Detour To Another Planet
I finished riding a few days ago but I have been up in the mountains of Virginia taking a few days off before I begin the second half of my tour. I made a last minute decision to follow a new friend on his route for a week and it was probably the best decision I’ve made in my month out on the road. The great part about touring is being able to make the decisions that leave the future unknown, and let me tell you, this one was worth it tenfold. What a week with the unexpected route change, you’ll be able to read more on it below if you’re able to piece together my disjointed thoughts.
April 27, 2021 68.88mi
I ended up staying an extra day in Emerald Isle. My body needed it, plus my cousin's Southern Hospitality drew me in. Yesterday when I was restocking food and bike parts I ran into Adam (he’s the gent I met in South Carolina after passing him in Georgia)! This morning we connected and realized we are trying to get to the same host at the end of the week. The only difference is that he was taking the Outer Banks and I was going to weave along the North Carolina coastal mainland. He asked if I had any interest in joining him and it didn’t take me long to realize this was something I couldn’t pass up. So, I called one of the places I was going to stay to cancel it and I hopped on the saddle to follow Adam to the Outer Banks! We had a beautiful tailwind all day and we were cruising along with no effort. The tall grass out here makes me feel like I was out in Fargo again. It just goes and goes until it falls in to the horizon line. We caught the 4:30pm ferry to Ocracoke where the Banks truly started. It was something like 24 miles on the water, over 2 hours on the boat. Just to put in to perspective how good the winds were treating us, we rode 18 miles in an hour, which is wild on fully loaded rigs that weigh 80-90 pounds. With winds like this I might even end up in Richmond a day earlier than expected!
April 28, 2021 28.55mi
I’m writing this from my tent. I like to write from a bench if I have one close by but it is WINDY tonight. Should I have tied some more guy lines? Prolly. Will my tent hold as is? Yeah. I love the wind but it might stuff up our plans to sleep on the beach tomorrow. It’s pretty cool riding with someone else for a while. Today was the least amount of miles I’ve covered on this tour. Being out here feels like New England and the Keys all mixed up. The houses feel like they belong in New England but we are surrounded by tall, hot sand dunes. We saw very little traffic between towns. All we had to listen to was our bikes and the sandy winds pushing us along. There were sand streams following us along the road due to the strong tailwinds, a sight I won’t soon forget. We are the first people to camp at this RV park since the pandemic hit last year. Brand new bathrooms! No hot water! Who cares, it got the sand off me!
April 29, 2021 54.68mi
Another day with fantastic tailwinds. There we sections that felt like we were on a different planet. Twenty foot dunes surrounded us on both sides, with sand whispering off their peaks. We had the pleasure of riding with more of the sand rivers along the road caused by the heavy tailwinds we were in. There was a dune that people were allowed to climb so we took the opportunity and got absolutely sand blasted. It showed us how lucky we were that we were heading WITH the wind and not against it. We made it to the Herbert C. Bonner Bridge by early afternoon and used it for some shade before making the pass. It was probably the coolest bridge I’ve crossed during the tour, with its snake-like bends as it rose 200 feet out of the ocean. We stopped at the Bodie Island Lighthouse before starting to look for a place to sleep. Turns out the Wright Brothers museum had a beautiful pine forest just off their site that provided a picturesque camping environment.
Well, I thought I was done writing for the day but popped out of my tent for a second and noticed that BOTH of my tires went flat. Probably from a thorn while dragging my rig into the pine forest. I’ll fix it tomorrow, no biggie. I believe it’s time for new tires again. Marathons??
April 30, 2021 37.09mi
I come to you from a swamp in mainland North Carolina. We took it slow today and spent quite a bit of time at the Wright Brothers Museum. While we were there we met four other cycle tourist’s who had just finished the Southern Tier and decided to do the East Coast from St. Augustine, FL to Bar Harbor, ME because they finished the Southern Tier so fast. One guy even had kitty litter buckets like Adam! We hung out for an hour before they took off because they average about 100 miles a day. The heat and wind were brutal. The bridge leaving the Banks was atrocious and it didn’t take long to get back to that heavy traffic we knew before we rode the Banks. We struggled to find a good place to sleep so we found this dry spot on the edge of the swamp. Oh yeah, got another flat dragging my bike to this place. Oh and finally had a fantastic biscuit sandwich for breakfast.
May 1, 2021 45.92mi
One month on the road done, just like that. We rode 3 miles in terrible traffic and wind before taking shelter behind a gas station where we slept until noon while the traffic and wind calmed down. We made it another quarter mile before stopping for BBQ… couldn’t pass up this place. Today was my last day riding with Adam. What a great choice it was to follow him out along the Banks. Everyone tours differently and it was a blast seeing how he does it. It can get pretty lonely on the road when you’re alone so it was great catching up on all of the talking I didn’t do for the 3 weeks prior. Passed in to Virginia at the end of the day, getting me to my planned host a day earlier! Adam had met Ingo the year prior when he was finishing up the Trans America route.
May 2, 2021 69.74mi
Adam and I said our goodbyes and I was off to find some allergy meds. I was unsuccessful. After getting out of Chesapeake I spent the rest of the day on country roads surrounded by farmland. Every 5 miles or so I would hit some woods with a minor 200ft dip and a relatively same sized climb about a quarter mile away, there was usually a bend in it before tossing you back out in the shade-less farmland. You know you can tell you’re getting close to a town again when the volume of trash along the road increases. It’s a bummer and it’s everywhere… whether you’re in the Florida Keys or the farmlands in Virginia. Rain tomorrow on my ride into Richmond?
May 3, 2021 60.25mi
1,521.17 miles. Half way. Well, just about half way. I’m just gonna call it half. I caught the 8am ferry to Jamestown and was greeted by the Virginia Capital Trail, a 50 mile long mixed use trail that takes you all the way to Richmond. Thanks to the trail I was able to finish my riding several hours earlier than I usually do because of the trail. Sure, it rained on and off but it never really slowed me down. Early on while riding the trail I ran into the four guys we met at the Wright Brothers Museum a few days earlier. We rode for a while before we split off when I stopped to refill water because they were trying to ride 115mi today. The gas station I stopped at had a note waiting for those 4 guys from a lady that had passed them earlier that was labelled “Four Hot Cyclists''. She expected them to stop there because it was the only station until you got much closer to Richmond. I took it with me as I’ll be seeing one of the guys when I get up to Portland (no… I haven’t read it). Here we go… the northern half of the East Coast Greenway… can’t lose focus now!
