May 25, 2008
Day 13: Suffolk, VA to Richmond, VA
107.88 miles - Other stats not available. The bike computer started acting weird after getting rained on yesterday, and I accidentally removed the battery while trying to fix it.
After breakfast at the Cruse home, I rode off into another cold morning with my arm warmers on. I should have looked at my maps more carefully before leaving without buying any snacks in Suffolk - I was riding off into a seventy mile section on Virginia country roads on a Sunday. As it turned out, none of the country stores would be open.
Still, today was a great day of riding. Almost the entire day was spent on smoothly paved county roads. Virtually no traffic for the first seventy or eighty miles of the day. Amazing.
These are some of the roads I was on today:
Pitchkettle
Providence
Lake Prince
Exteter
Orbit
Racetrack
Jones Town
Mill Swamp
White Hill
White Marsh
Sexton
Spratley Mill
Blackwater
Carsley
Otterdam
Huntington
Laurel
Laurel Springs
Webb
Hines
Stech
E. Quaker
Hitchcock
Centennial
Lawyers
Old State
That's a lot of turns.
After about 40 miles, I went a few miles off the route to the little community of Dendron, where my map showed a store. It wasn't open, although there was a pop machine, so I drank a bottle of Coke. I wasn't sure how much fuel that would supply for the next 30 miles.
As I was riding out of Dendron, I spotted another store. It wasn't open either, so I asked a guy in the yard next door if he knew if it would open later. "In about a week," he said. Well, that wouldn't help. He asked what I needed, and I told him I was looking for a snack to hold me over for the next thirty or forty miles. "Wait a minute," he said and opened a back door to the store. In a minute he walked out with a candy bar and bottle of water, which he gave me. Apparently, he was the owner of the new store, but was still getting things organized. I offered to pay him (and buy other stuff), but he said he didn't have cash registers yet, and wasn't ready to open. I thanked him and rode off.
After another twenty miles, I rode to the little "town" of Disputanta, where the promised store was closed, but once again I lucked out, and found an antique store with a few snacks and cold drinks. The $6 I paid the nice lady there almost wiped out her inventory, and bought enough calories to fuel me the rest of the day.
After about eighty miles, my route joined the TransAmerica Trail for several miles. I was nostalgic revisiting the scene of the first day of my big trip almost two years ago.
I felt good the last fifteen or twenty miles of the day, although, at nearly 108 miles, this would be the longest day of the trip so far. I arrived at the outskirts of Richmond (near the airport), and checked into the Super 8, the first non-scary, non-expensive motel I found.
After picking up a pizza at the nearby Pizza Hut, I went to bed early, having decided to take a rest day tomorrow. I was approximately halfway to Maine.
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Today's ride: 108 miles (174 km)
Total: 1,037 miles (1,669 km)
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