(St. Paul, VA to Max Meadows, VA)
Shady mountain roads!
A fluffy friend that I almost ran over in the road (but didn’t!).
A fuzzy friend that I also almost ran over on the road (but didn’t!).
We had rocky start this morning. Literally. I biked with Travis and Maceo this morning and somewhere in the first hour we had made a wrong turn and ended up biking (or at least trying to) on a 4 mile long gravel road before returning to the original route. Biking on a gravel road can only be described by sounds: aaaaAHHHHHH, eeeeeeeeeek, OOF, ouchouchouch, and YIKES!!! Biking up gravel roads always has me sitting on the edge of my seat as I pray that with each pedal that I don’t slide up and dig gravel sized holes into my hands (happened twice a couple days ago- so that’s why bikers wear gloves!). Biking down gravel roads instills a sense of terror that is equally as terrifying. We had a lot of climbing today. About 7000 ft of climbing. The Appalachian mountains are really different from the Rockies and the Sierra Nevadas. Instead of one constant uphill for like 4 hours followed by a speedy zoom down mountains with either 7 or 8 percent grade, the Appalachians are a long string of LARGE hills. These mountain roads were built by people who just wanted to get over the dang mountains and boy, could we tell. The people who built the roads on these mountains couldn’t have cared less about the grade of these puppies. I had thought that the climbing was over once we had entered Kansas, thinking that the Appalachians were small mountains but MAN those hills are STEEEEP. And there are so many of them. But the mountains are covered with tall trees and lots of shade so all is well. Maceo and Anna switched for biking and driving so I biked with Cole for a bit today and tried to get him to listen to Radiolab (super well thought-out/produced podcast) and eventually wore him down for an episode. I then biked by myself for a bit today and the path was alright–on a service road along a major highway but good trees for shade! I bumped into Anna and Cole (they had taken a different route) at a gas station and we sat down to inhale our food. I treated myself to a nice crispy chicken quesadilla which gave me the energy to REALLY book it to the house in Max Meadows. We stayed with Tony from Warmshowers who let us use his kitchen to make dinner. Sean and Maceo made a delicious peanut chicken and egg rice dish along with some curried vegetables. We washed our dinner down with some oatmeal creme pies and chocolate milk before heading to bed. Once again, my butt has inevitably been chaffed but I have drive day tomorrow to help my bummed bum recover.
Four more days! WOAAHHH!
Asia
A crunchy friend whose life also remained spared.