Hey All. 2 days left seemed like a perfect time to finally update the map, so check it out. There’s one little forgotten day in there, but other than that it should be fairly accurate. For those of you looked at the map every day and thought that Steve was still in Batavia, I apologize for misleading you. But it was fairly easy to figure out the real story. 😉
A Century to Go
Steve just called from Ashland, VA. He only has about 100 miles left before he’s finished. I tried instigating a 100 mile ride tomorrow, but it sounds like he’s going to try going about 85 so that he has a nice relaxing ride to the coast on Monday morning.
Today was 87 miles from TJ‘s house, finally out of the mountains and into some flatter terrain. The weather got hot again these last few days and Steve would like to stress the fact that it was hot. He claimed that the heat index was over 100 today, but I just checked weather.com and they had it listed as 99, so I’m not sure what he’s talking about. 🙂
Charlottesville — AKA: Charlotsville, Charlotte’s Villa, and Ville du Charlot
Is it just me or is there something weird about the word, Charlottesville? Ok, don’t answer that, but just hear me out. The double-t just looks out of place before the double-l and it seems like there are just too many letters used overall, making the pronunciation much easier than writing it out. I don’t know, it’s probably just me. I tried coming up with a better spelling, but they aren’t going to listen to me anyway, so I’ll drop it.
ANYHOW. That’s where Steve is tonight. Hanging out on the grounds of Monticello with Polly and Glen. I’m sure that Jefferson would be impressed with Steve having ridden all the way from Oregon just to see his house on a random Thursday. And he thought declaring independence from Britain was difficult. Ha, bet he never tried this.
I haven’t talked to Steve yet, but I think it was a 35 mile day from Rockfish Gap and Big Meadows Lodge, the place where he stayed last night. Skyline Drive has now been completed, although not without a fight. Between the constant low cloud cover making everything wet and the average speed of just 8.5 mph, yesterday was probably one of the hardest day’s he’s had so far.
I’ll update you more on today’s ride when I hear it, but I’m going to guess for now that he’s having a good time visiting and relaxing.