Cycling Across America #15
Part 15 of the Cycle-Across-America series relayed day by day, exactly ten years after it happened. (Read from the start in Boston)
Yesterday’s section saw the trip being restarted several days after being hit by a truck in Virginia. Ten years ago today I was trying to enjoy cycling again:
Friday the 16th of August, in Martin County, in North Carolina.The police found me at half five this morning. I’d managed to curl myself onto the floor of the toilet in the sleeping bag, and I think I got a couple of hour’s sleep. They brought me inside and questioned me to establish I wasn’t missing or wanted, and then they gave me one of their reflective vests and sent me on my way.
Seven and a half miles later I saw them at a junction, five of them. They were bemused with me more than anything, I think.
So I continued on that big road I hated last night. Turns out that just inside three miles away was a motel - though it wasn’t Frank’s Place.
Today cycling into North Carolina was nerve-wracking, like yesterday, and again I wasn’t enjoying it at all. Like yesterday I would pull off the road every so many yards, and when traffic was heavier I would cycle in the grass beside the road. At times the grass was as tall as two-foot - not easy cycling for a road bike. I spent an awful lot of time on the grass today. Because of the amount of time I spent cycling in the grass, the new bike itself was named yesterday;“Long Grass”.
Followed the Chowan River into Ahoskie, where I had lunch at a Taco Bell. Well, stodge more than lunch. Breakfast was way back in Whaleyville. Two hot dogs with chilli and a Honey Bun from the store.In Ahoskie there was a little sand devil in the car park, fifteen feet away from me, spinning sand around as they do, and off it went.
Cycling on Virginia 11 was like the arcade game where you hide behind mountains and then go up, dodge the fireballs, and then go down again into the mountains. That’s what I was doing for about seventy miles. Cycling on the road in between traffic going past, and then ducking onto the grass. Unlike the game of course, I only get one life.
After Aulander it was wearing me down because there was more traffic and more and more looking behind. Cycling looking backwards over my right shoulder - which is harder, but it’s because my neck’s never been quite right for looking left since cycling in Turkey. And my left side hurts anyway, the hip and leg. So I tend to look right and just pull it into the grass. It’s grass growing in sand. And it’s typically between six inches and twelve inches long.
It was very foggy for a couple of hours this morning so I had glistening arms for ages, and I was terrified of getting hit, because I couldn’t see things in front of me so I knew things behind me couldn’t see me either. Glad I had the reflective vest so at least when people hit me they knew they were hitting me. After the Hit-and Run I now wanted to be acknowledged, to be Hita-and-not-run, as it were. It’s a good strong Police vest. Blaze orange with zig-zaggy reflective yellow stripes on it. I took it off only at lunchtime. And then I put it on over the sleeping bag and hanging down.
I went through a lot of swamps today. The Roanoke River has a lot of creeks going off it. And they just flood the various gum trees that grow in the swamps. The trees just grow right into the river from both sides. It’s quite something. A lot of time the trees today, there’s a lot of trees in North Carolina, not like Rhode Island or Connecticut, these are just big, and they’re mean. I like North Carolina. It’s wilder but nice – than what? Than Virginia. You could get lost in those trees. They go on for miles. And the way they’ve carved out a hole for a highway or some pylons to go through, but it’s pretty much, trees dominate everything.
I spoke to a couple of people for directions today but really I was just getting my confidence back. Looking behind me a whole lot I didn’t sing too much on the bike. I tried to but it’s hard.
I was aiming for Williamston, but to go the route I was taking would’ve put me up at a hundred miles. I didn’t really want to do that so I was aiming for Robersonville, but a couple of people at Hamilton told me there was no such place. Finally some man told me there was a B&B just up the road –a big, white house. Which is where I’m at now.
Chatting for hours sitting out on their deck. They’re going to do me a big country breakfast, whatever that is. It’s just great to be with people and to be able to talk. He’s got chickens out the back. They’ve got some horses. He did a steak for me, rare. Not good for the bike –no carbohydrates, but great for the spirit. And delicious. Lovely salad and beautiful steak with some over-cooked onion-rings.
He’s developing his own beef. He’s got ten head at the moment, and is developing a leaner beef, cross-breeding them. But not anymore, he says, because the fathers would have to cross-breed with the daughters –and that ain’t good. He’s been feeding them corn and molasses and other mixed foods.
He talked a lot of how they used to farm, how they farm now, how the weather’s been, how it’s changed throughout the year. And he’s a truck driver so he knows a lot about roads. He’s been all over the country. He could tell me about the different States I’m going to, in the West, and the crops I’m going to see there.
And he also told me he’s been to seventeen foreign countries but not to Ireland. And, this is when he was in the service. How he’d finished up finally with eight months and sixteen days in Vietnam in 1963 when they weren’t supposed to be there. He worked for the Special Forces, the Green Beret, and told me all about the blowing up of bridges they used to do because China was supplying Cambodia, and then was coming into North Vietnam.
So he’d be telling me how Dobermen would kill one guard and then kill the other one silently by ripping their throat out, and the guards would make no noise. Then he’d blow the bridge. And maybe he’d wait until a train was coming over and see amazing fireworks. And he said within two to three weeks they’d have it up again, a wooden structure, and this is a three hundred yard bridge over a one hundred yard gorge. He says he’s got photographs of it with ten thousand people working at once.
-You can almost see the bridge going up, literally just watch it grow. It was moving that quickly, they were like ants.He talked about tornadoes and about hurricanes. When Bertha visited there a month ago or so, gusts got up to about forty-five miles an hour in the evening –so they were okay. He told me about a tornado that hit the house bang on next door and destroyed it, and took her chickens and dropped them in Berty County. He said he flew after it to have a look at the damage, and he watched it for miles, this line of damage.
He told me about the Pecan tree with the bark being very strong but the wood isn’t so if the hurricane is too strong, the outside of it will break the branches and yet the bark will cling onto them. And I saw tons of those today.
I’m not in good shape at the moment. I’m scratching like mad; ‘because of the feast the mosquitoes had last night. And my left cheek is still very sore, and on the bike I can feel it. And walking, I’m limping. Worse than that, I had a bath this evening, but my right leg just below the knee, the muscle at the back, just in the room here; it seemed to kind of go. So if I press it in that’s quite sore. And walking, I’m walking gingerly. I’m kind of limping on that leg as well. So I don’t walk so well.
And when I pedal it hurts. The right knee is also a bit tight where I lost the skin. Saddle sore big time today. I think it was because I was trying to get comfortable from the injuries the crash caused. Plus it’s a new saddle. A new saddle that was comfortable yesterday morning, but today not at all. So it’s cutting in.
Out of my routine I forgot to Vaseline myself. And as I didn’t get anywhere to stay last night I didn’t apply any. And I could hardly do it in front of all the police officers this morning. The right hand side, it’s very sore, where it’s cut. But worse than that, is at the back. Swollen areas, one on each cheek. Oh they’re about two inches long and an inch wide, and very tender. And they’re the bits that are both swollen right up just like a colony of blisters in one big enormous boily blister thing. And I’ve got one on each side.
I cycled eighty-seven miles today. Tomorrow is only about sixty if I’ve worked it right, to Goldsboro. And it couldn’t be much more than that the next day. The main thing now is just to try and get the less traffic.
“For a Vacation You’ll Always Remember, Come to a State You’ll Never Forget - North Carolina”. “City of Progress”, was how Ahoskie announced itself. It reminded me of back in Ridgely in Maryland. It calls itself “City of Dreams”, which is a far better name. Suffolk yesterday called itself the “Biggest City in Virginia”.
So the line is broken. It must be about twenty miles. I wouldn’t have made it. It was going to be dark. It was just way too dangerous. I actually thought my life was in danger. And I’m not convinced that it’s not yet. A lot of these trucks just don’t move. The average size of the hard shoulder today is probably about eighteen inches. I was on a lot of them which were six inches, and a lot of them where there’s none, and a long stretch where there’s three foot. That was the biggest shoulder, which isn’t even great. But cars do drive on them and it’s a worry. Having been hit from behind I think I’m going to be hit from behind again.
Better maps might help because I can get secondary roads and work out where I’m going. There are lots of good roads in North Carolina, which wouldn’t have trucks. They’re hard to find though as they typically don’t join each other –that’s the problem. I haven’t decided on which way I’m going at all tomorrow. It even depends on how sore I am.
The B&B has a huge big cupboard full of jars of stuff, which they call canning and they put stuff up for the winter. So they call it canning tomatoes, or canning squash, or canning, canning everything, and then some pickles, and there’s loads of preserves as well. They do a lot of canning. And they’ve put a lot of beef in the freezer as well somewhere over in some sheds. It’s a big place.
There’s a few chickens out the back. I’ve been told that they might wake me. I hope so because I decided I’m having breakfast at eight and I’m going on the road at half nine at the latest. And I don’t wear a watch and I’ve no idea.
I’m very tired with no sleep last night. I was very tired this morning on the bike. I could only do about nine miles an hour and it was going down to eight. I just didn’t have it. And I told myself,
–Look, pretend you’ve got the energy.And laughed at the very concept of it, pretended I had energy, and then cycled at eleven miles an hour for quite some distance. In fact my average speed today was just under eleven I think. Given the state I’m in, that’s not bad.
Read the Next Entry in My Bicycle Trip Across America
Read from the beginning of the Cycle Across America
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