A tale of two rides

April 26, 2024

One great, one ... different

TODAY'S RIDING ENVIRONMENTS stand in sharp contrast to one another. Starting out from Burkeville, I'm immediately returned to the same country roads, surrounded by farms and woods and country life, that I've been traveling for the past week. Lots of quiet, fresh air, and space are the hallmarks of the region and they abound here. Life is slow-paced, neighbors know one another, things seem simple.

Curious calf. It was the only livestock in evidence, leading me to wonder whether the ear tags were really necessary or just bling.

The rural idyll continues for 45 miles or so. There's little traffic, and what there is seems to not be in any hurry. Oncoming drivers lift a finger or two from the steering wheel, a customary gesture of greeting and acknowledgment commonly used by rural drivers as they pass by. When there are no vehicles nearby, all is quiet and tranquil.

A field of golden grain, nearly ready for harvest.

Oats, maybe? Whatever it is, it's been planted in what was, and may be again, a cornfield that was not plowed under after harvest.

Across the road, a field of what appears to be the same grain, except the stalks are taller. It's obviously been planted more recently or takes longer to ripen.

If it's oats, maybe the ones across the way ripen faster and are for instant oatmeal where this variety is for regular oatmeal.

The sun is obscured by a layer of cloud, so the day is slow to warm up. It's in the low 50s when I start off, so within a minute I've stopped to pull out and don my long-sleeved base layer. It's breezy again today, so pretty soon I stop again to grab and put on my jacket.

After a few early dips and rises, the terrain smooths out and, for the next 35 miles or so, slants subtly down. I shed a hundred or more feet of elevation, and it's easy riding. I'm relaxed and riding well, though I gradually become aware that the accumulated effects of the past few days are beginning to take their toll. I'm not spent, far from it, but my pace slowly drops. I find my way to lower gears sooner, and stay there longer, with each rise. On the downslopes I'm content to coast for longer periods, and use them as opportunities to stand and stretch and take a load off the points of contact between me and the saddle.

Stone house. Not anything like it anywhere nearby.

Grain of a different type, and a well-kept barn.

Pretty sure this is some variety of wheat.

Almost as if at the flip of a switch, when I cross the Swift Creek Reservoir, I'm plunged into suburban Richmond. Farms and woods are replaced with housing developments bearing themed names meant to convey the idea of gracious country living, on wooded 1/3 acre lots.

Their saving grace, at least initially, is that the wooded lots are real: there's no expanse of open space where identical homes, sited baldly on land devoid of anything except grass and seedling sticks imported from some tree nursery. The developers appear to have taken some care to leave as much of the woods intact as they could.

The other virtue is that traffic is commensurate with quiet residential settings. Cars and trucks do not whoosh past at 50 miles an hour, seemingly inches off my left shoulder. Drivers follow me at my pace, and a respectful distance, until they can ease by.

That's less true when my route puts me on busy multi-lane suburban arterials. Traffic is much heavier and faster moving. Bike lanes come and go, seemingly arbitrarily, and there's often no usable shoulder. It's grit your teeth, hunker down, and get along as best you can territory.

Utilitarian and unavoidable but not enjoyable.

The rush is broken, briefly, when RWGPS puts me on a narrow, unpaved walking path through a patch of woods. A skilled mountain biker might negotiate it without dismounting, but I have no hope of that. Pushing the bike is easy enough, and I don't mind the break, but it's a real surprise to be going this way.

With a nod to Robert Frost, two paths diverge in the woods.

Emerging from the serenity path, I negotiate several very busy suburban thoroughfares with come-and-go cyc.e accommodations. The route carries me eventually onto busy, fast-moving Forest Hills Avenue for the final few miles. The bike lane is again ephemeral, appearing and disappearing seemingly at random. Where it exists, it's often in the form of "sharrows" that indicate the rightmost traffic lane is explicitly open for use by cyclistscas well as motor vehicles.

My WarmShowers host house is right on the corner of Forest Hills and a cross street. I've been sending a stream of status updates, so my host is alert to my impending arrival. She's on her upper floor balcony as I pull up, and ensures that I know I am in the right place.

She welcomes me warmly and sets about showing me my accommodations. She has created a nicely-appointed basement suite specifically for bike travelers, and it's wonderful. I get the honor of being the first to try the new shower. Magnifique!

We sit in the back yard for a stretch, then I shower and change and we're off to dinner at a nearby brewpub. It's a marvelous way to finish the day. Soon after we return from dinner, I am tucked in bed and fast asleep.

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Today's ride: 63 miles (101 km)
Total: 384 miles (618 km)

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