Finished with cars and mountains

Tina, Rachel, Greg and Allison Walsh and Jim and Gabriela.

We haven't had a chance to post in a while. We're in Falls Church, Va staying with my brother Greg and his wife Tina and daughters Allison and Rachel. We arrived yesterday into Harrisonburg, Va around 4 pm after a beautiful 54 mile ride along Hwy 42. We are finished with the heavy duty mountains and had nothing but "normal" hills, which were all easy to negotiate after experiencing the worst that Appalachia has to offer over the past twelve days. We had a wonderful stay with my cousin Bill Thompson, his wife Wendy, and their 3 yr old twin daughters Riley and Casey. The twins kept reminding us of our nieces Sidney and Bailey and then while we were out to dinner, I received a phone call with Bailey singing happy birthday to me. It made my day. It was a great thing to spend an evening and morning with Bill and Wendy. I grew up with nearly 40 first cousins and so I never had the chance to know any of them very well. Although I saw Bill at every family function, this was really the first chance that I ever had to talk with him and to see his world. We are so grateful for their hospitality and warmth.

Harrisonburg was also the first place that we noticed any Latino presence in 500 miles. Bill shared with us that Harrisonburg has many poultry plants that employ Latino immigrants and that many in the community are very hostile toward them. These Appalachian states are perhaps the last places left in the US where there doesn't seem to be any visible Spanish-speaking community. We hope to learn more about this as we make our way up the Potomac River.

My birthday was an amazing day, as was the day after that. We made it to Marlinton, Wv and left the trail there. After eating and doing laundry, we decided to try to make it to Warm Springs, Va, about a 31 mile stretch. We left Marlinton at 4:20, thinking that we had plenty of time for the ride. We had no idea. Two and a half serious mountain passes later, we limped into Warm Springs a little before 8 pm completely exhausted. The climbs were long and steep. We have finally mastered the descents and it works well: go slow, brake often, watch for traffic.....and most importantly, stop every half mile or so to allow the wheel rims to cool...having been overheated by the braking. This is the cause of a couple of our flats and we worked together to solve this problem, it felt great. Warm Springs was inviting, touristy, a tiny hamlet nestled into the side of a mountain. As I walked the bike past a man, he shouted, "you are learning the lesson of Warm Springs, everything is uphill!" He's right. The Bed and Breakfast was incredibly comfortable, we took a dip in the pool before dinner and ate in an old gristmill with an enormous water wheel, built around 1900. Dinner was the greatest reward for our exhausting trek: pasta in garlic and olive oil with veggies, Salmon, a delicious salad, and blackberry cobbler for dessert. The bottle of red wine that Gabriela picked out made me delirious. As we stumbled out of bed the next day, I looked back at the mountains we had crossed and couldn't believe it. It's now easy to understand why this region is so isolated while being so close to so many major metropolitan areas. The next holler only 2 miles as the crow flies, but it might as well be in another country.

I want to reach back and share one more story about West Virginia. On the morning that we got our ride out of the State Park near Pineville toward Beckley, we stopped at a "bicycle shop" along the road. It turns out that this shop was in this guy's garage. He had parts and tools and called it a bicycle shop. We needed our brakes looked at and our gears adjusted and "Bo" was a wiz with the bike. This man, around 50 years old, is clearly very skilled with bicycle repair. We were also lucky because Bo has been out of the area for the past 2-3 years and just returned recently. He did a tour in Iraq as part of the WV National Guard. "M-wraps," he told us, "do you know what they are?" Transport vehicles with loads of armor to guard against roadside bombs. "I fixed them, and got them out to our soldiers............those things saved many lives." I wanted to avoid the overtly political questions about the war, but Gabriela jumped right in:

"How are things in Iraq?"

"We got ourselves in a big ole' mess, but we have to finish what we started" he replied. "We need to make sure our soldiers are safe."

That was about as far as it went, Bo wasn't very open to sharing, and we were at a loss for more and better questions. Behind Gabriela, I could see Bo's rifle leaning against the wall by the brake pads. The contrast made me smile. When Bo returned from Iraq, he was laid off from his job and went to the flood zone to work to help those whose communities were devastated. Bo is the first person we have met this entire trip who shares with us a love for bicycling.

"Be careful, you go over a hill here and before you know it you're doing forty five," he warned.

I was tempted to ask him about the road ahead but I have learned not to, to just let it come to us.....that when locals tell me about the hills I make them out to be more than they are in my head. I'd rather now know and meet them when they come. Bo still wears his camo military pants and tan t-shirt as he works on bicycles in his garage. His wife drives a school bus, which sits just outside the shop. We sat and talked with them for a while, sharing stories until I felt an urge to get on the road. This place--and the way that people here talk to you--as a way of sucking you in, slowing the pace, story leading to story, until hours have passed. It's as if you look down one day and grass has grown in around your feet and you are talking with a new twang and three weeks later you're still listening to the same guy finish his story. Inside of me, deep down, I long for this pace, for Gabriela and I to one day escape the mad pace that we live by and let the grass grow around our feet, to weave stories and drink sweet tea and look at lightning bugs.