May 14, 2021
Day 2 - Chickahominy park to Ashland, VA
If you build it...
Last night our neighbor got back from the grocery at 930 and started to finish building bunks in the back of a cargo trailer with wood and power tools. Luckily I had ear plugs but Mary wasn't so fortunate. There was a bass fishing competition, so lots of local dudes were pulling out at 4 am in their loud diesel trucks too. We got up around 6, made breakfast and packed up. The touring cyclist we met yesterday came by to wish us luck and hoped we wouldn't meet again (he was starting next week). I totally messed up trying to remember his name (John? Mike?). Anyway, we got back on the capitol trail. It was windy but nice to be able to ride two up and chat. We were waiting the trail around 20 some miles in to take the original route around Richmond so we could stay with a warm showers host. As soon as we got off the rail trail, the hills started. We were mostly going north and the wind was blowing south. We stopped at target to grab lunch materials.
The traffic got progressively heavier as we approached Mechanicsville. It was also approaching 4 pm on Friday. The roads were windy 2 lane roads with no shoulder so we pulled off several times to let cars pass. We only got coal rolled once and we were passed by 2 Maserati sport cars and about 20 school busses. We kinda skipped lunch in favor of a bunch of bread and we were starting to get hungry and tired. Luckily our destination was close and we made it to Derryl's around 520. We wanted to stay at Derryl's because he said he lived in a tiny house. It turns out that there are several on the property so we were fascinated and had a tour of his and a Buckminster fullerene shaped concrete house. We chatted with the owner of the property, Ken, and he told us about his life and how he innovated this style of building which consists of a thin 1/4" exterior layer of concrete, 8" of eps foam, and 1-2" thick concrete internal layer. The buildings are extremely efficient. Hopefully we can check out some of the other tiny houses tomorrow. We are headed to bed early because a rooster is supposed to wake us up. We are going to try and make it to mineral tomorrow, about 44 miles. (Our warm showers host, Derryl, while talking about finding parking for a tiny house, referenced the saying in field of dreams. This was odd because we just watched it with my dad the day before we left...)
Today's ride: 64 miles (103 km)
Total: 94 miles (151 km)
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