Day 8: The Guys on Bikes Are at Full Strength! (In Lexington)
RYAN -
A lot has happened since the last post... at the end of Day 5, after posting our daily update, we met some friendly folks from White Hall - Dick, Harry and Susan. They were nice enough to let us use their community center for the evening, share some stories and thoughts about traveling cross country, share their muffins and watermelon with us and a little part of their lives. We learned of the community center from our "Bicycling Coast to Coast" book we've been using to plan our stops. Kind townspeople of White Hall, don't worry about floods of people stopping in for lodging - this website is only for those in the know.
Day 6 we got the best meat, egg and cheese muffins we've ever eaten at the store down the road. As a side note, Jonathan has come to realize that he is rediscovering food - everything he's eaten so far is the "best ever". It's probably because he's burning about 7,000 calories before noon each day. Especially this day - we crashed on the hills before reaching the famous Cookie Lady and draped ourselves on a stoop in front of the post office. We thought it was funny when we got up and left "sweat angels" on the concrete. Pictures forthcoming. A lady pulled in to drop off her mail and felt sorry for us - she pointed out that the Cookie Lady was IN SIGHT about 100' up the road. We weakly thanked her and walked our bikes up the rest of the hill, where the Cookie Lady regaled us with stories about the 12,000 or so cross country bikers that have passed through her doors. She is a kind lady who has been helping out bikers for the last 29 years, and you almost don't want to believe her until she shows you squintillions of postcards from countries you can't pronounce. We got a sweet Polaroid picture of us surrounded by postcards. It was .... otherworldly. She asked us if we were heading on to Mallard Duck Campground. We looked at the map and thought, "no way". We crashed WAY earlier than that. We DID end up making it to the Blue Ridge Parkway, which was astoundingly beautiful when you took the time to look up from the 45 degree slope you were climbing. The hills just climbed forever. We burned off the cookies from the Cookie Lady while still in sight of her house.
The fun part of the day was dropping off the Blue Ridge Parkway to find a place to camp. Dropping off the face of the earth might be more appropriate. The 3000' of altitude we worked to climb all day was lost in about six minutes as we screamed down route 664 towards Sherando Lake with our trailers threatening to run us over. Ryan hit a scary, wobbly 49mph.
Luckily the Sherando Lake campsite was full, and the helpful park ranger said that the next campsite with availability was Tye River Gap. This was only 1.4 miles away. Another quick look at the book revealed that Tye River Gap was indeed another 20 (TWENTY) miles away, and dark was steadily approaching. I've learned not to trust 18 year old park rangers that have never driven a car without air conditioning. They simply don't know.
The next few hours were a little odd. We ended up in a mullet-owned, mullet operated gas station prancing around in spandex shopping for Rice-r-Roni. Ryan debated purchasing a handgun - they were on sale for $99 with ammo - but he didn't think the owner would sell to someone wearing spandex. However, he was kind enough to let us fill our water jugs. On the way back to Sherando Lake we found a perfect camping pavilion at a Baptist Church replete with No Trespassing Signs. Ryan made the "Forgiveness is better than permission" argument which lost to a 2 to 1 vote, and he doggedly went from house to house attempting to find someone who knew how to contact the pastor. It was like trick-or-treating in a trailer park. We crawled up an old fire road, called 411 in a desperate last-ditch attempt to find the church pastor, and then proceeded to set up our tents in the rain. Blech.
The Rice-R-Roni was burned, the tents were wet, we were happy. Kinda.
Day 7 - We packed up wet tents, wet tarps, cleaned up the burned Rice-R-Roni, and headed back up to the Blue Ridge Parkway for another workout. The sun came out and dried us out for the short ride to Tye River Gap, which thankfully came up quickly. By noon were were scouting campsites and destroying the laundry and bathroom facilities.
That's when four dudes from our bible study showed up.
Tom, Norm (Nerm) (Matt), Nate and Johnny K came down to camp out for the night. Johnny was cleared by his doctor to join us for the cross country trek, and the other fellas decided to make a weekend out of it. They cooked up one of the best dinners we've ever had for the bike boys, and we are forever grateful.
Here are the superlatives from the weekend -
Best new nickname - Norm (originally Matt -> Nerm -> Elvis -> Norm)
Loudest Snorer - Ryan
Best Tentmates - Norm and Tom
Best Eye Bra - Jonathan (he slept with a VERY lacy eye cover)
Bocce Tournament Winner - Norm
The camp owner said we should write a book on how to have fun when we left the next morning. We weren't sure if he was serious, or if he was telling us we were too loud in a roundabout way.
Day 8: The best pancakes ever. Daveyray made pancake after pancake in the morning, topped off with home fries. It only took us three hours to pack up the tents and trailers. The fellas followed us on the way out of the campground and down the road to the next town like a pacecar, with hazard lights flashing. We felt IMPORTANT! The cars lined up behind them felt IMPATIENT!
A short 20 miles later and we made it to Daveyray's folks house, where we have been spoiled like crazy. Appetizers, naps in the hammock, homemade chocolate chip cookies, hot tub, steak dinner and a bed for everyone. We are considering a recovery week here in the Lexington resort. In reality, we have to press on if we're ever going to make it to the other side. A HUGE thank you to the Robertsons for lavishing love on us. It was appreciated more than you know - by a lot of moms out there, too.
So far the Lord has blessed us with safety, with slow running dogs, with wonderful people and wonderful weather. This trip is about honoring Him and enjoying his creation - now that Johnny is with us, it seems like we can really get started on doing that. Our team was complete and we flew the colors today in celebration (matching red, white and blue jerseys). Watch out, west coast. We're coming for you.
A lot has happened since the last post... at the end of Day 5, after posting our daily update, we met some friendly folks from White Hall - Dick, Harry and Susan. They were nice enough to let us use their community center for the evening, share some stories and thoughts about traveling cross country, share their muffins and watermelon with us and a little part of their lives. We learned of the community center from our "Bicycling Coast to Coast" book we've been using to plan our stops. Kind townspeople of White Hall, don't worry about floods of people stopping in for lodging - this website is only for those in the know.
Day 6 we got the best meat, egg and cheese muffins we've ever eaten at the store down the road. As a side note, Jonathan has come to realize that he is rediscovering food - everything he's eaten so far is the "best ever". It's probably because he's burning about 7,000 calories before noon each day. Especially this day - we crashed on the hills before reaching the famous Cookie Lady and draped ourselves on a stoop in front of the post office. We thought it was funny when we got up and left "sweat angels" on the concrete. Pictures forthcoming. A lady pulled in to drop off her mail and felt sorry for us - she pointed out that the Cookie Lady was IN SIGHT about 100' up the road. We weakly thanked her and walked our bikes up the rest of the hill, where the Cookie Lady regaled us with stories about the 12,000 or so cross country bikers that have passed through her doors. She is a kind lady who has been helping out bikers for the last 29 years, and you almost don't want to believe her until she shows you squintillions of postcards from countries you can't pronounce. We got a sweet Polaroid picture of us surrounded by postcards. It was .... otherworldly. She asked us if we were heading on to Mallard Duck Campground. We looked at the map and thought, "no way". We crashed WAY earlier than that. We DID end up making it to the Blue Ridge Parkway, which was astoundingly beautiful when you took the time to look up from the 45 degree slope you were climbing. The hills just climbed forever. We burned off the cookies from the Cookie Lady while still in sight of her house.
The fun part of the day was dropping off the Blue Ridge Parkway to find a place to camp. Dropping off the face of the earth might be more appropriate. The 3000' of altitude we worked to climb all day was lost in about six minutes as we screamed down route 664 towards Sherando Lake with our trailers threatening to run us over. Ryan hit a scary, wobbly 49mph.
Luckily the Sherando Lake campsite was full, and the helpful park ranger said that the next campsite with availability was Tye River Gap. This was only 1.4 miles away. Another quick look at the book revealed that Tye River Gap was indeed another 20 (TWENTY) miles away, and dark was steadily approaching. I've learned not to trust 18 year old park rangers that have never driven a car without air conditioning. They simply don't know.
The next few hours were a little odd. We ended up in a mullet-owned, mullet operated gas station prancing around in spandex shopping for Rice-r-Roni. Ryan debated purchasing a handgun - they were on sale for $99 with ammo - but he didn't think the owner would sell to someone wearing spandex. However, he was kind enough to let us fill our water jugs. On the way back to Sherando Lake we found a perfect camping pavilion at a Baptist Church replete with No Trespassing Signs. Ryan made the "Forgiveness is better than permission" argument which lost to a 2 to 1 vote, and he doggedly went from house to house attempting to find someone who knew how to contact the pastor. It was like trick-or-treating in a trailer park. We crawled up an old fire road, called 411 in a desperate last-ditch attempt to find the church pastor, and then proceeded to set up our tents in the rain. Blech.
The Rice-R-Roni was burned, the tents were wet, we were happy. Kinda.
Day 7 - We packed up wet tents, wet tarps, cleaned up the burned Rice-R-Roni, and headed back up to the Blue Ridge Parkway for another workout. The sun came out and dried us out for the short ride to Tye River Gap, which thankfully came up quickly. By noon were were scouting campsites and destroying the laundry and bathroom facilities.
That's when four dudes from our bible study showed up.
Tom, Norm (Nerm) (Matt), Nate and Johnny K came down to camp out for the night. Johnny was cleared by his doctor to join us for the cross country trek, and the other fellas decided to make a weekend out of it. They cooked up one of the best dinners we've ever had for the bike boys, and we are forever grateful.
Here are the superlatives from the weekend -
Best new nickname - Norm (originally Matt -> Nerm -> Elvis -> Norm)
Loudest Snorer - Ryan
Best Tentmates - Norm and Tom
Best Eye Bra - Jonathan (he slept with a VERY lacy eye cover)
Bocce Tournament Winner - Norm
The camp owner said we should write a book on how to have fun when we left the next morning. We weren't sure if he was serious, or if he was telling us we were too loud in a roundabout way.
Day 8: The best pancakes ever. Daveyray made pancake after pancake in the morning, topped off with home fries. It only took us three hours to pack up the tents and trailers. The fellas followed us on the way out of the campground and down the road to the next town like a pacecar, with hazard lights flashing. We felt IMPORTANT! The cars lined up behind them felt IMPATIENT!
A short 20 miles later and we made it to Daveyray's folks house, where we have been spoiled like crazy. Appetizers, naps in the hammock, homemade chocolate chip cookies, hot tub, steak dinner and a bed for everyone. We are considering a recovery week here in the Lexington resort. In reality, we have to press on if we're ever going to make it to the other side. A HUGE thank you to the Robertsons for lavishing love on us. It was appreciated more than you know - by a lot of moms out there, too.
So far the Lord has blessed us with safety, with slow running dogs, with wonderful people and wonderful weather. This trip is about honoring Him and enjoying his creation - now that Johnny is with us, it seems like we can really get started on doing that. Our team was complete and we flew the colors today in celebration (matching red, white and blue jerseys). Watch out, west coast. We're coming for you.
