The First Week

It's 5:00am and we are currently stealth camping in Lexington at the Virginia Military Institute. Yesterday was a huge success for us: We rode 27 miles of the Blue Ridge Parkway, climbing to over 3200' of elevation. Then we descended down, which was a blast, and rode 22 miles into town and celebrated at Tong's Chinese buffet.

Yesterday was also the first day since Monday that it wasn't raining. My clothes still are not dry, and they smell quite bad. This has been our biggest problem thus far as the rain and cold just makes it really hard to keep going. At least we have lucked out and have only had to camp in the rain once so far. On Tuesday we stayed at a Volunteer Fire Department in Mineral, VA. In Charlottesville we stayed with a young couple named Baker and Christina via WarmShowers (thanks guys, it was really awesome of you to have the four of us on such short notice). And the night before last night we stayed at the former home of June Curry, The Cookie Lady, in Afton. Her house has been the best place we've stayed so far. It's basically become a museum, filled with thousands of postcards and other memorabilia from all the riders Mrs. Curry has helped from the 1970's up until she passed in July of 2012. I don't know exactly how many cyclists have come across her home and hospitality, but an article in one room said that the town celebrated her 10,000th rider in 1998. Staying in her home recharged our spirits and allowed us to power through the mountains.

Also our favorite person we have met on the tour so far has been a young lady named Lauren who we ran into on the Blue Ridge Parkway. She was taking a break off the Appalachian Trail (doing it solo!) in the middle of a huge ascent when we ran into her. She happened upon some cold beer from Trail Magic and shared with us. It was awesome and she was super cool.

This first week has been really crazy, and it's been hard to find the time to work on the blog. But I will still try to post as often as I can. We are having a ton of fun. We will be in Damascus, VA in two days where we will be taking our first day off.

Cheers!

- Chris