Day 2

Mileage: 103
Cumulative trail miles: 135

(Sorry about the late posting. I didn't have cell service in my sleeping spot, so I'm posting from Charlottesville)

The word of the day is saddlesores, and man do they hurt! But we'll get to that later.

I woke up this morning to misty rain and foggy weather. Fortunately I was dry and both my socks and jersey had dried out nicely. I had been woken up several times during the night by traffic, and finally knew why. Apparently there was a huuuge fishing contest going on this morning, starting in the parking lot right outside of my little ramada. I was told by a park employee that there were over 500 boats gathered for the start, and boy did it look like it. I was too sleepy to think about taking a picture though so you have to take my word for it.

As I was eating breakfast, another cyclist pulled into my ramada to fill his water bottles. We got to chatting and I found out he was from York and was doing a long ride this morning. After we talked for a little while and I packed up, he offered to ride along with me for a couple miles to keep talking. I happily obliged and even managed to remember to get a picture (through my condensation fogged lens, sorry! )

Alan and I rode the capital trail and he set a wicked pace, but we made it just about to Charles City before he had to turn around so he wouldn't be late to work. If you're reading this Allen, I definitely slowed down by a few mph after you were gone.

After Charles 'City' ( 4 buildings doesn't count as a city in my opinion) things were pretty boring for a while. The scenery around here seems to oscillate between shady forest roads and open farmland. (Pics) It was a repeating motif all today.

I also ended up riding a few miles alongside some cyclists doing a charity 100 mile ride for MS. I definitely stole some water from their support tent. It was good to see Charlottesville had a team on it. Represent!

Around 15 miles southeast of Richmond I came across a little place called Southern Chow. I would have ridden right by, but I saw two loaded bicycles outside and I knew what that meant. Inside was a middle aged couple from Tibet who were here riding the trail as well. They had started yesterday as well, but were going slower, so we just met the once. Also, neither of them spoke a word of English. So, you ask, how did I know so much about them and their itinerary?  Fair question. After a few seconds of trying to figure out which direction they were going, I realized we didn't have a language in common and wished them good luck. As I was filling my water bottles, the gentleman came up behind me, offered his phone which had a call in progress and said the word 'daughter.' So I got to spend a few minutes talking to Jane, this couple's daughter who asked about my plans and told me about her parents'. I also found out that Jane was an avid cyclist herself and had done a 1500 mile bike tour in Tibet the year before. Around that point, I noticed she sounded really cute too, but maybe that was just wishful thinking. She lives in LA anyways :(

In Richmond, or more accurately Mechanicsville, I stopped for lunch at a knockoff qdoba and got two burritos, one of which I'm eating right now, and took a nap.

Around that point I started really noticing that I was saddlesore, something I had been able to mostly ignore till then. In fact, those sores really started to dominate the rest of my day. From Richmond I had to take a break in Ashton and another in Coatesville, because it was too painful to keep sitting the saddle. I hit 90 miles around Bumpass and decided to keep going to Anne lake in the hopes that I could take a swim, clean up and soothe those obnoxious sores. The last 30 miles were spent alternating between pedalling standing up, coasting down hills, and brief stretches of sit-down pedalling.

Incidentally, I got my classmate Luke's last name stuck in my head this afternoon for no particular reason. It turned into my cadence (Soschnik- Schierling, Soschnik -Schierling). Unfortunately it was this afternoon that I was dealing with the sores, so I apologize to Luke that I've accidentally tied his name irrevocably to obnoxious pains in my butt. Not my fault really.

I finally got to the lake this evening and found that every single inch of shoreline belonged to some fancy lakefront property. Of course I should have known. Happily, when I knocked on the first front door I saw, there was someone home and they let me go swimming off their pier.

On my way out of the water, a man named Jerry came down out of the house to get something from the boathouse. We got talking as thunder started picking up in the distance, and when he heard I was camping tonight, he offered to let me sleep in the boathouse. I took him up on the offer. Pictures of Jerry and my night's bedroom attached.

So tonight I'm gonig to make sure I sleep on my front, to give my butt a break. Over the next few days the sores are going to give way to a tough, resilient pair of buttocks, but I have no idea how tomorrow will be. Hoping to make it the 70ish miles to Charlottesville at the least though. It's just after 9 so I'm ready to go to sleep now, G'night!