On the 55 mile drive there, we played our new favorite road trip game "Counting Baptist Churches". Last time we played it, we drove to the Outer Banks (300 mile round trip), and the total we counted was 24. This trip to Virginia was much shorter, but was driven on more country backroads, which is home to more little country churches. Rob fell asleep through half of the drive, but I motored on, as country drives are one of my favorite pastimes!
Me driving on US Highway 15 North, and probably singing along loudly to whatever song was on the iPod:
Once we arrived at the trailhead, we got dressed in our cycling gear. We brought many layers of technical cycling clothing, but I forgot one essential piece - my ear warmers! It was about 39 degrees that day, and windy, too! (gusts up to 20 mph) So I had to wear my helmet with my hair over my ears, which looks totally stupid, ask any cycling enthusiast and they'll tell you it's true!
Rob offered to let me wear his skull cap, but I retorted, "NO, you need it! Your bald head would freeze! At least I have hair on top of my head..." to which Rob smiled and said, "Hey now..." What a nice wife I am! I mean, what a loving husband Rob is!
Here we are about 1 mile into our ride. Not even warmed up yet, but stopping to take a picture anyway...
We look cold, don't we?
Because of the big snow storm that had come through this part of Virginia a week before Christmas, there were lots of downed trees and brush in the trail. Like this one, which with my awesome MAD SKILLS on the bike, I tried to bunny-hop over...unsuccessfully, I might add!
Of course I'm joking, I didn't try to really bunny-hop over that!
Rob and I rode really slow because 1.) we are really out of aerobic shape, 2.) Rob is a dialysis patient and he doesn't expect to be anywhere near as fast as he used to be, and 3.) Rob's low blood pressure and dizzy spells force us to go slow and take it easy. All of Rob's doctors and nurses say they want him to exercise, because it's really good for his heart. Most dialysis patients do little to no exercise, rightfully so because of all the side effects dialysis has. But if a dialysis patient has any sliver of energy, they are encouraged to use that energy aerobically.
So we tried. Slow, cold mountain bike ride on easy fire roads. It wasn't that great of a ride because Rob kept getting dizzy spells. At least he found a cozy bench to lay on for a while:
This ended up being our turn around point. No worries, we made it back to the truck safely, thank God.
It was the last week of deer hunting season in Virginia, and we were riding on the side of the trail that was OPEN to hunting. Probably a dumb idea, as we don't have any cycling gear that is blaze orange. At the end of our ride, we came across 2 hunters who said, "You should be glad we didn't think you were a deer! Where's your orange?"
Hmmm, I guess we'll have to invest in a 2 blaze orange vests to wear next winter when we ride during hunting season!
Here is Rob smiling at the end of our ride, only because we know we were going to sit in the warmth of our idling truck with the heater turned on full-blast!
Here's a video of Rob giving a ride report:
After warming up in the car and eating our lunch (PBJ on homemade bread, pineapple and frosted animal cookies!), we drove home the long way. East on US Highway 58 took us through the small town of Boydton, VA, where we ooh'ed and aah'ed at the beautiful historic homes, drove through the quaint historic downtown, and then decided to stop to look around at a cool antique shop.
They had maybe a thousand oil lamps, big and small, and a couple hundred cookie jars. It was fun to look around and make small talk with the owner and his dog, cutely named "Boo-Boo". After that, we drove home on Highway 1, through small towns like Norlina, which is now officially my favorite town name to say, because it's impossible to say Norlina without sounding like a true southerner! Mind you, we were still playing our car game - Counting Baptist Churches, so we were really keeping our eyes peeled for churches along the road.
We stopped in Kittrell, NC to grab a hot cocoa and to stretch our legs. It became harder and harder to spot the baptist churches as the night sky became darker. So we may have missed a few, but by the end of our drive, we'd counted 28!
It was a great way to spend the afternoon doing something fun and productive!
Glad you've spend your afternoon wisely. And sometime to capture those cool shots. Thanks for the share. Your blog is really worth a read. More power!
ReplyDeleteCasey
mountain golf community