Day Three- a silver lining

These are the storm clouds that drove us to a motel last night. We made it in around 3:00 and finished the miserable day off the way it was meant to be finished. After two days of riding and three beers in us, Tim and I passed out by 10:30 PM.
Since we had splurged on a hotel room, we decided to cook our dinner. Of course this is no hostel, so we just fired up our camp stove and made some very tasty burritos.
Our quaint little motel room in the morning.
So this place was already pretty ghetto looking from the outside, but after checking in the owner pointed to a table full of "goodys" medicine and said, "You take, my friend want me to give to all my customers." This was a delightful concoction of Acetaminophen, Aspirin, and Caffeine (insert e-sarcasm here). No thanks, dude. I don't take drugs (except the three ibuprofen i've been popping nightly).
The ride was absolutely beautiful. Clear skies, and very rural, low traffic roads. We passed through Bumpass, VA (I don't know how you pronounce it, but I prefer the comedic pronunciation myself). We also passed through Goochland, the space between spaces, but I didn't take a picture, it wouldn't be pretty... Goochland is also colloquially known as Grundle County.


If anyone knows what the fuck this thing is, please let me know. They were growing all over the evergreens by the side of the road.



Ah the pastoral landscapes.

I don't think we could have been happier on this ride. That is until tragedy befell us. We rode for 45 miles or so to Mineral, VA ("an early mining town") and made lunch in the yard of a library (yea we fired up the camp stove again) in between a middle school and high school. You can only imagine the looks we got. After lunch, at around 3PM we re-checked our maps, and realized that we miscalculated. Instead of being more than halfway to Charlottesville, we were about 50 miles away. Tim panicked, I prepared mentally for the upcoming death ride, and we set off. After about an hour we realized that the forecasted 30% chance of showers was now inevitable, so we pulled over to gear up and cover our bags. One might think that we were unlucky, considering it was more than likely we would have sunny skies for our long ride, but there was indeed a silver lining to all those gathering storm clouds. We stopped in someone's yard, and a very nice guy in a pickup chatted us up about our destination and the upcoming storm. He could probably tell how frazzled we were by the whole situation, and offered us a lift to a nearby gas station, about five miles off our route. Since we didn't know how bad the storm was going to be, or if we were even going to make to Charlottesvile, we took him up on that offer. While en route, he mentioned that the road we were on led straight into Charlottesville, and, unlike the mapped route, was only 23 miles to our destination. Even with all the hills and extra traffic (plus a wider shoulder than we were used too) it seemed like a better idea to cut our mileage in half. So we rode on.
The rain stopped eventually and this was what we left.
And this was probably one of the most welcoming sites I've ever seen. Storm clouds behind me, and ahead nothing but blue skies.


Tim didn't seem quite as optimistic about the whole thing, but was surely as determined, if not more so, to make it to our destination, and with good reason: Noelle, through her philanthropic work at greencorp became acquainted with people scattered all throughout the country, and one guy happened to be from Charlottesville. His parents frequently host greencorp volunteers and they let us stay in their lovely home. Jim and Anna were quite hospitable, and the accomodations are more than we can expect for a long time. The water pressure in the shower provided quite a pleasant massage on my aching shoulders. After an 80 mile ride (that's how much it turned out to be) through the foothills of Appalachia, we were ready for rest.

Tomorrow we tackle the mountains. Wish us luck!

-sf