I left Wednesday to follow the route Randy Logan and I rode to STAR in Staunton in 2009. It was a combination of 1-lane paved roads, 1-lane gravel roads, 2-lane paved secondary roads, and a few bigger roads only when absolutely necessary to catch the next little road...and everything was aiming at curvy conditions! We didn't complete the route as I ALWAYS plan too much. So this time I decided to stop midway. I stopped last night and spent the night in Christiansburg.
I had thought about camping. But with the combination of having a room at the resort (meaning I'd be carrying my camping gear for just one night) and the fact that the weather looked rather iffy, I decided to go motel camping and get an inexpensive room. The EconoLodge in Christiansburg fit the bill 375 miles into the 600+ mile ride.
Coming east off of VA16 I was on Roaring Ford/Poor Valley...nice gravel road which was dry in 2009. Alas, it was raining consistently for that part of the ride this time around...actually rather have it raining there than on VA16...or so I thought. I did manage to find a a muddy spot or two and one of them put me on my head. My supposed 80/20 tires are now looking more like 95/5 tires.
I had been thinking to myself about the near total lack of traffic I'd been dealing with all day, (I'd actually "followed" one car for about 1 mile (one lane barely paved road in NE Tennessee) in the 250+ miles I'd done to this point...the rest of the time I rode at whatever speed I desired. It was fantastic until I had to pick up the bike from a muddy roadway. I could have used a bud.
The bike landed on its right side, and I did feel a bit of an impact on my knee under the bike, but I wasn't feeling any pain. I took the bags off the bike (well, the one that was still on the bike...one had sheared one of its mounting pins and had popped off), backed up to the bike, grasped the handlebar and the grab rail and walked it right up. Dang...that works. It took about 1/2 an hour to strap the now loose bag back on, but I was on my way.
I'll admit that at this point I was feeling a bit "fragile" from the fall, so I headed for pavement and Christiansburg. But I felt good and was feeling lucky for not having any injuries. I stopped at a restaurant near the EconoLodge and had a nice dinner. When I got ready to go, I felt a bit of a twinge in the knee. Uh oh. But I had no problem swinging my leg across the bike.
Finally at the EconoLodge, I unloaded my gear and got ready to walk up to my room on the second floor. Uh oh. I'm feeling it more now.
I didn't sleep well as my knee is a bit tender and stiff. That's what I get for deciding to ride an adventure style bike in adventuresome places at an age where I should be taking it easy (yeah, I'll bet some of you do the same thing). I'll probably be limping around STAR and taking it easy there, but that's ok too. I'll be carefully walking down the steps to the bike with my gear and leaving shortly to pick up the route again. I should have more paved surfaces today, and I'm ok with that. Most of the rainy weather is south of me, but I may have a bit of precipitation to deal with...we'll see. The further north I get, it looks to be more and more dry. I like dry.
