Tuesday, August 15, 2000

Well, today was our rest day. As usual, we rode our bicycle rather than resting. We rode from Charlottesville, VA to Ashland, VA, a distance of 67 miles. Mary Kay said it was the first day since we entered the state of Kentucky that we were able to ride the bicycle. For the last several days we have done nothing except go up and down hills, many of which were so steep that we had to walk the bicycle. Today we were only in the granny gear for 3 or 4 hills. All the rest of the day we spent in the middle gear shifting between the first and ninth rear gear.

We started the day on highway 250 which we traveled on for only 2 or 3 miles. We then turned unto highway 22 which we stayed on until we reached Mineral, VA. There we ate lunch and bought some groceries across the road from the railroad depot.

Highway 22 was a very easy highway to travel on. However, in the first 6 miles we had at least 10 United Parcel vans pass us. They came in two’s, three’s and even four at a time. Most of the traffic was heading for Charlottesville so they had to wait behind us at times. Today we did not ride on one road that had a shoulder for longer than 200 yards. The good news was that after we left Mineral it seemed that we went down hill for a considerable period of time.

We stopped at the site of a very large civil war cavalry battle. There were 8,000 confederate and 5,000 union cavalry troops involved. The confederate forces beat the union forces commanded by Sherman and Custer.