Nomadic Cycling

Me, Mary and Phil, outside of Mary's shop before heading to Louisburg

I slept very soundly in Henrico and woke up around 9am to eat breakfast before heading out. It was almost 11 when we finally left, but we only had 46 miles to go to get to Louisburg, so it was a relatively easy day. After Paul left, Phil and I packed up and rode about 4 miles down the road to visit Mary’s shop and say goodbye to her.

It was a beautiful day, but the lack of a tailwind slowed us down considerably. I do wish that technology existed to record my thoughts directly into a word processing software somewhere in the cloud while I’m cycling, because I always have such elaborate thoughts that I tend to forget as soon as I get off the bike or something else distracts me. Today, what I remember from the ride was that I had the Canadian national anthem stuck in my head for a while, and then I struggled to recall the lyrics to my own American national anthem. Also, there were a good number of dogs out on the course today, and they all wanted to chase the bicyclists. I don’t even remember seeing a single dog during the whole trip so far, but today it seemed like every house we passed had at least one or two (or more) dogs that barked at and chased us. Most of them were fenced in, but there were a few that were not held back by any enclosure, and I got to use the water bottle technique on the ones that had any chance of catching up to me. At one point, there were so many dogs barking from so many different yards, it brought to mind the scene from 101 Dalmatians where all of the dogs are communicating with each other throughout the city and beyond. I’m pretty sure there is a strong line of communication between the dogs from Henrico to Louisburg.

We stopped for a long break about 15 miles from Louisburg. There were no shops or restaurants anywhere on the route, so we laid our bikes on the ground on the side of the road, and sat in the sun eating snacks we had in our bags. Phil read for a while, and I inspected my bike to make sure everything was still running smoothly. We stayed there for about an hour, since we were ahead of schedule, and still we made it to Louisburg more than an hour before I had planned.

Liz wasn’t going to be home for another two hours, so we found a cafe (the Coffee Hound Bookshop) that was conveniently located just two blocks from her house and waited there until about 6pm. Liz is one of my good friends from high school whose parents moved to Louisburg just after graduation, and I hadn’t seen her since she was visiting Rhode Island three years ago in 2008. We brought our stuff inside and ate dinner, and Phil read his book again while Liz and I phoned our friend Sam reminisced about old friends.

Henry, Phil, Me and Steve

Henry had to leave by 8am for work, so Phil and I got an early start for a long day.  Thankfully, he gave me some hand warmers to put into my shoes so my toes wouldn’t freeze during the ride.  It was one of the coldest mornings thus far, but at least it was sunny.

We managed 65 miles at a pace of 15.6 miles per hour, stopping twice for long meals. The first stop was only 16 miles out, at a Denny’s off the highway, for breakfast.  We stayed until 11am, waiting for it to warm up a bit.  It had warmed up significantly by the time we reached Emporia, where we stopped for lunch at a small diner called Logan’s.  The people inside were very friendly and told us that two girls who were riding down south from New York had stopped by just two weeks ago.  They all told us to come back if we were ever in the area again, so we will have to remember to visit them again some day.

Cotton from one of the many fields we passed

Somewhere in between breakfast and lunch, we started seeing fields of cotton.  I had never seen cotton before, and Phil initially thought the fields were full of white poppies.  The amount of cotton was impressive, and for a several miles I had the song “Summertime” stuck in my head (“Summertime and the living is easy/fish are jumping/and the cotton is high…”).

We were mostly on the Blue Star Highway, a memorial highway for veterans from World War II.  This road parallels Interstate-95, but has much less traffic and is actually quite pleasant.  However, when we turned off the main road to approach our destination, the roads became much nicer.  As we neared Paul and Mary’s home in Henrico, we rode over gently rolling hills and right over a beautiful lake.

View of Lake Gaston on our way into Henrico

Phil and I happily contributed to Paul and Mary’s very first couchsurfing experience.  Paul was home to welcome us inside and show us our rooms.  Mary has been working as an interior designer and decorator for her own business for over 25 years, and their home is absolutely gorgeous.  The view of Lake Gaston is even more extraordinary.  As we sipped wine on the porch after showering, waiting for Mary to come home, I couldn’t take my eyes off of the lake.

Shortly after sunset, the four of us went over to meet some new friends of Paul and Mary’s for dinner at a restaurant on the lake.  Everyone ordered the fish and chips, except for me – I chose fish tacos.  The food and company were excellent, and after going back to the house and programming the next day’s route into Garmin, we were ready for sleep.

The ride from Richmond to Petersburg was our shortest yet – less than 30 miles – so we slept until 9 or 10am and had a leisurely morning.  After Dennis returned from an exam he had at school and Crystal returned from cleaning a house, we walked to Joe’s, a neighborhood bar/restaurant, for breakfast.  We ate and then walked back to Dennis’s dad’s house to pack up, and we were back on the road just past 1pm.

It was a sunny day, and warm enough for shorts and no jacket.  The first half of the ride went by very quickly, and we stopped to break at the Food Lion (a great name for a supermarket, in my opinion) less than an hour after we had begun.  We took route 301 the whole way, so it was a fast, straight shot to Petersburg.  Arriving at Henry’s house just before 4pm, we had spent less than two hours on our bikes that day.

Standing by a cannon on the battlefield on Petersburg

Henry welcomed us inside and helped carry our bags and bikes up to his 3rd floor condo.  He brought us to the Petersburg battlefield, where we walked around and checked out the trenches, cannons, and other battle equipment that was still there.  We also saw at least ten deer during our hike.

Henry had driven us onto the army base to get to the battlefield, and we had hiked through some woods.  It was dark on our hike back to his Jeep, and we found that we had taken the wrong path when we emerged from the woods on the outside of the base.  Phil and I waited outside the gates while Henry ran back in to get the car, since I had left my ID in the car.

When we got back to his house, Henry phoned his friend, Steve, and we all went out for sushi in the old downtown part of Petersburg.  We stayed up talking (mostly about traveling) back at Henry’s house for a few hours before going to sleep.

I know it appears rather lame that we seem to be taking more days off than not lately and only cycling one day before resting one or two days, but we decided to spend Halloween in a city where there would be entertaining ways to celebrate the holiday.  Since we were in Richmond and the next real city is several days away, we arranged to stay two nights with Dennis and Crystal before moving on to the small town of Petersburg.  It was an excellent decision, and we did have a great Halloween.

An appropriate place to spend time on Halloween

Phil and I made strawberry pancakes for our hosts back at Crystal’s house.  Afterwards, Crystal took us to Hollywood Cemetery, which was only a block from her house.  We walked around the whole cemetery, exploring, admiring, and taking photos.  The cemetery is known for being the resting place for thousands of soldiers from the Civil War as well as three former presidents and a few other famous people.

After the cemetery, we went back to the house, where Dennis had just sold his SWEET bus (Schoolbus for Wandering Exploring Everything Tight)to the neighbors, who plan on taking it down to Florida to live for the winter.  Then we walked to the 821 cafe for lunch, where I ate a delicious Union burger (with mushrooms, Swiss cheese, onion rings, lettuce and tomato).  Crystal let us try her fried artichoke sandwich, which was surprisingly tasty.

The quarry on Belle Isle

After some time back at the house, we went to the river and walked across a suspension foot bridge to Belle Isle, where we walked along the river to a quarry.  I never knew Richmond had such natural beauty.

On the way back, we stopped to buy candy for trick-or-treaters.  We sat, passing out candy and drinking wine on the porch of Crystal’s house with her roommate, Emma, and some of their friends.  Then came the parade.  I had never seen or heard of a Halloween parade, but there is one in Richmond.  Unfortunately, it started raining shortly before the parade was scheduled to start, so it was shorter than usual.  It was still amazing.

All dressed up for Halloween

Crystal let Phil and I borrow some of her clothing to dress up for the occasion.  Phil turned himself into a fine pirate, while I donned a traditional Bavarian dress to become a German woman.  Crystal made herself into a zombie.  We went back to Dennis’s dad’s house before going out to Sticky Rice, a restaurant that offers half off sushi after 10:30pm on Mondays.  There, we met Lauren, who has biked across the country twice – once with Bike and Build and then again two years later as a promotional ride for a vodka company.  She was excited for us and bought us a drink, as well as gave us a donation!  The bartenders, John and Sophie, were also very good to us.  Sophie was particularly interested in our trip, since she had done some traveling before and was saving up to do it again.  After having one last sushi roll, we walked back to Dennis’s dad’s house for the night.

Me, Chay, Betsy and Phil

I had thought about running in a mile race that someone we met in the cafe the day before had told me about, but I didn’t actually wake up until 9:30, so it was too late.  Betsy made waffles in the morning, and we covered them with brie cheese, apple-cinnamon syrup and blueberry syrup.  I worked on the website a bit, finally getting a working link for donations on the “Donate” page, and we did a small load of laundry before leaving Betsy’s house.

We got a pretty late start, not leaving until after noon, but the wind, while not strong, was finally in our favor, so we made good time.  This was our fastest ride yet, with an average speed of 15.4 miles per hour.  The sun stayed out all day too, so I didn’t have any trouble with my feet freezing on me.

Crystal and Emma's porch is ready for Halloween

We arrived in Richmond, the city that hosted the first US Open of Cycling in 2007, just after 5pm, and reached Crystal’s house at 5:30.  Crystal was sitting outside on her very festive porch that was all decorated for Halloween.  We showered there, and then waited for Dennis to get back from mountain biking, since we were actually staying at his dad’s house.  We left our bikes at Crystal’s and drove about a mile to Dennis’s dad’s house, where Crystal made us a pizza and we talked and drank wine before going to bed.

This morning I awoke in the tent, huddled at the bottom (we had pitched it on a slight hill so the rain wouldn’t pool overnight), by Phil’s feet.  I hadn’t slept very well, since my sleeping bag was awfully tight so I couldn’t stretch out my legs, and I kept waking up, either with numb arms, hearing strange sounds outside in the direction of where our bikes were hidden, or finding myself sliding down, off of my sleeping pad entirely with my feet pressing up against the outer wall of the tent so I could actually feel the rain pattering down on them.  Nevertheless, I did not want to emerge from my warm sleeping bag when the time came to pack up and leave the church grounds.  We managed to gather all of our stuff together and get back on our bikes before 9am, but not before our hands and feet were numb.
It was less than a mile to the cafe I had picked out for breakfast, and after locking up the bikes, while walking through the entrance, I confided to Phil that I didn’t think I could ride in this.  He readily agreed, as both of our gloves and shoes were soaked, and our hands and feet were frozen.  It looked like it was going to be cold and rainy all day – not the kind of weather amenable to a 50-60 mile bike ride.  After reading what Phil wrote about how he occupies his mind during our long (and mostly silent) rides, I admitted that I spent the latter half of yesterday talking to my feet, convincing them not to freeze on me and trying to both mentally and verbally coerce my heartburn into shifting the heat to where it was lacking in my extremities.  Needless to say, I’m glad we chose to stay in Fredericksburg.

Betsy's bathroom was painted by a local artist and depicts Fredericksburg's skyline in brilliant colors

In the Hyperion Espresso cafe, we ate muffins and drank coffee and tea while using their free wifi to find couchsurfing hosts for the next few days.  We were very grateful to hear back from a few people, including Betsy, who lives less than a mile from the cafe in Fredericksburg.  We stayed at the cafe nearly all day, talking to other customers, reading, blogging, and avoiding the miserable weather outside.

When we finally left Hyperion around 3pm, Betsy welcomed us into her home and let us shower before offering us more coffee and tea and then taking us on a driving tour of historic Fredericksburg, with Chay narrating.  After the tour, we all had a relaxing evening at the house, enjoying homemade chili with brown rice and tortilla chips, plenty of drinks, and cake, while watching the movie “Shutter Island” to go with the season.

He holds him with his skinny hand,
“There was a ship,” quoth he.
`Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!’
Eftsoons his hand dropped he.

This trip has been a great adventure so far. For the most part it has not been the land passed or the sights seen, its the people I’ve meet. All of you whom I have both stayed with and met on the road. You are who has made this the wonderful trip that it has been so far and that I am sure it will continue to be.

Unfortunately the media tends not to report on the general good that goes on in the world the kindness that seems overwhelming on the small scale, yet when it is repeated again and again as it has been on this trip it shows itself to be the norm. The norm that is ignored. The media only wants the sensational. That which tends to be sensational seems to be cruelty and violence, but for those who are reading this I can only say good things of the world.

I do not mean to say that the world is perfect and that people have not been exposed to sadness and cruelty. It is sad and true. But its not the norm

In the 24 short years that I have been around I have been fortunate to experience very little but kindness and sincerity from all of those around me.

In short I want thank everyone who has helped me so far up to this point, both on the road and in general.

All I can really hope for is that I can return the kindness in the same or greater proportion than what has been done to me so far. This ride, is a small expression of that will to help others. Thank you everyone who has been a part of it so far.

Thank you.

Phil

By thy long grey beard and glittering eye,
Now wherefore stopp’st thou me?

The bridegroom’s doors are opened wide,
And I am next of kin;
The guests are met, the feast is set:
Mayst hear the merry din.’

Evening everyone, a few things to say.

First and foremost I want to give you all a few words on what this sort of travel does to you. In short, without proper expectations and preparation it drives you crazy.

I am an extremely active person both physically and mentally. This adventure certainly takes care of the physical bit yet it aside from conversation with random people hardly does anything for the mind. To qualify that statement, I mean to say that the long spans of riding in between point A and point B are the twilight zones for the mind.

Sure at the beginning and end of the day there is pleanty of human interaction, packing, planning and things to be done to properly occupy the mind. However once you get on the saddle and start riding, unless the conditions require constant attention your mind just starts to drift and you get bored and start to think about all the things you dont like about riding. How the saddle feels, what hurts in your legs, the wind, the rain anything. I am even fortunate to have a travel companion to talk to periodically but during riding Sarah can get so far away from me that I could easily consider myself alone.

Perhaps thats just me, perhaps I am slightly crazy but friends of mine have remarked of a similar occurance so I am here to try to lend aid to other travelers.

First and foremost you need a game plan. Something to do, something to mentally occupy yourself with for several hours a day.

Tips:

1: Get an mp3 player, I suggest the Sansa clip it costs about $60, the new one that is. Its a brilliant little mp3 player weighs a few ounces at most; its very bare bones, no flashy visual display or anything just nice and simple . The best part about the device is that its a standard 8 gigs of memory but has a Micro SD card slot meaning that it is expandable. I have a 16 Gig card in there at the moment. It cost me about $20. So for about $80 you have a 24 gig device with an excellent battery life. Ok that’s my endorsement for the evening. Regardless of what mp3 player you get. Get one! Use it to learn a language, listen to audio books, poetry whatever you please. Music works too, however you don’t really have to think or pay attention to listen to music so your brain can start wandering to strange places so something that requires thinking is best. Again I say audio books, language programs or something of the like are wonderful. I am currently working on learning Italian and memorizing various bits of classical poetry. It works wonders.

Ok so in the event that the battery dies on the mp3 player (which will happen, especially when you don’t want it to) or you just don’t have one, you need to use your own mental facilities to keep yourself occupied.

2. Try to memorize things. Stories, languages, Poetry, Pi, Strings of prime numbers. Anything really. Trying to memorize something makes you think just hard enough that you can still function and navigate, yet occupies enough of your brain so that your still busy and active in there. Its also pretty easy to get distracted by a car that passes far to close for comfort, or a beautiful landscape or bad directions. Just for long enough that you lose your place or forget just what you were doing and so you have to start over or somewhere you do remember. Hours of instant occupation, and honestly once you’ve memorized something you can put it to good use. Especially if its a language. But if its random facts or poetry you can impress random people, or come up with witty quotes that very few people will get. You can spout off the billionth digit of Pi; which is 9 by the way. Anything just memorize anything, once your done move on to the next thing. Supposedly its healthy for the brain too.

3. Play mental games. Doesn’t matter what it is, make something up if you have to. Few tips, look for funny or interesting road signs. Take pictures of them or just memorize them. Play license plate bingo with states or numbers.  Number games or taking formula to extremes are certainly time consuming. 1+1=2, 2+2=4 4+4=8 so on and so forth. Divide your mileage by different numbers.

Things that can certainly be tough and monotonous are hills. Pushing through them, particularly on certain hills can be tough. Besides a dedication to not stopping which can be much worse than going forward each pedal stroke can hurt. So I tend to count them. It helps keep ones mind busy on something else. Makes it a bit easier to get up hills.

Im sure there are other things to do to keep your mind busy but I strongly suggest keeping yourself busy or you may get homesick or lonely with what your doing so the best thing to do is to stay mentally occupied.

Good luck and happy cycling,

Phil

We took yet another day off at Rosheen’s house in Annadale, where we didn’t even leave the house (aside from a 6.5 mile run I did in the afternoon).  After getting  more than enough rest, we took off around 11am on Friday morning.  It was so cold, we only stopped once every 20 miles.  After the first stop, I lost all feeling in my right foot and never regained it until sometime during dinner later that night.

There weren’t many places to stop and warm up along the way, and after the second stop, I was really worried that my foot would become frostbitten and need to be amputated.  Then, just 7 miles from the end, I saw a place called “Try My Nuts” and was instantly drawn to it, for both warmth and nourishment.  The man inside gave us several samples of nuts, all coated in different sugars, spices, and butter.  I probably would have had to stay for a few hours to warm up fully, but after sharing a hot chocolate with Phil and eating a pretzel coated in chocolate and mini Reese’s Pieces, we ventured back outside to finish the last few miles.

First time pitching the tent since we left

Fredericksburg is a lovely historical town, and we passed through a battlefield and a large park on our way into the town center.  Phil had charted out the day’s course to end at a church that looked like it had a large yard where we could camp.  When we arrived, he went inside to ask about pitching our tent, and the man inside generously obliged.

After setting up camp in the church yard and locking our bikes up, Phil and I walked into the town to eat dinner.  We ended up at a quaint restaurant called Jake & Mike’s, where we each started with a pint of beer.  I ordered seared escolar over spinach salad and Phil had blackened chicken over zucchini and mashed potatoes.  For dessert, we split a pumpkin bread pudding with dulce de leche ice-cream.  Everything was wonderful, and we were able to load the next day’s route into Garmin and charge up some of our electronics as well.  I am not looking forward to riding tomorrow, as it is going to be even colder and will be raining as well.

We won’t be stopping every other day, I promise!  But it’s not every day that we find ourselves in such a vibrant area, with so much to see and do, and with family and friends as well.  We are trying to take advantage of being so close to the city, while avoiding cycling in the rain.

Tuesday morning we both woke up late, around 11am.  A few days ago, we began entertaining the idea of cycling straight to New Orleans for the winter, where we can work as pedicab drivers and in a bike shop, instead of cycling down the coast to Fort Lauderdale first.  Since boats generally don’t cross the Atlantic until springtime, we will likely have to stay in the states for the winter.  Why not go directly to New Orleans, where we know we have work, before cycling to Florida in the spring (preferably after the Mardi Gras marathon) to find work on a boat?  It will mean we need to start thinking about adjusting our course in a more westerly direction.

We discussed travel plans and towns we’d stay in along the way for a bit, and then figured out how to take the bus and metro to head into the city for the day.  Upon arriving in DC, my first priority was getting food (as usual).  Phil wanted to see the museums, and since they were closing at 5:30, we decided to look into those first- but not before I bought some food from the first food truck (and only traveling culinary carnival) in the city.  I enjoyed a delicious pumpkin and chick pea curry with basmati rice and a mango lassipop, while Phil started touring the Air and Space Museum.

The next museum we visited was the Native American museum (actually called National Museum of the American Indian).  Once inside, I found my way straight to the cafe, which was filled with Native American cuisine from all regions of North and South America.  The food all looked so good, but was so expensive.  I sampled a few things and ended up spending way too much money on a cup of pumpkin soup, wild rice/watercress salad, and guava tapioca pudding.  I shared this with Phil, since I didn’t want to fill up before we actually made it to any of the places recommended by our friend, Christina.

Silver Tree Sculpture

On the way to the Museum of Natural History, we walked through a sculpture park, where I took a photo of a silver tree.  Sadly, this is the only time I remembered to use my camera that day.  I really have been trying to take more photos for the website!  The Natural History museum was my favorite, but we had the least time to spend before everything closed and the guards began shuffling everyone out.  From there, we walked around to Eastern Market, where Christina had suggested we go for food and books, but it all appeared to be closed for renovation.  We walked to another of her suggestions, Good Stuff Eatery, where Phil ordered a burger and I ordered a pumpkin milkshake.  Looking back on everything I ate during the day, I guess I was really in the mood for pumpkin.  After this, we walked to Co Co Sala, a restaurant/chocolate lounge & boutique.  Charles, the bartender, was  helpful in deciding what to get and very friendly, giving Phil a drink on the house.  I was particularly impressed with his ability to spin a menu on one finger whilst simultaneously engaging in conversation.  I started with a chocolate martini and an exquisite dessert that involved dark chocolate mousse, salted caramel and dark chocolate gelato.  If I didn’t consume enough calories from that, I topped it off with a small plate of wild mushroom and tomato risotto.  Feeling sated, we departed the restaurant.

Phil was going to meet his friend Lauren, who lives in DC and had just returned from an interview in St-Louis, so I needed to catch the metro and bus back to Annandale on my own.  I needed cash for the bus, so I ended up spending $3.00 to withdraw from an ATM, and then had to spend money at the nearest store to make change for $20.  In my haste to catch the metro, I got on the wrong one.  Or I got off at the wrong stop.  Either way, when I got out of the train, I had missed the last bus by almost an hour.  There were two other bus lines that went to Annandale, but they left from a different metro station, so I had to run about a mile to another road to catch an entirely different bus, so I could eventually get on the same bus that I had ridden on the way into the city.  Without my smartphone, I never would have figure it out.  Then again, if my phone hadn’t been threatening to shut down because of a low battery, I probably would have gone to the correct metro stop initially (I had turned my phone off before getting on the metro because I was afraid it would die).  I finally made it back to Rosheen’s house around 11:15pm.