Day Twenty: The Day Is Done and We’ve Gotten It Exactly Right
Distance: 55 mi.
Song of the Day: The Budos Band — The Sticks
5AM: Wake with sun in white painted wood slat cottagehouse w/ Liz soundlessly asleep. Tiny ants dance beside me on oval wooden nightstand. Cottage attic is a hot box so I shuck off comforter and swing to my feet, barely the headroom to stand, and creek down cottage stairs to the cool floor below.
Drink two cups of cool almond milk to chill my self and trot back up stairs and dream intensely, wildly, for the first time in years.
Dreaming again, things must be going right.
9:30AM: Stiff-legged breakfast consists of yoghurt w/ granola, 1/2 gallon almond milk, coffee, and ibuprofen. Yesterday’s hills have crushed our confidence in this presumed “low mileage” stretch of North Carolina, which looked so do-able under the abstract glow of Google Sheets. 10 o’clock rolls past in procrastination daze; we worry seriously but separately about our ability to bike 55 miles of hills today.
Talking ourselves down we crackle over crushed stone High Street driveway onto W Main Street, wind to Old Fayetteville and Jones Ferry roads glide downhill ominously — it’s too early for downhills, we don’t deserve them yet — then moments later BOOM BOOM BOOM a series of six or seven steep climbs knock us back to stiff panting. Take respite in reaching Old Greensboro road, our home for ~20 miles. An hour passes knowing we’ve only trickled a few miles; I try to play music, can’t, shut it off, it makes me nauseous as I gasp & gulp at the air, fish outside tank that I am. Listen to birdsongs instead, and unwittingly chant “legs are rubber, legs are blue” as we bounce and shudder up green belt lined by wildflower, and daisies.
Liz and I cut in opposite ways when it comes to hill climbing strategies. I hungrily consume each strip of downward road forerunning in the parabola, strain into the upturn with full might, jumping down two or three gears at a time, striving to retain max pedal power. When lucky my momentum overtakes the hill and I repeat the arduous process; more often the hill consumes me and I implode back onto the rear of the saddle midway to creak and puff the final bit of hill in a low gear.
Lizzie squares up to the hill at a moderate speed, turtles her way into upturn with a strong and certain approach; she finds the gear suited for the grade and sticks with it, only clikkety-clakks if she’s misjudged something (the clikketies — she’s never trusted them!) She retains her pace even after cresting the hill, or slows down to give her legs a good stretch before re-acclimating to the next. These strategies leave me well ahead of Lizzie on hilly stretches, but more susceptible to cramps and heavier strains on the ol’ fast-twitcher-rabbit-thumpers.
1PM: Amble off road to diner neasted in old quaker quarters. Gotta refuel these meat cannons. Eat chicken salad, greek pasta salad, pear halves, and sliced tomatoes with side of pickled beets and a sweet tea; Lizzie eats grilled cheese stuffed with salted tomatoes, two sides of potato salad and applesauce. Meet a portly blue-shirted man with short unkept off-white beard, he regales a tale of jogging from Hillsboro to Chapel Hill 30 years ago, no water and nathin’ but $10 in his pocket; so excited when he reached town he spent it all on celebration beers, had to phone an attorney friend to tow him back to his hometown. We smile but say little in response; pay $14 bill and step back out to the main show.
15 miles until precipiced mountain farms hum us down into Greensboro. WE. ARE. MAKING. THIS. HAPPEN. Bike another 4 and stop to stretch, discover how DOT tallies traffic:
3:30PM: Greensboro approach looking hairy as pre-rush-hour traffic bustles into elongating shadows. Google Maps keeps wonking out so I pick a vaguely attainable landmark 7 miles away, the Mt Zion church. City apparently walled by hills the same as surrounding countryside; no shoulders and Lizzie at one stage blocks a whole caravan behind her, later tells me she was avoiding “Assjamming” bumps on side of the road.
FINALLY see the church! And there’s a sidewalk! And matted tufts of emeraude grass, freshly trilled and thick, too!
We plop down to pant, smile, flop, kick, goes on long enough to study tree awnings, be studied in turn by decelerating Jake Brake truckers.
5:45PM: Deplane into Kirby drive, herald ourselves with dinging bells, greet Lynn who is just about to head to Mark’s percussion performance at city arts center.
Make every day an adventure and worrying about years becomes positively meaningless.
