By: Alex Tran
After a very eventful few days at Acorn Community farms, it was time to move on. The days ride was only 30 miles and rather than a few monstrous hills to climb it was mainly rolling plains. For the first time since this trip started, I didn't fall behind. I could keep up for the entire trip. I was much more in control of my body and bike. Shifting gears felt natural, the burn in my quads was no longer enough to stop my pedaling, and I was no longer huffing and puffing the entire way to Charlottesville. I was finally accustomed to spending hours on a bike.
Now that I was no longer spending the ride too tired to look up, I could start taking in the views and appreciating the countryside we were riding through. Leaving later than usual at 9:30, the sun was up and about although the heat wouldn't start until an hour or two later. We rode through the cool air. Brake, shift, pedal, brake, shift, pedal. The route consisted of many small hills, forcing us to constantly change our gears. In the beginning, farms and pastures surrounded us. Trees formed tunnels that provided plenty of shade. Soon enough, we hit the 10 mile mark which surprisingly doesn't feel like much more than a quick warmup. After a while, the scenery changed. The woods were right next to us for most of the ride. When they weren't, we were in neighborhoods with houses sprawled far apart from each other with seemingly no order to where they were except on the side of the road.
After a quick lunch, we made to our host in Charlottesville - Jonathan T. Hine. A former midshipman and experienced cyclist, he was full of stories. We spent the time waiting in between showers listening to his travels. One of the most interesting men I've met, this guy knew how to live. He has his own blog at freewheelingfreelancer.com.
For dinner, we decided to break out the hamburger helper. Most people didn't seem to particularly like it but I thought it wasn't too bad - I did burn my tongue after the first bite and couldn't taste very well though. The team decided that we needed something other than hamburger helper so we all piled into the van and headed to a Chick-fil-A. Feeling nice and full after dinner, we headed to an arcade where surprised us and Delia put up an impressive 64 points on a basketball game decimating the rest of us and getting a perfect 10/10 cups on some pong game. Once we ran out of credits, we headed back to J.T. Hine's place and settled down for the night.
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