Bike Virginia Day One: The Extra Abingdon Loop

26 June 2015

First, I have to say this:  Antonin Scalia, spare us your spittle-flecked invective and go cry into your American flag.  Gay marriage is the law of the land; deal with it.  So is Obamacare; deal witht that, too.

*****

For 7:00 a.m. it seemed dark outside.  I checked my email; at midnight, Marc had written to tell us that he would not be meeting us in Abindgon.  The weather forecast factored heavily in his decision.  

Never mind that; Tom had declared, "Wheels up at 8:30," so I had to get ready.  I was halfway into my bike clothes (my rainbow-tie-dye jersey, suitable for a blue girl in a red state) when I heard something outside.  I peeked between the curtains to see torrents of rain.

It would be so easy right now to call Jack and tell him I'd be a few days early picking him up from DC.  I checked the Abingdon forecast for myself.  50% chance of rain there today, 80% tomorrow.

Tom, though, was unabashedly optimistic when I knocked on his door forty minutes later. "We'll check the radar when we get there," he said.

By 8:30 the rain had let up, and we hit the road for the two hour drive.

In Abingdon there had been rain, lots of it, in the morning.  But now, as we prepared to leave, the roads were dry.  At the registration desk, a volunteer commented on my jersey.  "It's a rainbow in celebration of the Supreme Court decision," I said.

"What decision?"

"They ruled in favor of gay marriage."

Her face went blank, but the volunteer in front of me said, "They did?  When?" She was beaming.

"About an hour ago. Gay marriage is the law of the land."

"That's great!" she exclaimed, and put up her hand for a high-five.  She guided me through the heavy ride packet: meal tokens, wrist band, route descriptions, bike tag.  T-shirts were outside.

Headquarters for the weekend portion of Bike Virginia are at the 4-H grounds.  Camping is in the rear, parking is out front, vendors are in the middle, and food is off to the side.  This early on the first day, the lot was still relatively empty.  We figured the forecast would keep a lot of people away.

We didn't get started until 11:30.  Tom had worked in an extra ten miles, more hilly than the rest of the route. But, as it turns out, his extra miles were the most scenic.

An antique shop with an unusual sign:

I like this hill:

Mountains in the distance:

A long fence on a flat stretch:

We rejoined the masses, and I stopped for one more view:

Then there was the little hill with the big traffic jam.

The roads here are narrower than we're used to, and the drivers more polite.  There are no marked shoulders either.  So when a rider is plodding up a hill, the drivers don't go around.  They wait.  Soon enough there's a line of traffic mixed in with a line of cyclists, and nothing is moving more than a few miles an hour.

I did the thing I do on Princeton's campus when pedestrians and people in golf carts are behaving like imbecilies:  I went around, in the way that someone from the northeast goes around.  In this situation, polite drivers are more hazardous than hurried ones.

There was one more cyclist-induced traffic jam before we reached the rest stop.

I inhaled the PB&J I'd packed (I made half a dozen sandwiches before leaving NJ), drank some Gatorade for the first time in years, remembered why I stopped drinking Gatorade, and asked a volunteer where I could find a bathroom.

She pointed.  "Go up the stay-ups," she said, "and you'll see the building."

Stay-ups? Oh! Those steps over there.  "Got it.  Thanks."

I should mention that there was a donation table for the local volunteer fire company, which is all well and good, except that said table was selling Civil War bullet casings.  Somehow I kept my mouth shut.  Also, so far today I'd seen only white people.

We had about seven more miles to go.  This included yet another cyclist-induced traffic jam, this time involving a dozen riders and one long, empty, flatbed trailer that Tom suggested we could hop onto.

I stopped one more time for pictures:

Around the corner I saw a Confederate flag.  Fortunately, it was the only one on the route.

Even though we finished with a few tenths shy of 32 miles, I felt as if I'd gone 60.  The heat and humidity were way up.  Dripping with sweat, we wandered over to the vendors.  I came away with three new Primal jerseys (they don't usually show up this cheap).

We're sharing a large hotel room eight miles from HQ.  It fits us and our bikes quite well.  There are two queen beds and a sofa bed.  I was a late addition to the room, having canceled my own room reservation after not being able to find anyone else crazy enough to do this Bike Virginia thing. We cleaned up, snacked, contemplated tomorrow's routes, and went back to the campground to spend one of our meal tokens on dinner.

View of the camp in the evening:

Hey!  A Tomassini Tecno, just like Beaker! I met his owner, too.  We love our Tomassinis.  I love mine better because mine is electric blue and has no logos.

In the dining hall, Tom met someone he used to work with, someone who is planning to ride the 105-mile route tomorrow.  I instantly felt deficient.  "I can do a hundred miles," I told Tom after his friend had left, "But I can't do them here.  I mean, I could, but I'd be miserable."

On our way home we stopped at a drug store and bought junk food.

Now we're off in our own digital universes again, Ron with his iPad, me on my blog, and Tom jiggering the Bike Virginia routes on offer to cobble together a metric that will probably kill us.

If it doesn't rain.