We woke up at 6:00 with the best of intentions. We were going to get on the road early and not be biking until sunset as usual. But as luck would have it again, we opened the door to see the perfect storm formulating outside, and the weather channel showed a healthy amount of red and deep red blobs directly over top of Somerset.
After filling up at the continental breakfast, we decided the proper thing to do was go back to sleep. So we did, and woke up two hours later and got our standard not-too-early-start, but good news was that the perfect storm had passed!
For the morning we rode on a large beautifully paved shoulder with gradual inclines, descents, and friendly fellow road-goers. The hills slowly became larger and the inclines steeper, and we plowed full speed ahead with the confidence of the North Cascades, Rocky Mountains, Rockstar, and Metallica combined, fearless in the face of the Appalachians. It turns out though, that the Appalachians are kind of rough. The Appalachians, or at least the roads over them, are ruthlessly steep and curvy in many places, much more so than the super-graded-highways blasted through the Rockies and the Cascades that we took.
We ate some bananas at an IGA grocery store in London, KY, and nearly hijacked a Vault truck that was in the parking lot, but restrained ourselves. We chatted with some older folks in the food court-ish area about our trip who almost literally fainted when we told them we had started in Seattle 38 days ago. They gave us some advice on the roads in our future, and one man assured us we could not make it the 100 miles through coal-country to where we planned to end today. He also gave us a friendly reminder that we were in Wildcat-country, and that Wahoos were to beware in such surroundings. Even 600 miles from home at this point seemed relatively close to us, and the draw of the sweet Virginia border was enough to keep us going faster than ever!On the way to lunch we encountered two inexcusable displays of atrocious driving. Each time I was in front of Sam, and forced to stare stupid right in the face. Atrocious driver #1 decided to pull out from a stop sign directly in front of us when we were flying across a flat road, requiring an abrupt deceleration to avoid an inbred-collision situation. Atrocious driver #2 requires a bit more explanation, and several minutes of silent thought on your part as you struggle to comprehend driver #2's person. We're flying along another flat road, not 30 minutes later, and we begin to pass a store with a long parking lot connecting to the road along its entire side - so you can pull into the parking lot at ANY point along its length. Nearing the end of the parking lot, a horn begins to blow on the vehicle behind us. I say to myself, aha, this is surely the horn of a neon-accented Geo Tracker (N-AGT). Yes, it is, and tis occupied by 2 older she-beings. Now here, I'm not going to make any generalizations concerning gender and driving, so stop asking about it. ANYWAYS, The N-AGT flies up alongside our incredibly handsome and streamlined drafting charge, horn-a-blasting, and without warning (or blinker mind you) swerves almost through me into the latter portion of the parking lot. While swerving, the she-craft begins to brake suddenly and aggresively across our path, as if to further ensure that I would become another blood-splattered accent on the N-AGT, and that Sam would become another mangled accent across my person in a vicious 2-biker pileup. Alas, we survive. If not for cat-like reflexes, and 4 well suited sets of brake pads, Sam and I would probably have had to fight two old ladies.
I know you're saying to yourself, that WAS atrocious! Unthinkable! Egregious! We agree with you, and would like to hear which incident the real world finds more atrocious: The N-AGT Atrocity, or the Great Raven Cheese Incident of 2009?
Ok, so we are over it, and onto lunch in Hima. Now, Sam and I are going to boast a bit and say that we think we speak fairly good English. Despite our confidence in this great language however, we had some serious trouble understanding the Hima dialect. A man confronted us outside the Hima store and asked us about our bikes (we think). And when you are pushing your third or fourth "what?", "i'm sorry?", or "haah?" in response to a question, you just have to make an educated guess as to what he said and factor in some body language / facial expressions / # of teeth visible at point in time, and make an answer. So the conversation went on an unstable foundation of understanding, and we believe we exchanged at least some information with him. While we ate our lunch outside the store, we further tested our language skills by attempting to interpret the shout-versations going on across the street and around the store. Strike three, Kentucky, strike three.
After lunch the roads became VERY steep and winding, and made us feel like lesser Lances through the French Alps. Every pedal through the Appalachians felt more and more like home though, and it felt good!
Sam has gotten into the habit of pre-melting the snickers he eats.In Hyden we ate at a very charming little cafe run by 2 really nice young people. They sat and talked with us about the RLPT and were very excited for us, but unfortunately we still didn't get our food for free. We loaded up with some dinner supplies and a crucial 2 lbs of Fig Newtons at a grocery store in town, with plans to camp out somewhere in a small town later on the road. We were approached in the store by a pastor of a local church who insisted on putting us up in a church for the night, and made many-a-call right away to inform the Cutshin Bible Church up the road that we were coming.
We were so surprised by the hospitality and generosity that basically pounced on us that we could hardly even get a word out before we were being greeted into the church after a few more miles of biking. There were kids and moms rolling out of the church when we pulled up saying things like "oohhh there they are!", "they're here!", as if the whole town had received the announcement we were coming. They were awesome people and they fed us leftover hotdogs, chips, soda, and fudge from the youth group meeting that evening. They brought over towels for us to use the church showers, food to cook in the morning before we left, and even set up the coffee machine so all we had to do was press the button in the morning! Unbelievable. Thank you Yeaddis.
I think I just wrote too much for one day.
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