Category: Cycling Cross Country

When we awoke on July 4, comforted by the kindness of strangers, we felt ready to brave more of the dark underbelly of coal country, cautioned (by the Elkins themselves, no less) that Hazard County was filled with “rough folk.” The guidebook made a point of warning us about coal trucks, whose drivers were paid according to their speed in completing their routes, and who as a result were said to navigate the narrow roads with reckless abandon, and with particular scorn for cyclists.

As good fortune would have it, however, the week we passed through Hazard coincided with the week allotted for coal truck driver vacations. In retrospect, it was fortunate for another reason as well: had I known then how frightening to a plodding cyclist is a speeding truck filled to overflowing with heavy, precariously placed objects, I would have spent the remaining distance to the west coast dreading the Oregon lumber trucks.

Our departure from Pikesville was leisurely; slow starts had already become the norm for the four of us. We ran into our host (the fellow whose lawn we had occupied) at a local market on our way out of town. He and his son were consuming a breakfast of chocolate milk and cookies. They bid us safe travels, and voiced skepticism when we said we were aiming to reach Pippa Passes that day.

We reached Pippa Passes quite easily and discovered it possessed at least two notable attractions. One was a youth hostel which, by some now forgotten metric, was considered one of the two best in the U.S. (the other being in Oregon). We also took the opportunity to visit Alice Lloyd College, an unbelievably rustic little institution which (at the time at least) had an enrollment of only about 300 students, and which specialized in Appalachian Studies. After chatting with a few students who were spending their summer building homes in Appalachia, Jeff and I played some one-on-one basketball in the hostel gym.

We ate canned stew, heated up at the hostel, then finally ended our extended lunch break about 4 p.m. and pushed off. Some locals suggested a route to Hazard which they said would cut about eight miles off the 30 miles shown by the guidebook, and we decided to try it.

The route may have been shorter in miles, and with fewer hills, but we ended up taking major roads, which were extremely busy with Fourth of July traffic. This gave us a new opportunity to see the redneck-y side of the area, as exemplified by the profusion of pickup trucks and 4WD vehicles, driven by good old boys with no love for cyclists.

By 7:30 we had reached Hazard, and by 9:15 we’d eaten a hearty dinner at a local restaurant. My meal came with an unlimited salad bar, of which I took full advantage, gorging myself until I felt almost ill. Who knew, I thought, when I would again be able to eat as much as I wanted (and more)?

Our holiday celebration, we decided, would consist in taking a break from camping out; instead we elected to stay in a motel for the night. Once we had found a likely-looking place, Brenda and Carrie got us a room with two double beds. Jeff and I snuck into the room after it had been rented, forestalling any attempt by management to charge more for our two additional bodies.

The motel was nothing fancy, but it felt like an unusual luxury to take a real shower and loll about on the motel beds. Jeff and I made our way through a six-pack of Budweiser as I updated my journal and enjoyed the company of the other three.

One state down, eight to go.

The four of us made great time this morning, completing 45 miles before our lunch stop in Elkhorn City, just over the border into Kentucky, noting our accomplishment with a group photo in front of the “Welcome to Kentucky” sign.

Crossing our first state line was a tangible sign of progress. It never again seemed so far from one of a state to the other as it did while crossing Virginia, and not until I crossed into Oregon many miles later did I experience such keen pleasure at my accomplishment.

Our riding took us through a shockingly destitute environment. The contrast between the affluence of eastern Virginia and the poverty of eastern Kentucky could hardly have been more striking. Forced to walk our bikes over a one and a half mile stretch of gravel road, we became a bit unnerved, initially because of the terrain, then because the surroundings appeared so hostile that we worried we might be in danger. Broken-down tar paper shacks, barking dogs on chains, and strange-looking folk who eyed us suspiciously were common elements of the scenery.

The rainy overcast weather contributed to my overall impression of an industrial Hades equal to the Romantic poets’ worst nightmares. Sodden with liquefied coal dust, Jeff and I stopped in a small valley to wait for the girls late in the day, and, as the sun sank, a telephone lineman doing repairs nearby remarked matter-of-factly that he “wouldn’t want to stick around these parts after dark,” all while we surveyed the surrounding old house-trailers and jerry-built plasterboard and shingle boxes that passed for houses, as well as the pile of beer and soda cans damming an adjacent creek.

By the time the girls showed up, Jeff was ready for us to hitchhike to Pippa Passes, the next town of any size. But I wasn’t ready to abbreviate my cross-country trip, even by a few miles, and I insisted I’d carry on by bike, even if it meant riding alone.

But then things began to look up. A fellow stopped his truck as we walked along the gravel road and gave us two beers (thanks in part to Jeff’s diplomacy).

And our concerns about where to stay for the night were pacified when aother passerby offered up his yard as a camping spot for the night. The couple next door …. Wilma and Paul Elkins …were just as helpful, letting us use their bathroom, and taking us to use nearby pay phones and buy food. We also accompanied Paul on an errand to buy moonshine, .. and helped taste test it as well.

Paul told us that Pike County was the coal capital of Kentucky … and that it had the nicest people you would ever want to meet. I reckoned that he was probably right on both counts.

When this morning dawned, my energies were high. I no longer felt so lonely, especially when it turned out that I would have not one new riding companion, but three. Carrie and Brenda, the pair of female cyclists I had noticed the night before, asked me if I wanted to join their group and, when I explained that Jeff and I were new partners, they invited him to join as well.

Thus began the first of many enjoyable days together during which the four of us sometimes covered fewer miles than I would have liked, but had a lot of fun smelling the roses along the way.

On that July day, Jeff christened me “Alpine,” for my persistence in surmounting one of the worst hills I had encountered thus far — a five mile grade of considerable steepness between Damascus and Rosedale, VA. I waited for a solid 30 minutes on the far side of Church Mountain as Jeff shepherded “the girls” up and over. Jeff and I grew to enjoy our assumed roles as protectors; it gave us opportunities to forget about our own pains and fears, and to sit by the road taking in the moment, perhaps drinking a Coke, and talking to whoever else happened to be nearby, usually because we were awaiting the arrival of “the Turtle,” as Brenda had quickly, and aptly, been named.

Carrie could hold a steady pace, but she generally hung back to encourage Brenda, who rode better as a result. Once, on a ridge next to a tumble-down miner’s shack, Jeff and whooped aloud, instantly wet beyond all caring, as rain poured down suddenly and fiercely and Brenda at the same time crested the hill, grinning from ear to ear. At the same moment, a grubby little tow-headed boy peered out from behind the plastic sheeting covering the windows of the shack, probably wondering what all the commotion was about.

What would have been grim, even scary riding was I alone became enjoyable with my new companions, and I began to feel that this journey might be fun after all.

After getting sidetracked talking to a lonely old minister, eating “lunch” (from 3 until 4:30 p.m.), and dealing with my first flat tire of the trip, we arrived at Sykes Grocery Store, and set up camp in a cow pasture behind the store. We had covered about 40 miles for the day, and were only a little more than 30 miles from the Kentucky border.

My prayers for companionship, offered up with increasing frequency as my solitary daily routine began to pall, were unexpectedly answered today.

I didn’t get away from Rural Retreat until 11 a.m. after cleaning up after a botched, burned breakfast of French toast. Once underway, however, I encountered some of the easiest riding thus far. The guidebook gave me advance notice of a 3.5 hill in the Jefferson National Forest, but even that proved not especially difficult. Following that climb, a swift downhill and a little more brought me to Konnarock. From there, I continued down for another 12 miles, finishing this easy 42 mile day by coasting into “The Place,” a large house that had been converted into a hostel for Appalachian Trail hikers and cross-country bikers.

I readily plunked down my $1.50, which bought me shelter, water, and the company of other like-minded souls, and began to mingle with my compatriots. I discovered among them 11 other cyclists who were part of a Bikecentennial-sponsored trip, two Appalachian Trail thru- hikers, and two women cycling cross-country together. Then, sometime after my arrival, another solo male cyclist showed up.

It was the latter fellow, Jeff Day, from Massachusetts, with whom I bonded. I appreciated his ironic, irreverent sense of humor , and immediately felt that I had found a kindred spirit. He too was aiming for the West Coast and shared my quest-like vision of our undertaking. We agreed to join forces.

And the great hunger for voyages rose up in him — to come always, as now at dawn, into strange cities,
striding in among them, and sitting with them unknown, like a god in exile, stored with the enormous vision of the earth.
Thomas Wolfe, “Look Homeward Angel”

Perhaps it was an attitude that connected us, one not dissimilar to that of Wolfe’s Eugene Gant. Both of us — Jeff, for whom things were always black and white, clear-cut, and I, for whom this trip had been a welcome relief from dithering, uncertainty, aborted plans, and closet nightmares — both of us fancied ourselves “gods in exile,” sharing a feeling of self-importance laughable in retrospect, but forgivable in a young person setting out in life.

We both appreciated that this job we had set ourselves was not only a physical challenge, but one of constant escape, constant self re-invention. Not put upon by the unfinished tasks of the static life, we were freed to flee, again and again, from rootedness. At every stop, every town, village and hamlet, we could, parasite-like, extract the essence of the place, free of any duty or obligation but to live our role of “traveler … adventurer,” our mildly risky task giving my normally staid self a welcome whiff of iconoclasm, the always-changing scene providing Jeff new ears for his jokes and stories.

That these jokes and stories would become a bit tired to my ears, or that Jeff’s over-the-top gregariousness would leave me longing once more solitude were events in the future, that night in Damascus. On that pleasant summer evening, I was looking forward to sharing my journey with a companion.

Embracing the fine weather, Jeff and I both elected to camp outdoors, rather than sleep in the house. I had become quite comfortable sleeping in my little bivy sack, an orange waterproof shelter just large enough for my sleeping bag. Folded into its stuff sack, it was very tiny and light, making it ideal for a trip such as this. On a night such as this, I could dispense with the rain fly, and fall asleep looking up through the mesh at the vast sky and stars above.

After 46 boring miles of riding today, through uninspiring scenery, I had to acknowledge that I was tired and lonely. This felt like a dangerous admission, considering that I still had a very long way to go. I briefly allowed my doubts and fatigue to take the upper hand, and I considered ways in which I might make an honorable exit from this venture, one for which no reasonable person could reproach me.

Maybe my money would run out? Maybe my bicycle would break down and I’d be unable to afford to fix it? Maybe I’d fall and break a limb?

Money was a constant concern. I was about on schedule as far as expenditures went, unless the trip took me seven (or more) days longer than three months, which it certainly would if I continued at my present sluggish average pace of 45 miles/day. AND, the projected expenses did not include money for my return trip cross-country, which in a best case scenario would be on an airplane, and in a worst case scenario on a Greyhound bus. I cashed another $20 American Express traveler’s check today, bringing my total cashed to $50 for the week. This bill has to last me through Wednesday, and today is Monday.

There were small things that made a day tolerable. Finding letters from friends and family at my designated mail stops provided a temporary emotional life line. Because it was Sunday when I passed through Radford, I had to leave a note for the postmaster, asking him to forward any accumulated mail. Next mail stop: Elkhorn City, Kentucky.

Putting a keen edge on my loneliness was the fact that I felt less simpatico with the people in the Blue Ridge Mountain South than I did with those further east. I hesitated to brand the folks in these parts as rednecks, but they certainly conveyed less interest in, and sympathy for, my undertaking. Anecdotes fro other riders suggested that the people in Kentucky aren’t much different.

I again slept like a log, turning in about 10 p.m., glad to be adjusting my sleep cycle to get up and on the road earlier. Last night’s campground was crowded, but this one proved vast and empty. Paradoxically, my aloneness here made me feel stronger and more self-sufficient.

After leaving Blacksburg late morning, with a stop at McDonalds to fill the empty place in my stomach, I passed through Christiansburg and Radford, feeling dopey from lack of sleep, and thoroughly uninspired.

Deciding that this was going to be tantamount to a rest day, I didn’t push, and ended up detouring off the trail to camp at a state park, which was pleasant, if crowded. I got more ‘You’re doing this alone?’ incredulousness from the guard at the gate. Dinner was canned liver(!) and Rice-a-Roni cooked on my little stove. After calling my family on a pay phone, I tried to ignore how homesick I felt, and turned in early. I slept like a log for eight solid hours. Riding total for the day: 30 miles.

The previous day had been a low-mileage effort (44 miles), and I started out determined to make up for lost time. My goal was an ambitious one: I was aiming for Radford, VA, over 90 miles away.

True to form, I left the campground as Anthony was still sleeping. For some reason, I experienced my solitude that morning as loneliness. I felt as though I was moving out of the cozier parts of the state, and into areas with just as much history as the parts I had passed through, but less of the charm. Geographically, I had entered the Great Valley between the Blue Ridge Mountains to the east, and the younger Appalachians to the west. Psychologically, I felt as though I was beginning to understand the enormous size of this huge, unmanageable continent which stood between me and the Pacific.

By 6 p.m., following a four-mile climb, my ambition was flagging along with my energy. And I was sensing the opportunity to be found in a college town; Blacksburg is home to Virginia Tech, infamous as the 2007 scene of the country’s worst college mass shooting. In 1980, however, the school was known for its bucolic setting and academic rigor; budding engineers in particular were drawn to its strong science programs.

For the second time in a week, I looked to the hospitality of college students when seeking a place to crash for the night, and I was again not disappointed. While asking a young passerby for directions, I was quickly engaged in a conversation which led to Walter, my new acquaintance, offering me a sleeping spot on the couch in his Zeta Psi fraternity house. I accepted gratefully, and followed him to the frat house, where I met some of his fellow Zets: Buffalo Bob, J.D., Jean, and Freaky Dave.

Budding engineers (some electrical, some mechanical) all, they were abuzz with enthusiasm regarding my journey, and eager to spout facts and figures on their own passions, from nuclear energy to electric guitars. I was amused and admiring … am I allowed, I thought, only one year out of college myself, to find college kids so young, yet so awe-inspiring for their openness?

Things were humming at the frat house on that Saturday. We were out in the sticks, but the frat boys still stayed up late on long summer nights, even if only to watch SNL reruns. By the time I fell asleep on the living room couch, it was to toss and turn, pieces of pizza awash in my beer-filled tummy. I awoke in the morning feeling foggy and famished. Promising to send my new friends a copy of the book that intend to produce following the trip [is it too late? :)] I packed my bags and pedaled off, sad to say good-bye, and also to be denied the pleasure of a lazy Sunday morning spent drinking coffee and reading the paper.

Enacting my part in what had become almost a daily ritual, I left the KOA campground while Anthony was still sleeping. I went down some hills for a change, and was able to easily cover the 20+ miles to Lexington by lunchtime.

After a fast food lunch at Wendy’s, I located the Lexington bike shop. I wanted to have my front wheel “trued,” because I had noticed it wobbling a bit. While the bike was being worked on, I asked the mechanic what sort of maintenance I should be doing. The response was essentially, ‘not much;’ he suggested only that I keep the chain moderately lubricated (putting too much oil on a bike chain is a sin almost worse than not oiling it at all, as the excess lubricant attracts gunk and road dirt), and be attentive for any oddities in the way the bike was riding or handling.

As I passed out of Lexington, I rode by Washington and Lee University, and was not impressed by what I saw.

Hoping to camp in Buchanan, I arrived at a service station off of I-81 hot, befuddled by the directions in the guidebook, and very tired. Then, of course, Anthony showed up, and we rode together to a KOA which was four long miles out of our way, but which was the only known camping spot for miles. Adding to my annoyance was the fact that this campground charged us $6 apiece for the privilege of pitching our tents, while the one the previous night had charged only $2. I was on a tight budget, and by the end of the first week I had spent almost exactly $70, out of a total allotted of, as I recall, something just north of $1000 for the entire trip.

Anthony was still somewhat aloof, but soon enough we were brought together by two other campers, Keith and Joe, factory workers from Ohio, who were getting an early start on their Fourth of July celebration. They were “bikers” in another sense, riding Harleys. They cradled their Miller beers in individual foam coolers and swapped ribald stories as Anthony and I listened politely. These two men, older and with more earthy temperaments, gained our interest as they shared seat-of-the-pants life experience, from bikes to babes, that was unlike our own, and fascinating for its novelty.

The shared bonds of maleness and hunger established, the four of us headed to an all-you-can-eat spot Joe had spotted down the road. They invited Anthony and me aboard their motorcycles and we complied, feeling mildly traitorous to our kind. At the restaurant, we pulled in next to two more Harleys. Indications were that these cyclists were of an even tougher breed and, sure enough, having been invited to join their table, we spent the meal listening to racial slurs, stories of sexual conquests, and of course, motorcycle talk. It was all very colorful, yet ultimately a big yawn, and I was happy when the meal finished and the four of us returned to the campground, and our individual spaces.

I left Charlottesville about 9 a.m. and made decent time until, near noon, I tackled the first and worst of the day’s climbs on my way up to the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Feeling spent as I climbed up into the town of Afton, I approached a yard with a sign advertising “Water for Cyclists propped against an old bicycle. I discovered that I had arrived at the home of the storied “Cookie Lady,” June Curry. She and her father, Harold Haven, well-known for their hospitality to cyclists, had been plying cross-country riders with sandwiches, lemonade and cookies since the Bikecentennial trail’s inception.

After I’d eaten generous amounts of the food the two offered me, I took a proprietary stance next to my bike and smiles for the camera, as Harold took a photo to add to their album of cyclists. Afterwards, I flipped through the albums from past years, past pages of smiling anonymous bikers, and felt a little disheartened to realize that my impulse to undertake this trip was not as original as I had imagined. I reconciled myself to the realization that while my journey had been done before, it was nonetheless for me an adventure, and unique to my own experience.

It was pleasant to find two familiar faces in the album — my cousin, who had inspired me to do this, and a college classmate. It is strange, too, to be united with these two, the disparate three of us given a common identity, “cross-country cyclist,” in this tidy collection of photos held high in a sleepy Virginia mountain town.

As I prepared to leave, Harold showed genuine solicitousness of my obvious trepidation. He recounted inspiring anecdotes about other bikers, women traveling alone, out-of-shape people who, surprising themselves, rode coast to coast. I was grateful for his kindness. Then, as he returned to his garage to continue working on a car, I mounted my bike and continued up the hill.

As I continued to climb, small farms dotted the rolling landscape around me. Cousins to the plantations further east, these plots differ most obviously by the manner in which they have yielded to the whimsical demands of this treacherous topography. Man no longer controls the land; it controls him, and humbles his efforts to tame it.

Twenty miles of tourist-traveled Skyline Drive left me lonely again. Alien spaceship RVs, piloted by people whose motives I couldn’t fathom, whizzed by, blithely unaware that we were ascending a 4% grade. I was very aware. A cyclist’s level of contentment is inversely proportional to the grade of his ascent, a little-known but highly proveable theorem.

Momentary bouts with depression were being replaced with greater self-confidence. The early American settlers spent 125 years exploring the mere 200 miles between the Atlantic coast and the eastern base of the Blue Ridge mountains, then in only 100 more years spread themselves across the remaining width of this vast continent. So did I move along much more quickly and with greater assurance once over the Appalachian’s front range. “Can I do it?” was replaced by “How long will this take me?” as the oft-repeated internal query.

I had a reprieve near the end of the day, as I got to coast down Vesuvius Hill, a steep hill that was 3.7 miles of sheer torture for a west-to-east rider, but which I experienced as a delightful descent.

I had targeted a campground which was near the bottom of the hill. When I arrived I found a well-stocked store and a friendly clerk who inspired my first attempt at cooking, such as it was. His recommendation was to fry hamburger, then break it up and add it to beef-flavored Rice-a-Roni. I added my own touch, canned tomatoes, and found it entirely edible. There was little that I didn’t find edible during the trip; my body was a calorie-burning machine, and I was always hungry.

Darned if, along about 8, Anthony didn’t show up. He too had stayed over in Charlottesville for a day.

The first, and worst, of the hills loomed some distance west of Charlottesville, where the rolling Piedmont ascended onto the Blue Ridge, the eastward-most extension of the Appalachian Mountains. Rumor from other cyclists had it that I was about to encounter some of the most demanding terrain of the entire route.

And while I hadn’t reached those hills yet, this day was not an easy day, either, as the riding proved the most grueling thus far. As promised by the guidebook, the route was a “roller coaster,” a series of seeming endless ups and downs. By the time I was within 100 yards of Monticello, going up .. and up U.S. Route 53, I “like to died,” in the local parlance.

The scenery was some compensation, however. I was moving away from the drab areas near the coast and into the thick of the history-rich south. Several old homes, in particular, appealed to my literary preconceptions. One such home, on SR 619 near SR 761, was so rich with character that I felt I had stepped into a Faulkner novel, so overgrown, lived-in, loved, broken-down, and seductive did it appear.

And everywhere I looked were lovely, tanned, smiling young women.

This was the South of my imagination: ripe, fecund, easy-going, against a backdrop of beautiful decay.

And the people were so nice. After stopping for a lemonade on the outskirts of Charlottesville, I rang the cheapest campground in the guidebook; the woman on the phone was so warm and solicitous that I almost wept when I hung up.

I then found my way to a local camping supply store, Blue Ridge Mountain Sports, hoping they could diagnose a problem with my little camp stove, which had stopped working. Not only did they fix it free of charge, but one of the salesmen who saw my Northfield Mt. Hermon T-shirt turned out to be both a graduate and a former teaching fellow.

The day’s final piece of happy luck visited me while I was stopped outside a downtown shopping mall, repacking my overstuffed panniers. A voice at my elbow said:

“How y’all doing? Where y’all headed?”

Jim, a friendly and interested fellow, himself a veteran of bike touring, soon discovered that “y’all” was just me, and that I needed a place to stay for the night. Yes, I readily agreed, sleeping on his sister’s sofa would suit me just fine, and, no, taking a shower at her place would be no hardship either.

As it turned out, Jim’s sister and her roommates, coeds at the University of Virginia, just happened to have accommodations at their off-campus apartment, and some spare dinner as well, and also had access to laundry facilities. Only a week away from home, I was already dazzled by the simple pleasures of civilization, no less than by the fact that these three attractive young women were willing to usher me into their home.

College towns, I discovered more than once along the way, were bonanzas of freebies and of people my age, who were interested in my journey and who were usually willing to do what they could to provide support.

I lingered on in Charlottesville for a second day, utterly seduced by the beauty of the town and the UVA campus, and by the friendliness of my hosts. But by end of the day on the 25th, I was itching to move on.