Thursday, May 28: AM prer-ride morning. Ok, back at it. But before I get into today, let me just reflect over the past week off. Judy & I were graciously flown down to Nashville by her son Jim and daughter-in-law Emmie, to attend the graduation of her granddaughter Elayna. Had a wonderful time celebrating, feasting, relaxing and just hanging out with some great people. And I’ll tell you what….that was just what the doctor ordered for both Judy and I - for her it was mental, for me it was physical. Made me wonder how in God’s name we were going to crank it back up for a solid 2 months to get this thing - American Dirt - in the bag. I mean, we were on the road for a short 19 days for that first segment, and we were both wiped out. How can we do 60 straight days - 3x the length of our initial start? Makes me wonder if we’ll need a break in the middle again just so we don’t go over the edge with this thing?
I really need to try to make this thing WAY less stressful for Judy, so I’ll take what I’ve learned from the latter half of our first segment: doing some segments in reverse so I can navigate for Judy to hard-to-find locations; not crush it all day long so she can relax and not be on the edge each and every hour of every day; do more support stops to regroup rather and doing these long chunks of mileage where it’s easier to have a mix-up somewhere along the line; and re-research segments to triple check our support stops and the routes for both bike and van. Throw all that on top of my having to work (do my actual job) every day, do the blog, eat, step up camp and/or motel it, and then try to get my body to recover (harder to do at 58 years old) and the day becomes that much longer. Now I’m not complaining here at all, just stating the logistics of this. So what all that being said, I’ll likely think about a mid course rest period about 4 wks in, and I’ll definitely be making some changes to the exact scheduling of the trip segments such that some of them will be in reverse order. Finally, I just cannot spend from dusk to dawn doing this (as I had once thought we could do for the sake of expediency) - we have to have a life amidst all this.
Ok, my left knee. Well, it’s still a tad tweaky despite me determination to do nothing but R & R over our break, concentrating on icing, stretching, and the application of a topical gel 3x/day. My sis the sports doc looked it over and pretty much agreed with me that it’s a tendentious issue. She found that it’s on the medial side of the knee, at an insertion point where three muscles join the knee. And she prescribed my above mentioned rehab routine. But when it comes down to it, and this is import to her and I with respect to the diagnosis of tendonitis, I cant’ really say HOW or WHY it happened. I mean, was it a lack of getting in the proper volume pre trip to prepare the muscles, tendons and ligaments for the rigors of American Dirt? Was it the hiking through chasm of mud, river and foliage with a bike strapped to my back for a day? Was it bike-hiking and bushwhacking in cycling shoes? Was it the two notable biffs I took off the bike - both onto my left leg? Was it a combination of all or some of the above? Don’t know!
What I do know is that I’m going to start the next portion of this thing with a leg that’s not 100%. It kind of scares me, but then again, I really feel I can just “deal with it” for a couple months. Not bummed, just determined to get through this thing. I will continue all the rehab stuff each and every morning/evening of the trip with hopes of actually getting through this and getting better as the weeks go on. Kim, my sister, even gave me this killer knee brace to use, so I also have that in my arsenal to help combat the knee pain. So, that’s where I’m at there.
AM prer-ride: Well, we got back down to the Ohio River, and as I mentioned above, I decided to do a reverse segment so I could find where we need to put in, rather than put out. This so Judy wouldn’t be driving all over hell’s half acre trying to find the right place. Now we ended up on the southeast side of the Ohio River when we stopped last week. So Judy know how to get to that point. And good thing we did this river Xing in reverse - because my put-out points were on private river-side properties. After driving around for 40 min we finally stopped so I could ask a local where a public boat launch was located. And sure enough it was down the river about 2 miles at a Shriners Temple. Rather than take a chance and put in on private property, we headed down river to the public launch. By this time it was about 1:30 PM. I quickly got the boat and the gear ready, and amidst a massively humid afternoon, I got in the boat and began padding 2 miles upstream so as to make my Xing right by the Parkersburg-Belpre bridge. Now I could see point park in Parkersburg way off to my left upriver, so sighting and landing was no problem. It was just that my 1/2 mile Xing had turned into a 2.5 mile paddle.
Only had one power boat go by, where I pointed to bow at 45-degrees into the wake, and then had this big old-time paddle boat eventually pass me, creating nearly zero wake. Make it to Point Park in Parkersburg in about 25 min. Judy had no problem finding the landing since she’d been there just a bit over a week ago. By this time the humidity was just stifling down here along the river. I mean the roof of my van was hot enough to cooks eggs on, so I had to be careful so as to not burn my arms as I re-lashed the canoe back to the top of the van. Then came the fun - more berminating and railroad riding!
Found this dirt road right out of the Shriners Temple and up the Rt 618. Xed that and then road berm to this dead-end RR that runs east-west. Got on that pup and just rode right down the middle of the tracks. Now these tracks dead-end at this chemical plant, so I knew it wasn’t a main line. The center of the tracks were near perfect with just enough ballast between ties that it made for a very comfy ride (for riding down the middle of RR tracks). And as usual, I’d just cruise across road Xing’s as if I were just tooling though. Hell, one guy freaking waved at me as if I were a train. Go to the end of the line, damn near in the bowels of this petrochemical plant, and then detoured onto the grass berm of the place and proceeded to ride their grass berm west to parallel the RR line, which at that point really goes right INTO the place with an exit that is a half mile down and totally fenced off (discovered this on last year’s recon mission). So I terminated around the plan to get back on the old RR grade until it fizzled out at the junction of Rt 339.
Met Judy for a little briefing session on the next segment and then off again, this time doing a short berminator session onto a county road that dead-ended, but paralleled the old RR line, which at this point was a tangled jungle of shit. I could see it just below me to my left as I berminated through these waist high weeds. Trust me, to try to push a bike, hike, crawl, or use a machete through that mess would have been something to write about. Ok, now I’m a dumb ass, but I’m not totally stupid. When I have the choice of riding through thigh high grass at 6mph or cussing, tripping, & stumbling through a jungle at 2mph, I’ll take the faster, easier mode. And that’s just what I did what with riding parallel to the old grade on a condemned road. Once the road was closed to traffic and gated off it just totally turned to a piece of garbage - which was perfect for me, cuz I could ride down the middle of this old gravely, muddy track and be out of the weeds.
Made it back up to Rt 50/32/7 west and just berminated the damn thing, again, paralleling the old RR grade. And tell ya what, this was CAKE! Because, and this is my assumption, that when the tractors cut the berm grass on the sides of these state routes, they embed the grass berm with a hard track, over and over again until it’s rock hard, such that I could ride on this 1 ft strip at about 8-10mph - killing it for berm riding! Now when there were guardrails up on the sides, oooofa….you better be able to hold a nice straight line because the rail is just 1 ft from your knees if you’re to stay on gravel and not asphalt. And just let me pat myself on the back for my kick ass line holding skills cuz I was just spot on riding these guard rail sections. On a couple of the sections I rode to the left of the guard rail on this 30-degree slope, and be darned if my conti tires didn’t stick like glue to the surface. It must have looked hilarious to someone driving by me.
Now at this point I was about 3 hrs into the day, from a riding perspective, and Judy and I were just doing going from X street to X street along Route 50/32/7 west as I was trying to make some ground on a shortened day. Once we met at the Torch Rd jcn. I wanted to check on the viability of getting back on that abandoned RR line, where it X’s the state route. And be damned if they haden’t labeled it as the Belpre-Athens Rail Trail. Ok that’s in name only, for there is a trail, but it’s amidst waist high weeds - NO jungle mind you, but waist high weeds. This has changed since I did recon here 2 yrs ago. But hell, it’s got signage for goodness sakes! So I took this dog for about a half mile to see if it’s really viable, and it looks like it is. Going to take bush pants, hiking shoes, and bush shirt to do this section, but I’ll try it tomorrow…hey, what the hell, should make for some good reading anyway right?
Rode the road back to Judy and called it a day. Got in about 4 hrs today. And the left leg - the bugger still hurts, but not really when I’m riding, like more when I’m bike hiking. I’ve got this sneaking suspicion that it’s going to dog me the rest of the summer. I’m icing and putting on this analgesic gel right now as I write. We’ll see. We found this little hole-in-the-wall campground along the Hocking River, about 6 miles from where I ended today, so we’re in a very good spot to get right back at it tomorrow. Judy cooked up some black bean burgers, dogs and had this great spinach salad for me. That and a couple of hinges and I’m in a very good place. I’ll see how that rail trail…er grassland goes tomorrow, really depending on how the knee reacts to bike hiking. But I do get on a good stretch of gravel road on the way to Athens, and then get on a bike-hike trail once in Athens. Hoping to make it to Lake Hope State Park by days end tomorrow - 47 miles.
Amazing to think that my goal is 47 miles. But on gravel, berm, and through a maze of thigh high grassy trail, it’s a massive accomplishment if I can get this done in a day. Want to say thanks to John, Marsita, Jim, Cindy and big John for coming out to meet us Tuesday night at the Tavern in Stow. Was just great seeing all of you. Also good to hook up with Bill on Wed night, as he’s thinking of joining me on the Katy Trail in MO, and through all of CO. Everyone take care, and I’ll be talking at you again tomorrow eve…..Pete