Blogs from Roanoke, Virginia, United States, North America - page 3

Well, I am now back home in Chicagoland, LaGrange, specifically... my parents house. It's an odd situation, because all my siblings and I are planning to move out soon, my bro and sis to college and me back out on the road. It's been nice to take care of some administrative issues, making sure my bills are paid, my accounts are in order, and in addition use my brother's toolset to do some preventative maintenance on Gretchen. In Champaign I experienced my first mechanical malfunction, my clutch cable broke and I had to do the "Miss Sunshine" thing all the way to my friend's place in Urbana and then all the way home. I've gotten quite good at it, but I'd rather ride with a clutch. Today I did a whole lot of work on Gretchen ... read more

Lexington to Roanoake We set off on Bike Route 76 towards Roanoake and promptly got lost again, 10 miles later we got back onto our route after a brief detour through some very picturesque (and poor) parts of Virginia. We were chased by dogs at one point, I took off up the road as fast as I could pedal, Vernon just rode along with barking dogs around him, they weren't vicious (probably just wanted some toes to lick). After lunch the weather deteriorated and we had to use our waterproofs, in the current temperatures it's a toss up between how wet you get from the rain and how damp you get sweating in a plastic coat; although the Goretex does seem to work fairly well. We reached Roanoke around 6pm after 58 miles of pedaling and ... read more