It was cool this morning, in the low 50's at seven o'clock. I don't know if the elevation of 2000' was responsible, or if it is just getting late in the summer. Either way, it warmed up quickly.
When we got ready to leave the motel, I found that the flat tire from yesterday was flat again. I had time to fix it and still make the local church's 9 o'clock service. It was nearly 10:30 by the time we got on the road.
The environment for riding has changed. We are still routed onto small backroads, but the towns are larger, and there are more and more non-agricultural houses. We are finally getting into more populous areas.
The terrain today was up and down. None of the hills had large elevation gains; many were as steep as 10-12%, and a few were steeper yet. Sandy had worried our legs might forget how to climb before we hit the Blue Ridge, but her worry was needless.
In the whole trip, no eastbound riders had passed us on the road, or we them, but today two young men from England did overtake us and we rode together long enough to exchange hellos. On the next uphill, they disappeared ahead. They left Oregon about 10 days after we did.
We stopped for lunch near the town of Grahams Forge, grateful to find a real restaurant instead of a minimart. Last night's motel had a continental breakfast, but all we could eat of it was bagels; that breakfast had been light, so we ordered a larger lunch. It took so long to be served our lunch stop took over an hour. Made us realize minimarts aren't all bad.
As we were getting out of the large town of Radford, we turned up a road with a whopping 18% grade. We grunted up most of it and walked the rest. With hindsight, we wished we'd walked more of it.
We reached our destination town, Christiansburg, after 56 miles, late in the day. We walked a couple of blocks from our motel in the middle of town to a Chinese restaurant for dinner. Not the best, but a refreshing change from usual fare.
No comments:
Post a Comment