Day 5: Bottoms Up Charlottesville

A freight train rattled through Mineral around five in the morning, and though I’d slept soundly enough on my mat, that was the end of sleep for the night. I gave up, packed, and was on the road by seven after a stop at the station for an egg-and-bacon sandwich stacked on the thickest bread I’ve ever encountered. Almost the moment I started pedaling it began to rain — the first of the whole trip. Most of my kit is waterproof, my jacket was already on, and besides, it’s humid enough out here that cold was never really the danger.

The climbing kept ratcheting up, but I’d stopped minding — the downhills that followed were too much fun to complain about the price of admission. Rolling hills, one after another, enough momentum on the way down to almost carry me back up the other side. Somewhere in there I hit a new top speed for the trip, thirty-five and a half miles an hour, fast enough that I swear I heard the voice of Track & Field announce a new world record. Palmyra was the only town on the route worth the name, and I stopped just long enough for food before the pull of a motel bed in Charlottesville got me moving again.

When this happened I heard the voice of Track & Field say “New World Record!”

Charlottesville turned out to be one of the biggest places on the whole route, home to the University of Virginia, and the climb in from the welcome sign made sure I knew it — granny gear, almost the entire way. Worth every turn of the pedal once I crested it: college bars, quirky little food places strung along Main Street, a campus that looked like something out of a film, and — a small miracle after weeks of retirees and truckers — a whole town full of people roughly my own age.

I cleaned up at the Red Roof Inn and walked straight back out to the Mellow Mushroom next door, a place I’d heard nothing but good things about from every cyclist who’d passed through before me. A Mighty Meat pizza and a run through their genuinely excellent microbrew list later, I was in good company at the bar. Adam the bartender was easy to talk to, and I did my best to sell the room on the upcoming World Cup, though the US losing a friendly to the Czech Republic four-two on the screens above us rather undercut my pitch. Two weeks of maybe a beer here and there had left me with no tolerance whatsoever, so I felt every one of them tonight — the Drifter Pale Ale from Oregon most of all, which felt like the right thing to be drinking given where my front wheel was eventually pointed. Adam bought the whole bar a round of shots. It was a great night. I made myself stop right at the edge of tipsy, before it became something else.

Blurry Adam, I blame the low light not the drink.

Tomorrow was a short one, only twenty-five miles, to a house belonging to a woman who has opened her doors to cyclists since the trail began back in ’76 — everyone calls her the cookie lady. Wifi might be scarce for the next few days after that, so updates could slow down for a while.