April 29, 2017
As Wheat Falls Before the Reaper
Our skin and panniers are wet to the touch five minutes after we step out the double front doors of the church and into the Virginia morning. At the chidboy down the road, the window glass sweats in fat drops. The air is hot, thick, heavy, un-moving. When we were in the desert, the linen shirt I'm wearing was always tight and crumpled, like a newspaper that had been wadded up and unfolded. Today it's smooth and straight, as if it's being steam pressed while I wear it.
It's only the end of April, but it feels like we've been transported to the middle of August.
A sign with a big left-facing arrow points the way toward the Endtime Tabernacle. They've got their eyes on the prize over there. Farther on, it's a series of fields that are now being planted with crops. More than 1,300 soldiers died there in just one evening during the Civil War in 1862. Beyond it the interstate. Part of the land is for sale, even.
Time moves on.
We see national cemeteries like you'd see church cemeteries elsewhere. At the site of the Cold Harbor Battlefield, we learn that in thirteen days of fighting in June 1864 the two sides combined to lose as many as 18,000 men. They mowed down the lines as wheat falls before the reaper, said a lieutenant quoted on one of the placards posted near the visitor center.
And to think, in modern warfare we have drones that fly overseas, without a human pilot, guided by an airman sitting in a windowless room at an Air Force base north of Las Vegas. He unloads missiles on people he'll never see, as if in a video game, then drives home to his wife and kids and sits down for dinner and asks how their day was. War used to be existential; now it's a job, and a day job at that.
Oh, the fucking roads.
The trail of yesterday is a faint memory. We ride on a country highway where traffic never drops away for more than thirty seconds. There's no shoulder. Most of the time there's a ditch beyond the pavement's edge. We contend with a fleet of dump trucks making runs to a quarry, dudes in lifted trucks with snarling exhausts, more than one passing attempt that almost turns into a head-on collision, and an angry young woman who screams something about getting off the fucking roads you stupid fucking assholes.
We would if we could.
Outside Mechanicsville, I've had enough. As Jerry pulls up next to us, I tell him we're going to try and find a way around this mess on side roads. He decides he'd rather stick to the route. I worry for his safety.
We avoid some of the worst roads, but not all. By the time we stop at a gas station half an hour later my head aches from the stress. I look at Google Street View on my phone and see that the roads are like this for miles and miles and miles. I don't know how the Adventure Cycling Association could in good conscience send touring cyclists along this kind of route. I've ridden more than 25,000 miles in the last ten years and it's one of the most dangerous I've ever seen.
This is a not a safe hobby. I know that. Anyone who's done it knows that. You have to be willing to take risks. But you also have to be smart enough not to put yourself and others in danger when you don't have to. Long lines of cars heading past you in both directions all day long on a two-lane road with no shoulder is that kind of danger. It forces you to trust that every single car will wait to pass you until they should, will give you enough room, will not drive out into oncoming traffic in the middle of a curve and kill the people in the car headed the other way just because they couldn't wait an extra six seconds.
That stuff didn't bother me quite so much when I started riding a decade ago. Now it does. I think it's because I have so much more to lose now than I did back then.
We pass all kinds of newer housing developments and apartment complexes and shopping centers with a thousand or more parking spaces. That's where the traffic comes from. None of this was here forty years ago when the route was created. We know the reason, but it doesn't make us any safer. That job is helped by a local rider named Todd, who guides us down some quiet back roads into the town of Ashland. He cranks out a lot of miles around here, but he says he flat out won't ride the roads the TransAm runs on in this county.
It's ninety-one degrees and humid when we step out of a Mexican restaurant in the middle of the afternoon. It feels like my brain is in danger of melting. To save it, we ride to a microbrewery. Jerry is just walking out of the library across the street, so he joins us for some IPA and stout and saison, all finer than fine.
With freight trains rumbling through the center of town, we learn more about what an awesome dude he is. He flew tankers for the Air Force, the kind that refuel fighter jets in mid-air. He owns a yurt on the shores of Lake Superior on the U.P. of Michigan. He bikes and hikes and kayaks and paddle boards. He's upbeat and positive and psyched for this trip. Every time we hang out with him our day turns a little brighter.
At dark we ride over to the bicycle shop. They let TransAm cyclists camp behind the store for free. Sandwiched between the police station and a RiteAid, it's not so quaint. There are a lot of bright fluorescent lights nearby. It could be farther from the highway. But it's here, and so are we, happy to have survived to tell the story of the day.
Today's ride: 46 miles (74 km)
Total: 114 miles (183 km)
| Rate this entry's writing | Heart | 6 |
| Comment on this entry | Comment | 4 |
So true. I did the TransAm only a year after I started riding, when I didn't know anything. The first few days of the route through Virginia didn't seem bad to me at the time (except for a few hours of rush hour traffic around Mechanicsville), but I suspect that I would not like it at all now, because I have years of experience finding low-traffic roads.
One of the things that has occasionally annoyed me about Adventure Cycling is their reluctance to change their routes as conditions change over the years. Although I will give them credit for changing one of their (less popular) routes in Michigan after Joy and I had a terrible experience with busy, scary roads there in 2012. It might have helped that Joy knows some of the people in the ACA office personally.
They DID do a "realignment" of some of the Kentucky portion of the TransAm a while back, some of which I found to be a major improvement when I did four days of it a few weeks ago. For example, it no longer goes into Bardstown, which had some of the worst traffic when I rode the route back in 2006.
If you decide to do some of your own routing in Kentucky, the trick is to stick to roads with four-digit (or three-digit) numbers as much as possible. The best roads of all don't have a yellow line the middle. The TransAm uses state highways a lot. Some of them are OK, some are too busy.
For example, when you get to Falls of Rough, instead of following the TransAm route on 110 and then onto the potentially very busy 54, turn right onto Tickville Road soon after crossing the Rough River. Follow it about 13 winding miles to the outskirts of Fordsville and get back on the TransAm. It's actually slightly SHORTER than the TransAm route, and is certainly much more pleasant. Probably hillier, but that never bothers me.
You're obviously an accomplished route-maker at this point, but if you need any assistance with off-TransAm routing in my hold home state of KY, don't hesitate to get in touch.
6 years ago
6 years ago
;)
6 years ago
6 years ago