So… yesterday I rode my bike to Virgina. Virgilina, Virginia, to be precise. Took 501 from home, then 49 to Virgilina. To make things less boring than an out-and-back trip would be, I then took 98 to Oxford and Old 75 (NC 1004) back to Durham. Total distance = 90.9 miles according to Google Maps, 95.13 miles according to my cyclometer (which I’m fairly sure is mis-calibrated).
The trip started out well enough. It was a little chilly so I had on my windbreaker and some sweatpants, and a slight headwind that stayed with me all the way to beyond Roxboro made me happy that I had. It was then–just beyond Roxboro–that I had my first mishap. Three hours into my ride, my Blackberry’s battery had run out of juice. Apparently, the act of searching for a signal tower in the middle of nowhere is very electrically taxing. At this point, I was actually considering turning around, because I would have neither a way to contact my wife in case of an emergency nor (more importantly!) my audiobook to listen to for the remaining five hours of my ride. Luckily and thankfully, a nice woman at the Mayo Marina market let me use her car-charger for *her* phone to recharge mine. About 45 minutes, one Snapple Tangerine White Tea, a BIG box of Boston Baked Beans (yum!), and the Saturday Edition of the Roxboro Courier=Times (yes, that’s an equal sign… no, I don’t know why) later, I was back on the road, about 80% charged.
I twittered most of the trip, but soon ran into my second mishap. No signal anywhere in or around Virgilina. Took pictures in lieu of tweeting. (Okay, I would have taken pictures anyway. But with no tweets to back them up, the pictures became more important.) Here they are:
The final (and thankfully also non-painful) mishap of the trip was when I arrived in Oxford, I realized I had left my “cue sheet” (aka “map”) at home. I could see the shape of the map in my head, but unless I was to suddenly figure out how to look at Oxford from 1000 feet off the ground, that wasn’t very useful. So, I called on my standard Navigator-of-choice, and called my wife. 
She got me back on track (Thanks, Honey!) and I was on the final leg of my trip. Tweets and pictures again suffered neglect because I had noticed that the battery was getting low again and I really wanted to finish my audiob… I mean… I wanted to be able to reach my wife in case of an emergency. Yeah. That’s it…
I got home at around 4:20; 10 hours after I had left. The “official” stats from my cyclometer:
| Trip Distance | 95.13 miles |
| Time Travelled | 7:47:02 |
| Average Speed | 12.2 mph |
| Maximum Speed | 32.5 mph |
Now–24 hours after I finished the trip yesterday–my legs and knees are only a little sore, my back and shoulders are more so. The back and shoulder soreness are likely from a borrowed CamelBak Ventoux hydration pack I had tried using for the first time. I liked it very much for this “un-supported” long-distance trip, but, as there will be rest/refueling stops every hour or so on the CNC Fall Ride next week, I’ll probably just stick with bottles and a fanny pack.