The Great Unwind

May 1, 2017

It's like we woke up somewhere other than where we went to sleep. The sky is a flat gray, it's ten degrees cooler than this time yesterday, and the wind blows strong from the south. Beyond Mineral we pass the first of the probably thousands of single- and double-wide mobile homes we'll see between here and the West Coast.

But we're still in Virginia. The old Baptist churches with names like Divine still stand just off the road. We still hear the odd gunshot from somewhere unseen off in the woods, smell the rotting stench of roadkill possum, and ride along those quiet and winding country back roads.

There's no reason to rush. But something inside tells me to push harder, to go faster. That's the default state in our culture, or at least it is where I live. And that's how most of the last year has been for me. After riding across the Deep South last winter, it's been an unbroken stretch of activity. There was the working, and lots of it. There was the gutting and then rebuilding of the interior of our old Volkswagen camper van. There was the building of our tiny little cabin on an island accessible only by boat, with no building experience to speak of. There was the learning how to run a boat to get out to that island, with having never owned a boat before. There were the thousand other little tasks required of adult life. Always doing, always more.

You can't just flip a switch and turn off that drive. I wish it was that easy. But I also know that it'll fade away with time, whittled down by the days and the miles and the stacks of cheeseburgers that lie ahead. And I know I can do little things to help the great unwind inch itself forward. So at our next stop I lay back in the grass, stare up into the trees, feel the wind rushing over my skin, listen to the birds and their conversations, and let the sweet smell of spring fill my head.

Some of the roads out here are so narrow they don't even have lane markers painted in the middle. The fields of wheat that stand next to them look soft to the touch, like I could take a running start and leap into them and their waving hands would catch me and hold me suspended a foot and a half above the ground.

We meet up with Jerry in Palmyra. The one restaurant is closed, so after thirty miles with a bunch of steep hills thrown in at the end, we feast on the best the tiny gas station can offer: chips and cookies, crackers and beef sticks, chocolate milk, and tiny cans of tuna salad. In between bites we look at weather forecasts and radar loops. We read about the thunderstorms that are headed our way. Storms may be severe, says one forecast.

I don't feel good about continuing on. Palmyra has a library and a church where we could pass the afternoon and then the evening. And anyhow, the trip is still young. We could take it easy; rest legs; live to ride another day; start the morning feeling refreshed, without an angry pocket of thunder and lightning barreling toward us.

Two for eighty-eight cents. The deal of the year.

This doesn't happen. What happens is a rough afternoon. We leave town on a busy, narrow highway where the drivers are patient but not that patient. I look up and see what I think is rain falling ahead, but it's a cloud of dust and pollen. It makes my eyes and nose and throat all scratchy. It covers our skin and clothes in a fine layer of yellow and white in minutes. I'm slow and tired and kind of weak.

We ride mostly tunneled in trees, but when we reach open fields with views to the south I see darkness and turbulence coming our way. We've been in this position before. It almost always ends with us huddled under the front awning of a church or a carport, rain lashing down all around us, lightning bursting and thunder booming and my asshole clenched tight. I'm anxious.

And then, relief. We round a corner and find a little country store with an open front door and a working kitchen and a long table in the back, just in front of the coolers filled with Budweiser, Four Loko, and something called Wild Irish Rose. It's not much, but it'll do.

In the end, we stop at the exact right spot. The temperature drops enough that I shiver when I step outside, but the storm passes just far enough to the west that our saddles don't even get a drop of rain on them.

We head west toward the murky gray of the storm's tail end. The roads rise and fall about as easy as you could hope to find in Central Virginia, but still I feel sluggish, like some invisible parachute has been deployed behind me. We're off the TransAm so that we can go south avoid all the traffic and madness of Charlottesville, a big city full of services we don't need.

It's the right choice. The roads are peaceful, the open fields rolling and green, to the point that they wouldn't be at all out of place in New Zealand or Ireland.

Half an hour after we roll into the campground the skies open and the rain pours from the sky like something you'd see during the climax of a romantic movie that's so cheesy and obvious it makes you want to barf. Then it passes, then it returns again. We decide not to set up the tent until the tail of the storm passes, which means hours of sitting on hard wooden benches under a covered porch in front of the laundry room. I feel dead to the world, for a reason I can't figure. All I want to do is sleep off whatever it is that's brought me down, but the lightning and thunder and rain continue on. I wait and I wait and I wait.

Darkness has been with us for hours by the time we can set up the tent and climb into the sleeping bag. Raindrops on the tent roof above my head push me toward sleep faster than you can say—

Today's ride: 51 miles (82 km)
Total: 205 miles (330 km)

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