Day 6 : A Story for Sure...

From Christiansburg, VA to KOA Kampground southeast of Wytheville, VA - 38.1 miles

Story [in numbers]:

Time on bike: 3:57:54
Average speed: 9.6 mph
Max speed: 31.7 mph

Story [in words]:

with our late night of riding last night, we slept in till about 7am today, quickly got ready and got the bikes loaded, and it became quite apparent that Kirk was not very interested in moving at a very fast pace today. so he told us that he was going to hang in town a while longer, do some laundry, get a good breakfast and then just cover a minimal number of miles. so we said our goodbyes, and pedaled down to the motel 8 office to grab some continental breakfast.

we got on the road by 8:15, and spent the next 20 or so minutes riding to get back on the route. we finally got back on our route and headed on. the riding was good...a fair amount of climbs, but we were covering the miles without too much trouble.

before long, we rolled into the town of radford, yet another university town. (radford university) the downtown area was really cool. there was a house with the craziest tree limbs i have ever seen. there was actually a tree limb that was growing on the ground. kind of reminded me of the tree that used to be on memorial mall area at purdue. (it was struck by lightning last year)

we continued on through the towns of newbern and draper. we weren't too far out of draper, when from up the hill and around the corner came a hand cyclist (a 3-wheel recumbent looking cycle that is "pedaled" with your hands...usually for people who are paralyzed).

so we stopped and talked, and man was it worth it. we found out the guys name was alan and he suffered from friedreich's ataxia, which is a deterioration in the cerebellum that slowly causes you to lose control of portions of your body. he was diagnosed when he was 30 (he's now 33), but he quickly decided that he wanted to use it to write a better story. so he started talking to children in schools. and then he decided that he was going to ride from st. louis (where he is from) to washington, d.c. he was an incredibly inspiring guy to say the least, which it would turn out shortly after that we would need the encouragement.

he, along with his sag wagon, also had some great insights for us about great places for us to stay in the coming days. he even talked about staying a night with some trappist monks. sounds like it was a pretty wild time. so after talking across the road for quite some time, we both decided to head on.

we got back on the road, climbed a couple of hills...and then as we rolled down a hill, we came to a stop sign and i forgot to down shift as we were coming to a stop. traffic was clear and so we began to cross, however, i was in far too tough of a gear and so i had to put a ton of torque on the pedal, which meant that i was also pushing on the seat...and it was at that point that i felt the seat move and heard a noise from underneath me. i have had a few minor problems with my seat in the first few days, so i thought i was having the same problem. i finished crossing the road and we put our bikes against the guardrail to see what was going on.

when i looked under my seat, i discovered that the problem was much more serious than what i had been dealing with. the seat had almost snapped completely off. i was pretty sure that it was a goner, but we tried to reinforce it with some duck tape, just to see if we could make it to the next town. however, we rode probably another 150 yards and the seat snapped completely off.

this put us in a whole new predicament. our bikes are pretty unique to say the least, and i was pretty sure that the only place that we would be able to get a replacement seat would be from the guy that we bought the bikes from. so...we sat on the side of the road underneath a shade tree as we tried to decide what we would do next. we decided that the best case scenario would be if pervis (my friend who did this trip in 2008) would be willing to bring me his bike tomorrow when he comes to visit us and allow me to ride his bike for the rest of the trip. (the only other option we could come up with was contacting the place that we got our bikes from and asking them to ship us a new seat...but if we were to do that, we probably wouldn't get any riding in until wednesday.

we couldn't get ahold of pervis (he was at work)...so in the meantime we decided to walk our bikes up to the house that was just up the way. we could see that the guy was out on his porch, could hear that he was playing a banjo, and it looked like he had a truck. we walked up the hill, or maybe i should say limped up the hill. we certainly looked like we were in a little trouble to say the least.

as we got up in front of his house, we made a little bit of small talk, told him that we had a broken bike, and then asked him if he might be able to give us a ride up to the koa kampground in wytheville. he said that he would be willing to do that, so we wheeled our bikes into his driveway and got our bikes loaded into the truck. (meanwhile, we were greeted by two of the cutest little weiner dogs) we had a great little ride down the road...the guy talked our ears off about all kinds of fun things. we tried to give him $20 for gas, but he refused to take it...said, "he didn't need it...that we should give it to someone who needed it when we got to oregon". he was a great guy and a real blessing.

we got ourselves a campground (the guy who we assume to be the owner gave us a special site (including electric and water...which we didn't pay for) just for the heck of it...he was a super nice guy)...and we got the tent set up. and then of course...we showered...which is always awesome after a day of cycling...even a shorter day.

before long, pervis was off of work, and he called me back. he asked what was going on and i told him what had happened. after a short discussion, we decided that tomorrow he would bring his bike to me, we would swap bikes, and tomorrow i will continue the trip on his bike. what an amazing blessing. when we talked on the phone yesterday, he had said, "let me know if there is anything that you need and i will be glad to pick it up for you"...however i never really thought i would be telling him that what i needed was a bicycle. crazy and yet an amazing deal.

now i definitely feel like we are in an epic story...and that we are in this for the long haul, for sure. when i talked to my dad tonight he said, "didn't you expect that things like this would happen?" and i did, but at the same time, you are not really prepared for them even when they do happen.

so now we are sitting on an amazing little porch swing as it rain lightly. a beautiful ending to quite a day.