Nearing Completion

I arrived at my growing up homestead near Staunton, VA and thereby finished out my third-to-last leg two Sundays ago (July 19). The week before that had included so many moments that are crowding for space in my memory I can hardly believe it. Was there a couple in Richlands that invited me to sleep in their son's old bedroom, the walls pasted to the ceiling with Duke Basketball memorabilia? Did my Mom bring me a slice of peach pie in a tupperware container on my first night upon entering VA? Did Tom Graham and his two lovely daughters take me out to their farm to pick blackberries and feed their goats? Did I pass a fighting rooster farm, with a thousand blue plastic roosts perfectly aligned? Did I pedal across Annie Dillard's Tinker Creek? Did my dad join me on a ride through the hills south of Lexington? Did we gorge ourselves on wild raspberries?

I stayed with my parents in Harrisonburg for 4 days and then picked my friends up in Washington, DC to start our Shenandoah National Park traverse. Mel & Jess flew in from CO Springs. And Dan drove; he was moving to Manassas, VA anyway.

Dan brought his BOB trailer for gear, and I threw on the rear set of panniers that I'd jettisoned somewhere back in CO. Mel & Jess, with their racing bikes which couldn't take standard racks or trailers, nevertheless loaded as much gear as they could into their backpacks and onto Mel's seatpost rack. We were a motley crew.

We started with a classic loop through Albemarle County along the Tye River. Some very steep climbs. I kind of wanted to say, "welcome to VA; it's steep here," with that ride, but all it seemed to say to them was, "very pretty." We stayed in a cabin some family friends have rebuilt and baked pizzas on their grill. Then we rode North along the Skyline Drive, and stayed in another cabin near the halfway point. There we cooked some standard backpacking meal of instant rice and canned beans and freezer-whilted sliced peppers and canned chicken. The next day we descended from the ridgeline into Front Royal and rode Northwest to Middletown where a mutual friend of ours grew up. Greg's parents still live on the farm there and hosted us for the third evening. They turned on the water pump to their pool slide and fed us a garden-fresh meal and showed us around the farm. Ray even fired up his 20yr old Cat track loader and let each of us push a little bit of brush down the hill. Made us feel like real farmers. Marlene set us out on the porch as the evening closed and fed us pound cake and fresh fruit. Fireflies blinked on and off. It was very pleasant. The last day we rode the final bit into Manassas, where Dan's parents live. We had to sprint down a couple illegal miles of interstate 66 to connect our route, but got in safely. Mel & Jess flew out the next evening, which gave us enough time on Wednesday to explore a used bookstore and a tobacconist where they bought me an old-man pipe as a graduate school present.

Tomorrow Dan and I will start out toward the coast. He's riding with me for the last little bit. There are only 130mi to go. We'll divide that into 3 easy days. We'll arrive in Kilmarnock, VA, or more specifically the Easternmost tip of Windmill Point Road, sometime toward afternoon on Sunday, August 2. And then it'll be over.