May 5, 2015
Day 0: Travel to Yorktown
My flights to Yorktown were the best I have had in years. I had used frequent flyer miles to travel via American Airlines, and I had to book a flight on a Tuesday cause it was all that was available even though I booked months in advance. Apparently they were trying to fill lesser-filled flights with the reward-point travelers, cause all of my flights were only partially full and I never had anyone beside me to crowd me. Prior to boarding the final leg from Pittsburgh to Newport News, another cyclist saw my panniers and introduced himself. Andy was from San Antonio, and he too was going to ride the Transam. He was concerned about his bike being held at the FEDEX distribution center where he planned to go pick it up. Arriving at the Newport News airport, I was surprised by how small it was, and took a cab to my hotel. The next surprise I got was how hot and humid it was. The temperature was 86 degrees, and it felt like summer already. The final surprise of the day was when I arrived and discovered that both FEDEX boxes had made it to the hotel even though the previous night their tracking system still showed that one of the boxes wouldn't arrive till the next day. I cancelled the room I had reserved for the following night, and hurriedly set about reassembling my bike so I could depart the next day. I rigged up some cord I brought along to hang the bike so I could work on it - it's much easier if you can get it off the ground.
It took a bit to figure out the puzzle of the cables coming off the handlebar (one of them ended up on the wrong side after I slipped the fork into place), and to reassemble the headset and re-attach the rear derailleur. Jake (my wrench) would have probably had it done in 10 minutes, but it took me more than 2 hours.
The Duke of York hotel is directly across the street from a public beach on the York River, close to where the York River empties into the Atlantic. I managed to just beat sunset and wheeled the bike over to the beach and asked a nice couple to photograph me. It's traditional for cross-country cyclists to dip their rear wheel in one ocean and their front wheel in the other after crossing, so here is the traditional photo:
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I had to redo my hotel for the following night in Mechanicsville, as I had it booked based on the expected arrival of the FEDEX box. Once that was done, I was pretty tired and dozed off.
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