August 27- Daleville to Lexington, VA

This was a day of stark contrasts.

We had diverted from the prescribed route yesterday by a couple of miles on a very busy highway in order to reach a motel; we even had to walk the bike on the shoulder for a short stretch. This morning, to avoid fighting our way back, we continued in the same direction for a short distance before turning onto U.S.11 to intersect with our route. It was a challenge to negotiate that busy, multi-lane highway, but we managed it without incident.

Shortly, we found ourselves on a lonely backroad with killer hills- the max was 18%- making us wish we were back on the highway. And in fact, we soon were. But it wasn't long before we were back on a country road and I remarked to Sandy that it was pleasant riding. As I thought about it, of course it was pleasant. It was sunny and cool enough that the sun and shade were equally comfortable. The smooth road was winding through woods at a steady 1% downgrade. We were warmed up but not tired, and the bike liked the gear it was in. You could sell tickets for a ride like that.

We stopped at the historic town of Buchanan for a meal, even though it was only 10:30. We keep telling ourselves that mealtime should be a matter of opportunity rather than the clock. We ate at an old drugstore with a pharmacy, soda fountain, and booths. Not cutely nostalgic, just an old place still going. The staff was putting up Happy Birthday banners for the boss, which we thought was a nice touch, not something you'd see at Walgreen's.

The later ride was on backroads though never far from I-81. In early afternoon, at about mile 50, we reached Lexington, and sought out the bike store we had been looking forward to. We restocked our supply of tube patches but the shop was so cramped the owner couldn't get our tandem back to his service area to do a little cable improvement I was hoping for.

We retraced our route a few blocks to check out a B&B we'd seen on the way into town. It is a budget-buster, but worth it; a large, luxurious house with antique furniture and beautiful artwork. We've stayed in enough cheap motels to feel we deserve hardship mitigation sometimes.

We walked several blocks to a Greek restaurant and enjoyed dinner there. We have seen no Greek restaurant before on this trip.While there we met four young cyclists (3M, 1F), eastbound like us. They left Astoria only a week after we did.

On the walk back we stopped at a cemetery to visit Stonewall Jackson's grave.

Lexington is a beautiful old town of 8000, the home of Washington and Lee College and also VMI. As pretty a town as any we've seen, and thriving. The restaurant prices are higher than we've grown used to.

One other thing to mention. We must have been asked our age at least 50 times so far on this trip. Since that's a question out of normal polite bounds, there is apparently a disconnect between what we are doing and how old we look. Makes us feel good every time we're asked.

The first picture below is nothing special, just a typical view of our roads through Virginia.

August 26- Christiansburg to Dalevfille, VA

Our uneventful ride today continued across the Great Valley between the Ridge and Valley Appalachians to our west and the Blue Ridge ahead. We rode 50 miles of hilly terrain without a net gain or loss of more than a few hundred feet. As we found yesterday, some of these little hills have some bite: 10%, 14%, ... whatever. We just trudge over them, and today we didn't need to stop or walk any.

One notable thing about today's route is that there wasn't a single gas station, convenience store, or restaurant anywhere between the starting and ending towns. As we've travelled east, there have been more rest stop places; not today.Our lunch was pop tarts alongside the road.

After settling into a Howard Johnson's Motel (did you know they still have those?) we had an excellent Mexican dinner across the street.

August 25- Wytheville to Christiansburg, VA

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.

cus to Wytheville, VA

Just as we were about to set out aftger breakfast,

August 24- Damascus to Wytheville, VA

As we were about to set out after breakfast, a Forest Service volunteer asked us about our route plan, and suggested we ride up the Virginia Creeper Trail rather than the road route shown on our map, because of heavy traffic on the road which winds up the mountain. It turned out the volunteer, Marsha Wikle, lives in Palmetto, very near our home. She also recently had a bike crash causing the identical injury to one I suffered about 15 years ago.
We took Marsha's advice, having learned to give heavy weight to local knowledge if it comes from a cyclist (and little weight otherwise). The trail follows an old railroad bed and the part we rode gradually climbs 1000' over 12 miles, so steadily that we felt we were hardly climbing at all. The trail is gravel and dirt and mud, so we rode at a slow speed, but the weather was cool and clear and we were riding beside a creek with constant rapids and waterfalls, so we were in no hurry.
Our route over the Appalachians crosses two major ridges. Today we rode over the first. The Blue Ridge Parkway, which lies a few days ahead, runs along the top of the second one. The trail got us halfway up to today's 3700' summit, and the road the rest of the way up was nowhere as steep as some of the hills we've been over before today. Since the pass was not marked with a name on the map or on the road, we decided to name it Pussycat.
Quickly descending from Pussycat Pass, we reached the Lost City of Troutdale, which our map said has 494 people and "all services". i.e. a restaurant, grocery, service station, motel, post office, and a hostel. It was our planned lunch stop. Problem was, there wasn't anything there except a couple of houses. At the end of the day we looked at the satellite view using Google Maps, and confirmed that what we didn't see isn't there. Strange.
We pressed on, and since we were still descending it didn't take long to reach the next town, Sugar Grove. Just as we stopped for lunch (standup minimart fare) we got a flat on the left trailer tire. By the time we ate and fixed the tire, it was 3:30, so we knew it would be late by the time we finished the day. And it was.
After the descent from Pussycat, the terrain was easy riding, up and down on small country roads, with plenty of pastures, farms and cows to see. The last few miles to Wytheville, pop. 7762, was on a busy U.S. highway, without incident. Wytheville is within lodging range of the big NASCAR race at Bristol, so I was quietly worried we might have trouble finding a room at less than triple what it might cost, but we found one at a descent motel at only 1 1/2 times the usual rate, within walking distance of an Applebys, where we enjoyed a drink and dinner while watching the car race and me teasing Sandy that I'm becoming a big fan.

August 23- at Damascus, VA

HTo get our trip moving again, we needed a bike mechanic's help with our jammed shifter, so first thing in the morning we took it to the most promising of the bike rental/shuttle shops, and met the manager, Pepper, who bought into our cause, he having ridden cross country three times and knowing what it is like to be stuck. While we went next door for breakfast, he was able to extract the jammed cable and replace it with a new one. The shifter itself was undamaged. By ten o'clock he had it adjusted and we left with a healthy bike, much relieved.

Since we are already committed to a second night in Damascus, we have the remainder of the day to spend resting and whatever. I took a long time to give the bike and the cases a thorough cleaning, the best they have had since before we started the trip. Then on to the town's library where we could relax, read, and blog with wifi. 

Returning to our B&B, we sat outside and spent a long while chatting with our hosts, Gaines and Susie, and three interesting guests who are here for the NASCAR races.

To reward ourselves for untold minimart dinners, we went to a "tablecloth" restaurant overlooking an old mill race and pond and enjoyed a fine dinner. We may eat the memory of it for dinner one day in the future.

We spent an enjoyable evening talking with one of the guests, David, from Columbus, Ohio, while watching an NFL game. None of us cared much about the game and we talked about sports we used to play and encounters with dogs.

Damascus is a pretty town, which since the bike trail opened in the early 90's has thrived on the bike rental and shuttle business, as I mentioned yesterday. We learned that they get 120,000 people per year here to ride the trail, and about 10,000 hikers on the Appalachian trail, plus a few hundred touring cyclists like us. The winters here are dead.

August 22- Rosedale to Damascus, VA

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.