Day 11: Getting reacquainted with the bike

After a nice long weekend, made even longer by heavy rains that hit the Outer Banks Sunday and Monday (see flooding in front of the Sand Dollar Motel where I stayed Monday night, above) I was off again yesterday back on the mainland heading towards Wilmington after 3 1/2 days off. Ocracoke received 8.5" of rain and Cedar Island received more than 11" this weekend -- the first big rain of the hurricane season. I'm currently in Beaufort, a small town but major shipping port, one of the deepest U.S. seaports on the Atlantic. Yesterday morning the rains died down just enough for me to get out of my motel on Ocracoke Island (the smallest, quaintest and southern-most of the populated Outer Banks islands) and onto the 2 1/4-hour ferry (pictured above) from Ocracoke back to continental North Carolina. Yesterday I rode 43 miles from where the ferry deposited me to Beaufort, where I have unusual access to a CVS, Wachovia and a library. 10-15 miles of the route ran through the Cedar Island National Wildlife Refuge, which is a vast marshland where you can see many birds including egrets, red-winged blackbirds and sadder-than-usual roadkill that includes baby turtles. The roadkill comment aside, I'm very impressed with how much land both on the Outer Banks and near the ocean on mainland NC has been saved from development. It must go a long way towards explaining why fishing is still so profitable up here compared with the Chesapeake Bay region. Ok, as it's now 2:30pm I must be off. 105 miles to Wilmington...