Days 6,7,8 - Virginia wet green

This is a condensed version of the last 3 days of my adventure. I can sum it up in two words: rain and punctures.

Armed with maps printed by Luc, I left the Bijeau home on Monday and started heading south, leaving D.C. after crossing the Potomac river. The trail took me through Georgetown, a historical part of Washington where some of it's oldest buildings (~1780) are located, and continued all the way to Alexandria.

On it I met two more extraordinary people. First, a runner, Eric McGlinchie, professor of political science, world traveller, 100 mile runner and father of two! How the hell can one do all this stuff? I struggle with balancing a job and amateur-level triathlon, and kids are not even on the radar yet. I bike, he runs, and in the two miles we spend together I feel a bond already.

An hour later I stop to eat at George Washingtons house in Mt Vernon, which is now a museum and most importantly, has a food court. While I am eating at a table outside, a cyclist sees my bike and asks me if I can keep an eye on his while he gets inside to get food. I said "sure, then please come join me". I get to meet another John, a civil engineer from Seattle who builds light rail road, recently for the Microsoft campus. John was on a business trip to Washington and rented his road bike. We get to talk more and I find out that John was trekking Yugoslavia by bike in 1984, with armed soldiers coming out of the woods to check him out. I do the math, I was 1 year old! He is 55 now, but at 25 he did some crazy things.

The nice bike trail ends and so does the good weather. I soon find myself on a busy highway and rain starts. And except a few short breaks it does not stop until two days later.

I don't get to see much of the two historical towns Fredericksburg and Charlottesville that I pass trough on Tuesday and Wednesday, because of the rain.
Tuesday was especially bad. In the morning I find the rear tire deflated. I don't see an obvious cause and I change the tube.
I wander a bit through Fredericksburg spining in a circle for about an hour because of a road block. It has an old feeling to it but I don't get to appreciate it because I have other preoccupations, like changing the tube a second time because this one gets deflated too, breaking one of my two tire levers in the process. I check again really carefully the tire and the rim, nothing. With the road block, tube changes and the fact that the motel was a bit far out of my route, it's almost 2 PM when I leave Fredericksburg. It rains, stops, rains, stops, and then all over again. At some point I don't even notice anymore when rain starts or stops. I am generally wet, but the rain gear does a reasonable good job at keeping my trunk/core dry.

At 6 PM the navigation tells me I got 3 hrs till the cheapest motel in Charlottesville. I can't wait to get there, with all this traffic and rain.
But the day has one more in store for me. Another puncture, right when another bout of heavy rain starts and there's no shelter around except leafless trees. I can hear the air "hissing" out of the tire, and I summon all my memories of misery endured in the Carpathian Adventure racing series to help me fix it. I curse the damn broken tire lever too.
At 10PM I finally get to the motel, can't describe how good that felt.

Wednesday morning rains like hell again. I am not in a hurry to get wet again so I wait for it to slow down, around noon.
I am in Charlottesville and want to see something of it despite the weather. So I eat my late breakfast in a park inside the beautiful University of Virginia campus watching the students passing by.

The road continued to Waynesboro, after climbing a big hill in the Shenandoah state park. On top of the hill is the Skyline Drive, which is supposed to be a scenic route but by the time I get to it it is covered by fog.
Oh and I get another puncture, same rear tire, but at least the rain stopped.

In Waynesboro I find a bikeshop where I get one more tube. I hesitate to change the tire which I think still has life in it and I regret it deeply 2 miles down the road when a small piece of wire makes another hole in it. I get back to the shop, riding on the flat tire, could not care less if I shred the damn thing to pieces.
While a nice guy at the bike shop replaces my tire with one that reassuringly says "anti puncture system", I get to patch some of the 5 tubes used so far.
I am now paranoid about the tire and I check it every 10 minutes.

But there is joy after misery when I see a patch of clear sky at the horizon. Soon the sun is shining, and the traffic is almost gone too.
I now pedal into the sunset towards Lexington, my destination for the day.
The smell of flowers and grass after the rain almost makes me dizzy and reflecting on the succession of highs and lows in my trip gives me a phylosophical mood.
Now all I need is a beer to get deeper into it, which I get first thing after checking in at Motel 6 in Lexington.