May 24, 2001.
Lake Anna to Charlottesville, Virginia. (83 mi.) Mile 258
The
ups and downs of bike touring: bonking into Charlottesville.
Today was representative of some of
the good, the bad, and the ugly of bicycle touring. We finally got an early start on
our day and it felt great. Perfect temperature, sunny skies, air perfumed with
wild rose and honeysuckle, birds singing,.... and hills? No
problem. We felt very lucky to be cruising
along seeing the country this way.
Morning at Lake
Anna... packing up
Virginia countryside west of Lake Anna
We even stopped for a leisurely cup
of coffee and put away a dozen donuts between the two of us while sitting in
the sun watching motorists fill their gas tanks. Another advantage of cycle
touring is that there are more opportunities to strike up interesting
conversations with people you meet, such as Carr
Apple, a local contractor, who talked to us quite a while about area
things of interest.
By noon, however, we were starting
to run low on fuel and become a
little more focused on reaching the reported cafe in Palmyra, the only eatery on
a 60 mile map section. The Adventure Cycling TransAm route
takes the cyclist through scenic back roads with light traffic, but also without
many services. We were starting to "bonk" when we
pulled into Palmyra at 2:55 pm after almost 60 miles of riding, where we learned
that if we had been 5 minutes later, the cafe would have closed. Fortunately,
they stayed open to serve us. Besides lunch, Marilyn had
two chocolate milkshakes and some ibuprofen, which seemed to help the
situation a bit.
From studying the map, it became
apparent that there were no overnight accommodations anywhere until
Charlottesville, almost 30 miles away. We didn't see much choice but to push on
unless we did what one previous cyclist had done, (according to a local): pay $5
to have someone haul him and his bike into Charlottesville in the back of a
pickup. But we are both too stubborn to cheat it this way, so on we pushed.
Traffic picked up as we neared
Charlottesville on winding, hilly roads. None of the roads had any
shoulder and all are narrower than the combined width of 2 cars and a bicycle,
yet drivers take these roads at 35-40 mph, even when the limit is posted 15-25
mph. Sometimes we would look in our mirrors and see a logging truck barreling
down from behind, with a car coming toward us ahead simultaneously. It seemed
the @&^$% hills would never end, and to top it, we encountered our first
murderous bike-chasing dogs. Marilyn's legs were Jell-O and nerves were shot
when we finally pulled into the Charlottesville motel, where another guest
commented, "You two look completely played out!". This was true. We
have earned a lay-over day.
