Vaguely Historic

April 28, 2017

A chorus of chirping birds, the smell of fresh-cut grass, a massive spire of granite or maybe marble that commemorates the victory of the two long-ago wars that guaranteed the independence of this country. The start of the TransAm. It's a place I'd never thought I'd find myself standing, yet here I am — anxious, excited, ready.

From what they call the Victory Monument we coast down to the shores of the York River, where we look out on the featureless gray of the Atlantic Ocean beyond. On a little stretch of white sand we dip our rear tires about an inch deep into the salty water. I think about what it will feel like if we're able to make it all the way to Washington and do the same with the fronts. I wonder what we'll see. I wonder who we'll meet. I wonder how we'll have changed. All I know for sure is that a great adventure stands before us.

So we get to it. With a kiss and an I love you we're off.

I hear the sand stuck to our back wheels crunching on the pavement as we go. Looking around at all of the brick buildings near the waterfront I think, Man, this feels historic. Then I see that behind the wooden door off to my right is a sushi joint. Beyond it, a bookstore.

The Colonial Parkway sounds vaguely historic too, but it's flush with traffic in the way that any major road within twenty miles of a coastline is required to be. Even though it runs flat along the banks of the York, sweat pours from our heads whenever we stop. But it's wonderful all the same. The woods around us are deep and mysterious. The lowlands over which we pass on wide bridges look untouched by human progress. Birdsong fills the air. Everywhere we look bursts in shades of bright green.

The Parkway shoots us out into the middle of Colonial Williamsburg. The place is run by the National Park Service and gives a sense of what life kind-of-sort-of looked and felt like back in the days when Virginia was a colony and the United States wasn't even a slice of a fragment of an idea. It's picket fences and broad lawns and buildings so old that on an American scale they're ancient. There are a non-trivial number of people walking around in the long dresses and vest coats and samosa-shaped hats that make it look like they're from the 1700s. We see long lines of tour buses and longer lines of high school students who look underwhelmed. It's this weird cross between a national monument, a museum, and a theme park without the roller coasters.

It seems less quaint when we end up in among a series of buildings that look old and important but house a Williams-Sonoma, a Talbots, and even a full-on Barnes & Noble. The sight of a Starbucks brings the high school students back to life. A well-preserved example of colonial history? Eh. A venti no-whip latte and a spinach and cheese pretzel? OMG.

"Guys! It's just a bookstore! We only have an hour and a half here, go take the tour!" says a chaperone at the center of a dozen juniors. He's only been here for the morning and is already starting to lose his mind.

But on the whole, Williamsburg is lovely — pastoral, idyllic, a reminder of a simpler time, at least if you were white and a man.

Back on the Parkway, the traffic drops to almost nothing and we ride easy and free. It might be the last time I can say that until the middle of Kansas. We meet our first loaded cyclist, a local guy out for a couple of days. Then it's on to the Virginia Capital Trail, past wide open fields of young wheat, all green and fuzzy on their tops, each a tiny sprout of new life reaching out of ground on which who knows how many young men died to secure the independence of this nation.

We had planned to stop at a county park about thirty-five miles from Yorktown, but we get there by 1:30 and still feel strong, so we keep cranking down the trail. It's swamps and forests and the overpowering smell of spring in full bloom. We see plantations built in the 1670s, one of which is the childhood home of President John Tyler, who historians describe with terms like obscure, unimportant, and held in low esteem.

A sign in front of a country store lists the prices for turkeys necks, pig ears, pig feet, and beef liver. A tired old SUV in the parking lot has a window sticker that reads, "I have kids: Get too close and I'll ding your shit." I'm not sure what that means, but I like that it exists.

The farther we head down the trail, the fewer riders we see, until it becomes all our own. We sweat rivers in the direct sun, but mostly we travel the gentle ups and downs and subtle curves of the trail in the shade of a tall tunnel of trees. On this day there's nowhere else we'd rather be. I wonder what percentage of Americans can say the right now. Five percent? Two percent? Less than one?

At the top of a low rise, we pass what a small sign tells us is the Malvern Hill Battlefield. Except for the replica cannons that stand at its highest point, it looks like a dozen other fields we passed today. But on this one, in just a single July day in 1862, at least 100,000 Union and Confederate troops engaged in battle. In the yellow grass and thick woods that surround us, more than 8,500 of them died. It's a scale of death too grand to comprehend. What must it have sounded like? Or smelled like? Where do you put 8,500 dead soldiers? And yet without a sign to tell us what we're looking at, we'd have ridden by thinking only about cold beer and glazed honey buns.

The nearby Willis United Methodist Church served as a hospital during the war. Tonight it is our home. Out front we meet Jerry, a retired guy from Northern Michigan who's riding the TransAm to Oregon. He's been waiting forty-one years to take this trip, ever since meeting some young people riding the route in Kansas back in 1976, the year it was created. We thought we were excited to be out here, but we've got nothing on Jerry. It's a lifetime of anticipation come to bear.

We take showers, cook dinner, and talk with Jerry about the road ahead. We revel in the fact that we feel safe and welcomed and appreciated here, like we belong. After dark, I stand on the front steps of the church in the warm night air and listen to the crickets and the frogs call and call and call. I know these aren't exactly the things those young men on the battlefield a mile to the south of us fought and died for all those years ago, but there exists in my heart and in my mind profound gratefulness that they did.

Today's ride: 68 miles (109 km)
Total: 68 miles (109 km)

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