This was a 50-mile day. The first 10 miles were spent traversing the width of Charles City, which I discovered was a county, not a city per se.
As these early miles felt uneventful, even dreary, and left me with few notable memories of tidewater Virginia, perhaps this is a good time to describe my gear.
In 1980, before the Chinese had cornered the market, the Japanese still made mass-production, high-value bicycles. Fuji was one such brand. According to wikipedia, quoting from Richard’s Bicycle Book, “Fuji played a part in the cycling boom of the 1970s. It introduced the first successful mass-production 12-speed bicycle in the mid-1970s, using a redesigned rear axle to minimize spoke dish to maintain wheel strength. “
I had no idea what “spoke dish” was, but I liked the look of the 12-speed Fuji Royale that I saw at Jay’s Bike Shop in Princeton, NJ. I don’t remember the sale price, but I’m sure it was no more than a few hundred dollars. Mine was white, not blue like the one in the photo below.
Aside from the few notable exceptions when didn’t have to camp, I was on my own when it came to where and how to spend the nights. I carried a lightweight sleeping bag which provided sufficient warmth for all but a few of the chillier nights in Colorado and Wyoming.
As protection from bugs and rain, I bought a two-man tent, so tiny and confining that I was essentially sleeping in an orange nylon coffin. I don’t know how a second person could have fit into such a small space, but for my purposes it was perfect.
This type of tent is known as a “bivy sack,” and deserves a picture as well. Mine was orange rather than grey, but was otherwise almost identical to this REI model. This one is actually $16 cheaper, at $149, than the one I bought 40 years ago.
I ended up camping with Anthony again, though we had not seen each other during our day’s ride. I was happy to discover that the campground, populated mostly by RVs, had hot showers. I was very tired, and collapsed early in the evening.