Against All Odds

May 9, 2017

It storms throughout the night and then the morning, but with a tin roof above our heads everything stays dry. We make the most of the gift by sleeping in and staying huddled together all toasty warm as endless rain lashes down in a booming metallic chorus.

All the rain leaves the creek that runs next to the road a thundering stretch of whitewater. The tops of the tallest hills are ghosts behind the thick low clouds. Within a few miles we ride up into those clouds, the road angling gently upward until we top out near 4,000 feet.

The descent chills. We stop in Konnarock and warm up on cheap coffee and cappuccino that comes out of a black plastic box with the push of a button. It's strictly a styrofoam cup kind of place. At the rickety metal table next to ours, old guys in ball caps talk in accents so thick it's hard to hear what they're saying. I only catch snippets of conversation: "we got the strongest milit-ry in the worl'" and "he's a-one a them Hill-ry votahs" and "Washington state? I wouldn't even go out thar on an airplane."

Beyond town we head off the highway and hook up with the Virginia Creeper Trail. I hope it doesn't end in abject disaster like the last one.

The trail is muddy from all the rain, but it's an incredible scene. Wedged into a tall and narrow mountain hollow, it runs next to a creek so swollen and fast-moving that the rushing of it drowns out all other noise. Tiny waterfalls cascade straight down off jagged faces of rock just a few feet from the path. In ten miles we pass over seventeen or eighteen bridges, some hundreds of feet long and others not much farther across than the length of my bike.

The scent of wet earth and leaves, together with the thick air from the morning's rain, makes the world smell intense and loamy and brilliantly alive. We see no others riders, but dozens of AT hikers bound for Maine. We talk and dream of becoming two of them some day.

The Creeper shoots us out into warm sunshine and the town of Damascus. The first bike shop we stop at is closed. Also, it doesn't really look like a bike shop. They just rent bikes for people to ride on the trail. I ask a second shop if they have any derailleurs for sale. They do not. The third shop has one mechanic, who doesn't work today, and because he doesn't work today they can't sell me any parts. The fourth and fifth shops are just rental places that flat out refuse to work on any bikes other than their own.

So much for the Damascus plan.

I am disappointed, frustrated, astonished, and livid all at once. And then, defiant. Fuck this town; we'll get the bike fixed ourselves. We'll figure out how to get the derailleur off, deal with whatever problems we find, then order new parts and get them shipped and install them ourselves.

I go back to the second bike shop. There are three men sitting inside behind the counter, none of whom seem to be doing much of anything. This time I ask if they have a long wrench to get some leverage to break the derailleur bolt loose. They do, and they try, but they can't. At least not without breaking the wrench or the dropout in which the bolt is stuck. As the first two guys debate these points, the third, a big and quiet guy named Jamie, changes everything.

"I don't know that we need ta take that thang off," he says in a slow, deep voice. "We might jus' be able ta bend it back into place."

It seems like a long shot. The thing is pointing about ninety degrees off where it should, and the gaps where the chain goes through the jockey wheels have been pinched to the point the chain can't quite make the gap. But with a big wrench, a pair of pliers, and about five minutes the derailleur is square enough to work.

Still, there's the matter of the chain. The one that's on the bike is single-speed length. Most of the rest of it is mixed in with our spare parts and tools. The last link is out in the dirt on the trail where we left it seventy miles back. Yet somehow this works out, too. The other guys search through the drawers in the work benches and one of them manages to find a single master link, the kind they told me five minutes earlier they were all out of. Jamie hooks it up. And there it is: the original chain and derailleur are back in business.

"It ain't perfect," he says, "But I think it'll get ya ta Washington."

Jamie spends another ten minutes dialing in the shifting. It's not perfect either, but it's close. And it's more than enough to keep us going. When I ask if he can true Kristen's wobbly rear wheel, he says he can. Then he does.

When I ask Jamie how much we owe, he shakes his head and says we don't owe anything. Is he sure? Yeah, he's sure. We buy some tube patch kits; it's the least we can do.

Against all odds even half an hour earlier, we're good to go again. We are stunned and pleased beyond words.

While all of the repair business is unfolding, Jerry shows up at the shop. We all decide to go grab Mexican food to celebrate the repaired bike and to share stories from our last few days on the road.

When I passed through Damascus six years ago, bikers could pitch a tent on the lawn at a hostel called The Place for free. A new town ordinance makes that illegal. This is how we end up at an old house with a sign that says Crazy Larry's, where we pay a shocking amount for a bed in a room with an aesthetic best described as squatting on the back porch of a foreclosed home.

I ask Larry how he ended up in Damascus.

"I first came through here back in 2001. I was on the run from the law out on the trail. But I had a spiritual experience out there and decided to turn myself in. Which I did. Spent fourteen months in jail."

As the story goes on in curves and tangents involving Alabama and large engine repair and a guy he knew who was on track to be a heavy metal rock star before ending up with incurable cancer, Kristen and I both watch this bearded former fugitive pull out a small, white pocket knife. He opens the blade carefully. He runs his finger along the edge near the tip.

We are cornered in this room. I notice that against the wall behind him sits an orange-handled hatchet.

He raises the knife — and then carefully sticks it in between two teeth and fishes out whatever's stuck between them.

Larry's mellow now, just like everyone in Damascus is mellow. Walking the streets we see hikers all over. Everyone says hello. They're people in good spirits, people in the middle of grand adventures, all brought together in this tiny little town tucked into this beautiful and far-flung corner of Virginia. Half of them are probably stoned — all of the ones sitting in our hostel's kitchen definitely are — but it's all part of the charm.

Having spent so much time focused on fixing Kristen's bike over the last two days, I realize I haven't thought about anything beyond this town. No plans have been hatched. And now, no worries cloud my mind. Slowly, slowly, slowly I unwind.

Today's ride: 28 miles (45 km)
Total: 508 miles (818 km)

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