Dinosaurs on Wheels

I really hate to call this blog "Final Thoughts," because these certainly aren't going to be my final thoughts on this marvelous journey.  I'm sure that I will never forget everything that I saw and experienced during the summer of 2020.  I had always planned to post a final post-ride blog.  I wanted to give it a little time, since the days right after we finished were filled with the things you would expect: Get back home, get familiar with family and friends' names ;-) , go back to work, get back into the old groove.  Also, I thought it might give me a bit more insight to think about it before putting pen to paper (or digits to keyboard, as it is).  To see if I figured out any life changing deep thoughts from this trip.   So here they are, my (not)final thoughts on this great trip across 'Mur'ca during the 2020 pandemic. Before I start, I want to thank everyone who donated to the World Bicycle Relief charity organization. We set a goal of raising $2,...

Well, it's hard to believe that it's over.  For the past two months I've been getting up every day 5:30 to 6AM, just to put on damp cycling shorts and jersey, put everything I have into two (originally 4) bags, loading up and heading out, only to have to find a new place for the night, eat, go to sleep, and do the same thing over again.  It's a strange kind of routine, but over the past two months that's been the routine.  Now it's over, and I'm free to go back home and sleep in the same bed more than one night in a row.  The other side of this routine we've been in for so long is that we were able to make good and steady progress on the ultimate goal.  To get to the other side of the country.  And now we've done it. And now we're done.  Two weeks earlier than we expected, but we're done. I think it's pointless at this point to talk about the overall meaning of the trip, what I've learned, what I liked, disliked, will and won't mi...

For the past two months, I've been looking and thinking about this day.  Not that we're completely done, because we have the trip to Yorktown to ride on Monday.  But thinking about rolling into Richmond, and to my daughter Tess's apartment, seemed to me to be the symbolic end of the tour.  Perhaps because  three days before I left, Patty and I had moved her into her apartment, and so I had a very vivid visual of where we were headed?  Perhaps when I would talk to or FaceTime Tess, it reminded me of our target, but Richmond seemed to be so much more real than Yorktown, a place I've never been.  Today we rode into Richmond and now the end is real.  This morning we left the Home2Suites in Charlottesville, about as early as we could.  They were nice enough to have to-go bags prepared, plus we grabbed a few extra items from the breakfast bar.  We do go through a lot of calories, you know.  A couple of Keurigs of coffee downed, room cleaned up...

3 days from the end!  It's hard to believe. We had a pretty easy day today; we had split a day into two, going for 2 40 something mile days instead of a single 80+ mile day.  I'm very glad that we did, because of the heat indexes, and because it's nice not to be slogging through another day, hurrying to the end, eating, sleeping, repeating.  This has been a long trip, a great trip, but sometimes we had to be on such a tight schedule to make the places we needed to make.  For a change yesterday and today, this wasn't the case. The Royal Oaks "Resort" We started this morning from our "cabin" at Royal Oaks resort.  The air conditioner froze up a couple of times, so it ended up being cooler outside than in.  That made for some difficult sleeping, but eventually it cooled off enough that I could get a few hours' sleep.  Even though this place was nothing really special, and not somewhere I'd seek for a "resort" stay, I'm glad it was ...

Today we chose to take a long hard ride and cut it into two shorter rides.  First, we have been riding in a record hot day streak in Virginia (23 straight days over 90 degrees), and we would be facing our last great big hill climb.  And, for a change, we had an option open to us to stay somewhere indoors.  Our original plan was to got the distance from Lexington to Charlottesville, Virginia, about 84 miles, all today. Included in today's ride would be the ride up the mountain at "Vesuvius," up to the entrance to the Blue Ridge Parkway.  If anyone's ever been on the BRP, it is a road, closed to commercial traffic, that runs along the ridge (hence the name) of the Blue Ridge Mountains from about Asheville, NC to the Shenandoah National Park in Virginia.  We used to ride this in North Carolina around Boone and Blowing Rock.  It's a beautiful ride, but typically there's not much up there as far as services.  In this part of the road, there is a small "reso...

Today was just a really great day of riding.  From beginning to end, despite being rained on at our destination, it was just a really good day.  One of those days that, when this is over, I'll look at as a good example of why I went.   We started early from Blacksburg, where we enjoyed our short stay.  Our target today was Lexington.  We didn't see much of the Virginia Tech campus, just a little, but we enjoyed the London Underground pub, the Red Carpet Inn, which was a decent, dated, but clean hotel, and our Italian dinner at the local "lifestyle center."  We rolled out this morning after visiting the local McDonald's for its "big breakfast," which means the maximum calories we could intake from their breakfast menu.  Eaten, as always, from their parking lot, it still was a good start.  The outskirts of Blacksburg were immediately different from the previous days' journeys, in that we have now left coal country, and we've left the poverty fi...

Okay, after the extreme frustration of last night's attempted post, where I finished the complete blog, loaded the photos, and clicked "post," only to have the post appear with nothing on it, I will get back to our activities for the past 2 days. As I had explained yesterday (but no one saw this), we have been killing ourselves for the past few days, trying to reach the next hotel.  Springfield to Berea, Berea to Hazard, Hazard to Breaks.  All were really long days that were done in 100 degree plus heat index days.  In addition, as we got into eastern Kentucky, the amount of feet climbed steadily climbed.  On our worst days in the Rockies we were hitting 4-5,000 feet of elevation change.  The worst days in the Missouri Ozarks totaled about 5-6,000 feet.  In Kentucky we hit 9,000 feet for the past few days.  Man, we're tired.  No one is really to blame for our long days, but there are just no spots to stay between these long runs.  As I've sai...

* tonight's post was completed, photos attached, and when publishing disappeared.  Nothing.   About two hour's worth of work gone, and I don't have it in me to reproduce it. Okay, here’s the gist of it: We went off the prescribed trail today in order to save 40 miles and about 12,000 feet of climbing over 2 days. We rode route 460 in Virginia all the way from Breaks to Bluefield WV. We missed a good portion of likely a pretty ride and replaced it with an efficient ride that rode on a four lane highway. It’s not as pleasant, a bit more noisy, but with 2 lanes plus a shoulder, likely safer than many roads we’ve ridden.  It was very hot again today, so saving miles and climbing was the right choice and likely saved our legs some agony.  We’re headed out again tomorrow and we will take the same road to Blacksburg VA home of VA Tech.  Good night