May 13, 2017
It'll Do 'Til the Haul Gits Here
The chidboy down the road isn't open when we roll up at a quarter past seven. But no worries, the map shows no fewer than twelve — twelve! — in the fifty miles between Lookout and Hindman. It's going to be an unhealthy and expensive day for food.
Greg warned us yesterday about the climb out of Lookout. Not for the steepness, but for the dogs. Yet it turns out there's only one dog. We joke that the rest of them must have ganged up on Jim and Keith, dragged them away from the road, and are now off in the woods devouring them for breakfast. When I was here six years, ago there were at least a dozen, half of them roaming in a single, feral pack. This time I see more fences, more care. The hollow has the look of a place time has forgotten, but it's slowly progressing just like everywhere else in the world.
Jim and Keith haven't been mauled to death. They're just getting chid coffee ten miles down the road. While we talk with them, a local guy launches into a long rant about the route we're taking is terrible, awful, horrible, unsafe, full of coal trucks, shoulderless, and that if we head up that a-way we're riding right into a damned hellhole. He suggests riding busy major highways all day long instead.
None of us take his advice.
We ride down the Lula Bates Memorial Highway, then up a quiet road with a sign that reads No Thru Trucks. Kristen and I wave at kids jumping on a trampoline in a big front yard and they wave back, all smiles and bouncing ponytails. When Kristen rings the bell on her handlebars we get screams of excitement and even bigger waves.
There are dogs everywhere, and they all bark, but they're almost all behind fences. Our favorite is a small pup sitting on an easy chair on a porch, who gets up and barks so much he kind of jumps up in the air, but who also won't come down and chase us because that would mean leaving the chair behind.
There's no traffic to speak of on this Saturday morning. The sun shines. The air is cool. We're happy to be right here.
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Beyond the Floyd County sign things get a little weird. We find more angry unleashed dogs, falling-apart mobile homes, and rusting hulks of old cars and trucks stacked in piles being reclaimed by the grass and weeds. All of a sudden there's trash everywhere: rivers of fast food boxes and soda bottles and chid wrappers lining the shoulders to a depth of three or four beer cans.
Half of the cars on the road aren't cars, but four-wheelers. Some are like the ATVs I remember seeing when I was younger, where it's one guy sitting on top of a small chassis with four small tires. But most are like miniature trucks, with heavy suspension, big tires, a full roll cage over top, and a red and white cooler strapped to a rack on the back. We even see one with four seats and an entire family inside, rolling down the highway at forty miles per hour to the Dollar General.
"You guys mind if we switch to the other table?" I ask as Kristen and Jerry and I sit down to eat at the Bypro Dairy Bar. "There's a dog turd on my side."
With that done, I dig into a chicken biscuit sandwich with a side of something called chicken fries and a deep-fried Twinkie for dessert.
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Bypro is a hot mess; no question about it. The smell of burnt rubber and car exhaust hangs over everything. A chorus of barking echoes off the cliffs and hills that tower over town. I'm admiring the row of seven — seven! — vending machines for soda and energy drinks in front of the grocery store and watching a stray dog walk across the parking lot when a guy walks out of the store and turns to me.
"Widjah highza gon to?" he asks.
I'm never sure exactly what I'm being asked in this part of the country. But I can't pretend to be Belgian, so I just have to guess.
"Ah, we're going to Washington state eventually," I say.
"Woo hew, thazza haul righ there!"
"If it ain't, it'll do 'til the haul gits here."
The guy busts out laughing and then jumps into his four-wheeler — of course — and speeds off.
I stand there and tilt my head a little. Did I just say ain't? Did I just talk in a Kentucky accent? Where the hell did that come from?
The places we ride today are not perfect; we're still in Eastern Kentucky, after all. There's a lot a garbage around. Most people have accents so thick I can't make sense of them. I hear a dad say motherfucker in front of his six-year-old daughter. We see more than a few shirtless dudes sitting around strung out on something. This is probably related to the big pharmacies with the bars running both vertical and horizontal across their front windows.
But while there are parts of this country where the term hellhole applies, this isn't one of them. It seems no better and no worse than any other place around here we could have ridden. It's poor but it's hanging on as best it can. And with empty roads and beautiful weather we have a wonderful day.
A push up America's steepest driveway brings us to the Knott County Historical Society. Jim and Keith are already here. Jerry shows up soon after. For some reason that's never clear, they host traveling cyclists. It also seems to be just one guy, a sixty-five-year old man named David. He wears a tan suit with a brown tie and a fedora, in the way you might imagine someone who starts their own historical society would. He shares the place with a number of cats, including a polydactyl cat named Edgar Allan Toe.
Tents are set up; riders scatter about the property. Kristen shares with me a bit of the chat she had with David.
"He said the house has been in his family for four generations. He also said there's a gas leak."
Soon we notice the unmistakable smell of pipe smoke. This could be an explosive night.
The calming rhythm of the crickets is broken every few minutes by the obnoxious snarl of aftermarket truck exhaust pipes that bounces off the hillsides. We have a tickle fight and discover that it's impossible to do a quiet Chewbacca impression (go ahead, try it). I decide that if I ever start a punk band I'm calling it Noam Chomsky Don't Know Shit About Cycle-Touring. Then we tuck into the sleeping bag and fall right to sleep.
Today's ride: 52 miles (84 km)
Total: 658 miles (1,059 km)
| Rate this entry's writing | Heart | 4 |
| Comment on this entry | Comment | 6 |
Recommended by the Grampies.
Your pictures are splendid though your trails seems to be harsh.
Your writing is bringing us the atmosphere of rural Virginia and Kentucky that I am discovering.
Will you continue your adventure next spring from Buckhorn to 1000 more kilometers west on trail 76?
https://www.gpsies.com/map.do?fileId=mwtzywazyafnwhri
6 years ago
All the best.
6 years ago
The Cordes family (Jason, Lindsay, Levi, Myles, & Moab)
6 years ago
6 years ago