My first week on the road

I haven't had much time to update the blog as I've been going all-out to make it to the Outer Banks to meet my friend Alyssa, a good friend from high school who is on internship at Duke University and therefore *relatively* close to my route (in the same state anyway). That plus exhaustion and very limited internet access must excuse my tardiness. I just crossed the North Carolina state line today, and have now logged a total of 405 miles since leaving DC. A quick overview of the first week is as follows:

Sunday, August 30 (Day 1): A big thanks to my friends Amy Baskette and Chad Jones for getting me on the road at 11:30am and biking with me to Mt. Vernon! After we parted ways, I made it another 45 miles to Prince William State Forest, 40 miles southwest of DC as the crow flies. In order to save money I made the misguided decision to head for a campground that was 14 hilly miles off-route. I got lost in the dark, rained on and arrived hungry and exhausted at the campsite at 9pm. It would be several days before I dared camp again.

Monday, August 31 (Day 2): After waking up every 20 minutes due to numbness in various limbs and finding my head at a 90 degree angle to my neck during the night I journeyed from Independent Hill to Fredericksburg (63 miles). It is a beautiful day but the route is more rural than I expected (see barn pictured above) and food stops so scarce that breakfast consisted of oreos, strawberry frosted pop-tarts and cheddar pretzel combos (don't get me wrong, it was delicious). I crossed the Rappahannock River into Fredericksburg by evening.

Tuesday, September 1 (Day 3): Once I got out of Fredericksburg, there were so few cars between there and Ashland that I had the roads all to myself and was able to ride straight down the center. It was another beautiful day, with blue skies and little puffy clouds. the birthplace of William Clark. I stopped at a grocery store in Chilesburg where it was as though the people were stuck in time but the food had passed on through and everything was expired. I spent the night in Ashland (pictured above), home of Randolph-Macon College, which reminds me terribly of Northfield, Minnesota, where I went to college.

Wednesday, September 2 (Day 4): My best and worst day so far, I started off a little slow this morning, wanting to take advantage of the library. When I stepped out close to 1pm I found my rear tire completely deflated and the local bike shop listed on my map having closed its doors a year prior. Two cyclists flew by and I dropped my tools and sprinted after him. Turns out he and his friend were friends with the owners of the old bike shop and fixed my tire for free. They even called me a "damsel in distress" but I didn't care: I had lived to face another day in blissful ignorance. Having gotten such a late start I made a circuitous route through Richmond in order to pick up a spare tube and arrived at my motel after 10pm. A full moon aided me as I rode for three hours in the pitch darkness through the woods and over the James River into the town of Hopewell, 15 miles from Suffolk, VA.

Thursday, September 3 (Day 5): While I'd been passing through pleasant, bucolic scenery so far, today's route was eerily quiet and supplied me with my first confederate flag sighting. There were houses and barking dogs but I saw very few people. The gardener at a convenience store explained that everyone in the area works for a slaughterhouse and an impending coal-fired power plant has divided the community as proven by yardsigns for miles on end reading "No New Coal Plant" or "Say Yes to Cypress Creek Power Plant." The roads had been paved with a roughly-crushed gravel asphalt so that I couldn't get any momentum and the vibrations were making me cranky. However, I ended up at a lovely private campground called Lake Butler just as the sun was beginning to set (pictured above). I was the only camper so I took up three spots and pitched my tent 10 feet from the water. The manager, a very old woman, said the closest place to get breakfast the next morning was at least 15 miles away. My face must have betrayed my disappointment because the next morning she brought me two biscuit breakfast sandwiches, cranberry juice and a banana. It was very sweet of her.

Friday, September 4 (Day 6): rode 74 miles to make it over the NC state border to Elizabeth City, a town of 17,000 people, still 50 miles on US-158 (the major roadway into the Outer Banks from the north) from Nags Head and Kitty Hawk. Fortunaely, Alyssa was willing to pick me up at my motel the next morning and drove me all the way to our b&b. I must say, driving was a marvelous change of pace. We stayed in Buxton, a village just 10 miles north of Cape Hatteras, the point where, I learned, the southerly-flowing cold water Labrador Current and the northerly-flowing warm water Gulf Stream collide, creating a dangerous area of turbulent waters and shallow sandbars known as Diamond Shoals.