had been a relatively short day, but I was about 35 miles from the Mennonite Your Way house for the following night. As I rolled in to the campground, I didn't see any place to register. I saw a group that was setting up camp, so I asked them how it worked. They said someone would come around and collect the money that evening. They invited me to set up camp next to them, and maybe we could split the cost. Dwight was certainly the most talkative of the bunch. He told me a couple different stories about 5 or 6 times each throughout the evening, including his boxing career, his martial arts training, and repeated examples of how great a guy he is. Aside from the one brief anti-Semitic rant, he seemed like an alright fellow. They got their grill going and offered me supper, so I jumped at the opportunity to have a burger instead of my beans and rice. After we got done eating, I offered to help them clean things up, mostly because it looked like rain was coming. They told me that it wasn't going to rain and that they'd clean it up later. At this point, it started to sprinkle. I asked them again if they wanted help cleaning up, but they continued to say that it wasn't going to rain and that they'd clean it up later. I got in my tent and mother nature proceeded to dump on us. From what I could hear, their tent blew over and they just threw all of the wet equipment into the trunk of the car. At this point, I put in my earplugs and tried to sleep. The wind and rain did not make for a quiet tent, and when the rain stopped, my neighbors got out of their car and started a fire. I drifted in and out of consciousness as the four of them enjoyed their night life. In the morning a woman came around while I was packing up to collect camping fees. My neighbors on the other side were in a small camper that looked as though it had been by the river a long time. They pulled the collection woman aside and complained about the noise from the night before. The woman from the camper told me that if she had owned a cell phone, she would have called the police in.

I had slept in (if I slept at all) a little more than I had wanted to, so I threw things together and hit the road. I stopped at the first gas station I came to, which was about 9 miles down the road. My bike felt like it was riding difficult, so I looked things over and found that my rear wheel was loose. It was locked in place, but it was wobbling at the bearings. I took off all the bags and flipped the bike over to have a better look. Long story short, I got it functional again, but the bearing felt extremely rough and was even sticking at some points, so it wouldn't spin freely. This made what would have been a short day with a couple of decent climbs into a crappy morning.

I made it through the climbs and arrived at Mariann and Bob's house just after 12:00. They fed me lunch, pulled a vehicle out of the garage so I could work on my bike in the shade, and even lent me their car when I needed to go to the bike shop to have them look at my wheel. The bike shop adjusted my bearings for $2 and told me of another bike shop in town where I could find the tires I was looking for. At the other shop, I dropped $80+ on new tires for my ride that shouldn't give me 3 flats in a day like my other, worn out tires did. I had been hoping to make it to DC on those tires.

After a wonderful supper and some conversation at a bit of a higher level than an inebriated Dwight was able to give, I headed to bed. I rose early to get on the road before the rain that had been forecast would begin. The weather people were wrong. I started the day at around 7am in the rain. It wasn't heavy, but enough to get me wet, and with the humidity, I didn't dry off. The cloud cover that came with the rain did stick around until early afternoon, which was nice. I pushed pretty hard and didn't stop very often. It was nice to be out of the rough part of the mountains. The road just rolled.

When I got within about 15 miles of my estimated end to the day, I passed a zoo. It seemed a bit off the beaten path, but it was there. There was a sign advertising that you could have your picture taken with a baby tiger. I passed it. I got about a mile past it before I decided that I needed my picture taken in my cycling gear with a baby tiger. This is the one time that I have actually backtracked on a bicycle tour for anything unnecessary. I don't like to cover the same ground more than once, unless it's to get to food, water, or shelter.

After the picture, the clouds were gone and the heat had come. It wasn't too bad when I was moving and had a breeze. As I pulled in to Lexington, VA, I saw an ice cream stand in a parking lot. It sounded too good to pass up. I had a peach shake. It was amazing. When I finally got to my final destination just north of Lexington, I had ridden about 90 miles on the day. I was a bit surprised. I only expected 75-80. Now Harrisonburg is just that much closer for my ride tomorrow. Again, chance for rain in the afternoon in Harrisonburg, so hopefully I'll beat it there.