Virginia is for (car) lovers

Entering Virginia from Maryland the next day, after having made some
headway that Sunday evening, we immediately noticed that the shoulder
completely disappeared, and all of a sudden everyone was driving much
faster... What we've come to know and expect and to some extent,
accept, is that this is the case all over Virginia, as they just paved
the old dirt roads, and never widened them.. A little frustrating
also because they retain the feel of an old dirt road and are very
pretty, but very hard to ride a bike along... After rerouting we were
on our way, but still a bit behind due to our late start out of
Baltimore, with over a hundred miles to go by the next night (kinda
late afternoon at this point) we realize we have some serious night
riding to do!
Unfortunately, kurt got something in his eye really bad a bit after
nightfall, and we stopped for the night, hoping that a good nights
rest would clear it out, so we camped alongside a bike path we came
across, woke up at 5, got 2 flat tires in an hour, but were still on
the road nice and early... Around 11am, we pulled into a town that I
now forget the name of, but it was very pretty, and we stopped for
lunch, and to refresh our route... It was here that we realized that
our estimations of how far we still had to go were drastically low,
and we actually still had aroumd a hundred miles to travel! In poor
spirits, we started considering our options, perhaps a train?did we
need to cancel yet another show?!? The impossibility of riding a
hundred miles in time to play made calling it off and just getting to
our next show in richmond early seem really attractive.. But then
monkeyclause, the barn turned all recycled materiels studio that we
were to play, was maybe my most highly anticipated destination of our
whole trip... A hard decision to make indeed...
...on very little sleep after days of riding 60+ miles a day and
camping in secret spots that can take a long time to find when
exhausted late at night, one can start thinking... derangedly... To
say the least...
This said, upon deciding to call monkeyclause so as to let them know
that we wouldn't make it after all, we noticed that next to their
contact information, was the date we were supposed to play there -
august 27th - the NEXT DAY!!! Our relief and excitement took the form
of a looong coffee and sandwich break that actually we probably
shouldn't have taken as long of one of.. Sorry for the sloppy
sentence.. Heh.
So we continued along a few hours later, still trying to get as far as
we could, so as to not have to hurry at all the next day... We got to
a town called culpeper that night, and were loafing outside a 7-11
eating snacks (Dianne had a corn dog, kurt had some chips, and I had
sardines with saltines) when a fellow named "ed payne" saw us and
recommended that if we were camping we could go right across the
street to this apartment complex he owns and camp on the 5 acres
behind it.. Which we did, and had a lovely time!
......

Sent from my iPod