Well, enjoying my third rest day, after 7 more days of cycling in Kentucky. And it also happens to be my birthday (but as it's yet another 'dry' county, celebration will have to be a Diet Coke...).
Just a few miles short of 1000 now completed, so just about a quarter of the distance; and all but 50,000 feet climbed (with plenty more to come!). And another little milestone yesterday was crossing from Eastern to Central time, so I am now 6 hours behind the UK.
One friend asked me in an email if I was very tired. Without wishing to sound complacent, the answer is "not inordinately so". The body is used to cycling now, and so far all my moving parts are fine. But who knows, something may give out - a knee, a hip, even a wrist - or I might crash, so I am taking nothing for granted. On the roads I cycle cautiously, and slowly. Daily average speeds are around 11mph which "proper" cyclists like Andy Miller and Giles Sharp would scoff at (as indeed I would, normally!). The roads, though, are a delight to ride on. Excellent surfaces, which put our British roads to shame, and very quiet for the most part. On the more rural ones it's not unusual to go 2 or 3 miles without a car passing. (There has been only one unpleasant stretch of road for cycling, about 12 miles of switchback four-lane highway much further east in Kentucky, with coal trucks thundering by! But 12 miles out of 1000 is not a bad ratio.)
Motorists are friendly too. I usually wave to oncoming drivers, and usually there is one back (sometimes the minimal response of one finger lazily lifted from the steering wheel!). I have commented in an early post on the bigness of things in America; one driver's responding wave was a hand out of his window, holding a massive cigar...).
The only significant difficulty with the cycling has been the increasing heat wave. Shade temperatures in the afternoon are in the mid-90sF (say 35C or so). In the sun, after noon, it feels like a furnace. So I try to get going early, by 8, and reach my destination by early afternoon and then hide in air-conditioning. I heard a great exchange yesterday, between a store owner and one of his regular customers; "Hot enough for you, Billy?" "Hotter than hot..."
My accommodation is usually motels, which have without exception so far been clean and comfortable. Sometimes I splurge a bit on a more upmarket hotel, as here. But the night before last I stayed in a most unusual and wonderfully historical place, a log cabin at the site of Abraham Lincoln's birthplace. This being the USA it is now an official Memorial Park, and I must say they do these things really well here. There was a very informative Visitor Center about AL's parents, very much frontier settlers of the time (1809), and the kind of life they would have lived around their log cabin home. There was inevitably a lot of information about slavery and the Civil War (which, I think I read, cost 620,000 lives in all); Lincoln's stand on slavery and his attitude on the Union, were both uncompromising. Of slavery he said, "If slavery is not wrong, then nothing is wrong".
But the old attitudes occasionally still persist. Way back in eastern Virginia I was puzzled occasionally to see Confederate flags outside homes. I asked an elderly black American man whom I met outside a country store about this, remarking that the civil War ended nearly 150 years ago. His response, I thought, was wonderfully diplomatic; "In Virginia there are still many contradictions....".
More nature notes. Quite delightful encounter the day before yesterday. I turned my head as I was cycling along an empty road and noticed that a large dragonfly was flying alongside me, about a foot away from my head. He escorted me, like a jet fighter, for at least 25 yards! I have noticed too cows simply standing in ponds and reservoirs to cool down. There was quite a crowd in one reservoir the other day. I stopped to take a photograph, but the cows seemed to resent my intrusion into their bathing, and all splashed out. I apologised.... There are lots of horses too (Kentucky being famous for them); yesterday I made friends with a beautiful grey mare (almost white) and her equally white baby foal. I wish I knew what the different birds are. Some of them have calls which are more like squeaks than bird song, and quite frequently I think I have suddenly developed a squeak or a rattle on my bike only to realise it's a bird!
A few more nice names.... I passed "Terrapin Lane" just before rescuing a turtle that was crossing the road. "Lonesome Pine Trail"; (isn't 'lonesome' a better word than 'lonely'?). And I went close to a town called "Paint Lick" - honestly!
Great news about my cycling buddies Mike and Joan. They are now able to resume their TransAm trip, setting off from Christiansburg tomorrow. (They will thus be, sadly, about 9 days behind me.). Mike does an excellent blog, and - unlike me - is able to post lots of photos on it. So if you want a good read, and to see properly the kind of country I have been through, go to: http://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/mikenjoan2011
You will enjoy it!
As always, thank you to so many of you for email encouragement, and for the continuing generous contributions to The Stroke Association.
All best wishes and thanks for your interest and support!
Ken
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