29 May 2012

Wytheville to Damascus VA 57 miles  (TransAm 497)

We might need to re-think this bit about Gina no longer sleeping in the Nursery.  Being the only TransAmmer sleeping downstairs last night, Gina quickly become one of the many TransAmmers sleeping upstairs after getting “totally creeped out” by the “creepy hallway” with the “creepy red glow” from the exit signs.  Throw in a young boy pedaling his trike down the hallway and I don’t blame her one bit for grabbing her sleeping bag and pad and joining Wendy upstairs.  Church or no church, there’s safety in numbers.

Today, in fact, was a numbers kind of day.  Number of days ridden without a day off the bike?  Eleven.  Total number of miles traversed?  Five hundred and forty-two.  Number of decades covered by Gina’s cycling posse of Ollie, Judy, Wendy and herself?  Thirty.  Number of breakfasts consumed?  Two.  Since the posse stopped for Second Breakfast, one can only assume that either they are all fans of Hobbits or Gina has been talking up the value of having a meal between Breakfast and Lunch.  What better place for Second Breakfast than one named Joey’s Country Kitchen in the hamlet of Rural Retreat?  I can smell the eggs and bacon and Uncle Billy Bob’s pipe from here.  Our kids are in Appalachian Trail country now, and might I say that not a funnier book has been written about hiking that historic trail than A Walk in The Woods by Bill Bryson.  I dare you to read it and not laugh out loud; it’s simply not physically possible.

Perhaps the best number of all?  The number zero.  This is the number of miles the TransAmmers will pedal tomorrow.  Finally, a rest day is at hand.  Well, if you call catching up on laundry and email and posting blogs and photos and shopping for several days of meals and just generally taking care of all those life chores that are hard to keep up with when you’re in the saddle all day “rest”.  Then it would count as a day of rest.  If you don’t call that “rest,” then I would definitely encourage you to settle in with Bill Bryson and not be signing up for any TransAms anytime soon.

Postscript:  Can I just say that it wasn’t until I was posting this blog that I noticed the gigantic pencil in the photo of Wytheville.  Shockingly, it is reportedly only the second largest pencil in the world (although not surprisingly, it is the largest pencil in the state of Virginia).