By: Kate Pearce
We headed out of Charlottesville this morning armed with some advice from our wonderful host Jonathan. Only around 30 miles, our ride today was supposed to be “short.” The fact that 30 miles has become “short” to us is pretty exciting!
Looking at the elevation profile and route ahead of time, we noticed that it was not too big of a deal up until one huge hill. About a 1,000 foot climb from our rough estimates, Afton Mountain, the gateway to the Blue Ridge mountains, waited ahead for us.
The first 22-ish miles were pretty smooth through some rolling hills. Well- except group 1 which consisted of me, Matt, and Delia took a bit of an… interesting route. Our blind faith in Google Maps led us a bit astray. Let’s just say, Google doesn’t know that when we say “bike directions” we mean for road bikes, not mountain bikes. We ended up on a bit more rugged of a trail than expected! Stubborn as we are, though, we decided that 1.5 miles on a weird trail wasn’t much and wasn’t worth turning around for.
At first, we tried biking through. It was kind of a hard-packed dirt single track trail through tall grass. That wasn’t too bad. Then the mud and roots and rocks hit. And curves and mini hills. I’ve done some super mild mountain biking in the past, so I decided to try biking more. Bad idea! I almost careened into a tree, then I almost rode off the path, and then I almost got stuck on a huge rock. Suffice it to say there was a lot of getting on the bike only for me to realize I needed to get off. In all honesty, the trail really wasn’t that crazy, just not what we had been expecting. As we finally exited the jungle-like trail, I commented that “I love hiking, but I don’t normally hike with a bike beside me.”
We had agreed to meet up with the rest of the team at an antique shop right at the base of the mountain for lunch. Unfortunately, Lisa wiped out before she got there. The picture below shows some helpful bystanders pitching in to help wrap up her scraped leg with gauze.
All in all, we met up for a long lunch at the base of the hill, none of us too eager to climb it. Some classic lunch foods and new sandwich combinations were consumed, and we reapplied lots of sunblock and such. We could see the hill we had to climb rising up in front of us. As our first “real” hill, it was a bit intimidating.
As we rode in, approaching the Blue Ridge mountains, it was really beautiful. I hadn’t traveled in Virginia much before this, and so far I’ve been so impressed with the natural beauty and kind people we’ve encountered.
While we were eating our lunch, a nice woman came up to us and asked if we were with Bike and Build. Of course, this led to me giving the classic Spokes speech. She seemed excited by our mission, and she explained how after she’d graduated college she had went on a Bike and Build trip from Annapolis out to California. Instead of taking days to teach, they took days to build with Habitat for Humanity. A fellow cross country biker, she was really generous to offer her pond up to us. She explained that she is building a house about half a mile from where we were and that we could come take a dip in her pond. Happy for any procrastination and cooling off that could be done, we headed to her pond.
Chilling on the dock for quite a while, we really took in the scene and relaxed.
Eventually, we realized it was probbaaabbly about time that we climbed the hill. We set off, determined. We might have been grinding away in our lowest gears and taking lots of breaks, but we made it up! I felt really victorious having climbed my first “mountain” on a bike.
Better than that feeling, though, was the feeling of going down the back of the mountain. Going at about 35 miles per hour for 2 miles without pedaling at all is an amazing feeling! The sun was out, the sky was blue, and I was zipping down the hill on my bike. It felt great!
Waiting until it was time to arrive at our host’s house, we regrouped at French Press, a coffeehouse in Waynesboro, VA. It was super hip and delicious. Delia ordered before me, getting a fresh lemonade and chocolate croissant. That sounded so good, so I just copied her on that. Below is a picture of the space- it felt like a fun living room. We read our books, sipped some drinks, and chilled after the ride.
Later that afternoon, we arrived at Francine’s home in Waynesboro. She is incredibly nice, and her home is so clean and comfortable. We were definitely excited to have the luxury of sleeping inside for a night. Better yet, she even cooked us a delicious dinner! We polished off the Mexican quinoa casserole, guacamole, cornbread, and salad. It was so tasty! For dessert, she even baked us fresh gingerbread with lemon sauce. IT was a lovely dinner, and it was great to talk with her. Francine shared awesome stories from Zion National Park in Utah as well as The Wave (look it up)! We got into a weird discussion about local wildlife, and we realized all of the cool animals that we’ll get to see on this cross country trip.
We relaxed at her house, and after our nightly Spokes meeting we split off to head to bed, prepping mentally and physically for our 60 mile (longest yet!) ride tomorrow.