Day 81 – Lexington, Virginia to Charlottesville, Virginia

A Very Long Day

(Technical issues fixed)

Sunday was an eventful day from the start. The weather had turned very cold and I stayed at the Econo Lodge in Lexington. At 7:00 I was leaving my room to head to the lobby for breakfast, only I couldn’t get out. The door wouldn’t open, for some reason. It seemed like it was sealed shut at the top.

I’ve never seen anything like it and I called the front desk. I’m sure the guy thought it was nothing, but he ended up banging on it and making all kinds of noise, with no success.

A guy who was called to fix it drove up and talked with the employee. This was followed by more pounding on the door and then the next thing I hear is “Stand back, I’m gonna drill a hole in this door.” If everyone in that place weren’t awake before, they were now. It was incredibly loud.  Then I heard things like “This ain’t gonna work…Let me go get my other battery…I’ll getit in a minute.” Finally after cutting out the whole area around the lock, he was able to open it. This was shortly followed by an argument between the two, I assume over the cost of the service.

I had a very long day ahead and was ready to get out of there. The breakfast at the hotel was not nearly enough so I headed next door to the Lexington Restaurant. A tall guy with the boots, jeans, cowboy hat and accent came in excitedly talking about a fox he just saw in the parking lot. “I just saw a red fox! At first I was thinkin’ rabies, but I don’t think he has rabies.” Then somebody would say something, followed by him repeating “I was thinkin’ rabies.” Then someone else said something followed by him again saying “Yeah, I was thinkin’ rabies.”

Then he said “There he is!” We all looked out the window at the fox crossing the road. After that things settled down and people started talking about their trucks.

The plan was to go 80 miles to Charlottesville. I wanted to get the last big climb out of the way and then some so the last three days on the road would be mostly flat. That many miles was ambitious, but I figured I’d do it.

I was counting down the miles to the the top of the climb and then got on a stretch of some nice downhill. Eventually I came to a little town and an intersection, which was a bad sign because I shouldn’t have. I went into a store and asked a woman behind the counter if this was the way to Vesuvius. She shook her head and said it was totally the wrong way.

Two guys were standing by who looked like they were from ZZ Top. In the end everyone said I had to go back the way I had ridden and then take a right. This meant that all that downhill I had just ridden was now going to become uphill. The 80 mile day now had turned into an 88 mile day.

I picked up the pace to make up for lost time and eventually began the big part of the climb, which as near as I could tell was around 2,000 feet in under four miles. I was so ready for the end of it and it felt a lot like riding McKenzie Pass way back on Day 3. Getting to the top was a relief, but I was fooled into thinking that the rest of the day at 1:00 with 58 miles to go was somehow going to be easy.

After reaching the top I turned onto the famous Blue Ridge Parkway and was on it for about another 20 miles. There was still lots of climbing and a fair amount of weekend traffic to deal with. As nice as the scenery was, I was wanting by now to get out of the Appalachian Mountains.

Once I left the Parkway and got back on to the backroads, I saw that the hills still wouldn’t go away. They never stop. They were shorter climbs, but there were more of them. It was a little after 6:00 and starting to get dark when I reached Charlottesville. It was one of the toughest days of the trip, but now I’d say the worst is definitely behind me and it’s possible the last three days and 200 plus miles will be relatively easy. But you never know.