Before we left our accommodation at the Methodist church in Rosedale, Sandy took advantage of supplies in their kitchen to cook up a pancake breakfast. We never did see anyone from the church, but we appreciated their opening it to cyclists. We could see in the guestbook that Marie-Christine and Peter were there the night before, so they are already a full day ahead of us.
Yesterday's ride completed our eleventh week on the road, with 3701 miles behind us and total climbing of 130,098'.
After a few mostly flat miles, we hit the big climb of the day, 1000' over a mountain ridge which looked intimidating on our map's elevation profile. It turned out to be 2 1/4 miles of 8-10% grade, and we were pleased with ourselves that we climbed over it without any rest stops. We seemed to be riding better than the day before, and one reason may be that my bike check before setting out for the day found that the rear brake was dragging. Maybe we had the brake on all day yesterday.
The descent to Hayters Gap was too winding and steep to be enjoyable; Sandy is getting very good at working the drum brake on and off so that all I have to do on descents is steer.
The sun had come out after a foggy start, so at the bottom of the descent we stopped to apply sunscreen. When we restarted, the shifter for the rear derailleur, which we replaced only a couple of weeks ago, wouldn't work at all. The cable going into the shifter looked frayed. We still had 20 miles to go to Damascus, which our map says has a bike shop. As a temporary fix to get there, I tightened the derailleur cable so that we were fixed in a fairly small gear, enabling us to get over hills if they were not too steep. We limped our way to Damascus, and found that the town is a popular center for mountain bike rentals to people who ride from the top of a nearby mountain back down to town on the Virginia Creeper rail-to-trail. There are no fewer than six bike rental places, but none had a mechanic on duty until tomorrow. Damascus is also a town crossed by the Appalachian Trail so they see many hikers as well as transamerica cyclists.
We were lucky to have called ahead to reserve a room at a B&B in town, because there is a NASCAR race at Bristol, VA this weekend, and almost every room for 100 miles in every direction is booked. We decided that we would have to stay in Damascus at least two nights because even if we get the bike fixed in the morning, the next leg of our trip is long enough that we'll need a full day on the road. Our hostess Susie not only found a room at her Inn where we could stay an extra night, but even offered to put us up in her house if we need to stay longer.
After a drink and dinner, and a walk around town with our hosts, we retired to a night of worry about what we will do if we can't get the bike fixed.
The picture is from our evening walk, showing the Appalachian Trail emerging from the woods into town.
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