The scenery here is exceptionally beautiful, and it seemed odd to see such a large amount of poverty scattered throughout it… a run-down mobile home with black plastic bags on the windows and a pit bull chained outside centered on a dirt patch.

…a small clapboard store, now empty and doorless, but with bars still on the grimy windows.

…a car on blocks, no wheels in sight. Another car beside it that will never again see the road, its hood missing, the rust more prevalent than the remaining paint, the remnants of which are faded from the elements.

All of this intermingles with an explosion of vivid greens covering the verdant, lush mountains, and each vacated mobile home stands out like a cold sore on prom night.   

Pedaling past the scenery today, my legs felt sluggish, as if I were riding over used chewing gum (my journal actually says “feels like road is made of ABC gum”) so I oiled my chain and freewheel. 

The fact that I even had a “freewheel” tells how old my journal is. With a freewheel, the cassette (the cogs on the back) thread onto the hub of the wheel like a screw cap, whereas with the more modern freehub, the cassette slides onto splines.

By 1:00 it was getting very hot, and I stopped in Franklin at a Yard Sale to fill my water bottles. The proprietor invited me to sit in the shade for a while and I took her up on the offer. I also ate the barbecue she handed me, then the oranges, and ended up staying for 45 minutes talking and watching people spend their quarters.

When I left at 1:45 I only made it four miles before stopping in the shade again, half my water already gone. Today was going to be a slow slog if I had to stop every four miles. When I got low on water, I just started knocking on doors. On a day when the road feels like a griddle in a greasy spoon cafe I just couldn’t afford to run out of water. 

In the midafternoon I knocked on the doors of a couple of houses along the road but the only response I got was a foul-tempered dog barking to let me know I wasn’t welcome. Just as I took my last drink of water from my last water bottle I saw a farmhouse about half a mile off the road and decided to risk the extra mile up and back on the chance I could get my bottles refilled.

It was an old farmhouse, and although I’m not the best person to ask about the age of a house I’d say it was more than a hundred years old. It appeared to be well cared for, and the elderly couple who owned it were sitting in rocking chairs on the front porch. They had to be at least eighty, and maybe older. 

I asked if I could have some water and the request appeared to make their day. They were REALLY proud of their water, and the husband informed me that,

“We got a farty two foot deep well, and it ain’t like that city water that has all that klaw-reen innit.”

After filling all three of my bottles, then drinking all three of them, then refilling them again, I sat on the porch steps and listened to them (mostly the husband) talk. He eventually started repeating himself, but it was nice sitting out of the sun, leaning against the railing, and enjoying the stories. I was amazed to learn that this octogenarian had never been farther away than Indianapolis from this house where, of course, he was born. Other than that single trip, he’d never even left the county.

It really WAS good water, as cool and refreshing as any I’ve ever tasted in my life.