"Don't you get tired riding a bike so far?"

October 11, 2018

Day One: Henderson, KY to Grand Rivers, KY

I woke up and found that after weeks of unseasonably hot temperatures, it was chilly. The wind appeared to be mostly out of the north, so I decided to ride south today.

As always after riding a loaded touring bike for the first time in a while, the bike felt extremely heavy at first, but in a few miles I got used to the way it handled. I also got used to shifting into the small chain ring frequently.

My first stop was in the tiny village of Robards, where there's an old, defunct country store which I wanted to photograph for this journal. Every other time I've stopped, no one has been around, but today a man was sitting on the front porch. He cheerfully assented when I asked if I could take a few pictures, and for the next 30 minutes engaged me in an almost exclusively one-side conversation, in which he told me many, many things. I will make an attempt to impart the flavor of his monologue:

"I've lost 230 lbs in the last two years... I weigh 250 now... I walk 10 or 15 miles every day... I walk through the fields and on the roads... everyone knows me around here... I used to take 40 medicines... I've traveled in 48 states, but there's only one place I'd rather live in than Robards [Here I was expecting him to say Florida - my wife thinks it's funny that virtually every Kentuckian she's met loves to go to Florida, and she would have found this amusing - but the man surprised me by saying "Pigeon Forge, Tennessee"]

He continued:

"I had Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever twice... I had the highest temperature ever recorded of anyone in Kentucky... I had seven ruptured disks... I worked 120 hours a week - farm work, manual labor... I have a soprano singing voice... I've been asked to sing in gospel groups... at church they say many have been saved after hearing me sing... I mowed that yard over there, after it got to be about a foot high... I mowed it with an $89 push mower... the man said I'd never get it mowed... when I was done he gave me $100...

The talk then turned to an uncle of his, the inheritance from whom was apparently the source of the man's financial independence:

"My uncle sold me his farms for one dollar for tax purposes... his house did not have an indoor bathroom... he always pooped outside... He would shit in the parking lot of the bank and wipe his ass with grass... I would say 'Uncle, they are going to have you arrested', but he said 'Why, I'm not doing nothing wrong'... Later I found out that he owned controlling stock in the bank, which is why they never did anything about it... He would keep chicken sitting out on a shelf in his house, unrefrigerated... he never got sick eating it... They put him in the nursing home, but I broke him outta there, and he lived four more years...After he died I found old spark plugs in his house with diamonds hidden in them...

During all this, I said very little except for an occasional "huh", or "that's interesting."

Finally, I told him that I needed to get back on the road, and he told me that I should stop by again and he'd let me look inside the old store, which was now his residence. "My woman's asleep in there now, but come by some other time and I'll show you around."

With that, I got back on the bike and rode away.

About five miles later I was in Sebree where I had my second breakfast - after only 24 miles of riding - at the Sebree Dairy Bar. As usual, everyone else in the place was in the "Smoking" section, which is separated from the "Non Smoking" section by a low wall which unsurprisingly does nothing to prevent cigarette smoke from encroaching. However, as I am usually in the small minority of Dairy Bar patrons who don't smoke, I think it best not complain about this.

Sebree is on the TransAmerica Trail. I decided to stay on the route, since it's well-signed and pleasant, and the next several hours were very enjoyable, especially after the sun came out.

I stopped in Marion after 68 miles and went to a McDonald's. It was 61 degrees and sunny, but a couple of teenage girls were sitting outside in fur-lined parkas. They looked like they were freezing. "How do you ride when it's so cold?!" I can only assume that they were recent transplants from south Florida, or somewhere. If that's the case, they are not going to be happy here in February.

While I was eating my fish sandwich, the only item on the McDonald's menu that I find edible at this point, I decided to leave the TransAmerica route, and head more or less directly south toward the Land Between the Lakes. The first five miles on US 461 were unpleasantly trafficky, but then I turned onto a series of quiet, but hilly, country roads.

At one point I encountered a small herd of goats on the narrow road. Their owner, a 78-year old man carrying an oxygen tank on his ATV, was moving them a few hundred feet, and after he (and his dogs) got the goats back inside the fence, we talked for a while. He provided some helpful routing advice, and then left this parting question: "Don't you get tired riding a bike so far?"

After several hilly miles, I got onto busy US 62, which had a nice, wide shoulder for a few miles, but then became rough and narrow. I'd been dreading crossing the Cumberland River, but was pleased to find that the bridge at least had a (narrow) shoulder. I waited for gap in the traffic, and rode across as quickly as I could.

It was a couple more miles to the motel, where the nice lady who owned the place gave me the touring cyclist discount, and then let me have one of the cottages for the same price of $66 including tax. Nice!

I was so tired that I could barely stand up in the shower, and went to bed at 7:40 without even eating anything for dinner.