May 16 update

May 16, 2017 update. We left "love" about 8:00 this morning and had a tough climb up to Montibello where we had a very steep descent down to Vesuvius. just before starting the descent, Malcolm broke his front disc brakes cable. The descent was very steep, with a 10% plus grade in places, and very curvy with rough pavement. We started down the hill which is about 3 miles long and drops about 2000 feet, and agreed to stop and cool the brakes several times in the way down. So, about halfway down, Malcolm had gone ahead completely out of sight, and I'm really concerned about him. I come around a bend and just below me is  a steep driveway up to an old cabin. This driveway is as steep as Tim Foley's, if you've seen his you will know what I mean, but if not, let me say you can barely ride up it. This driveway below is also a very rough, rutted, dirt incline. As I come down the hill I see Malcolm up this driveway about a hundred and fifty feet working on reattaching his panniers. He had bailed out just like one of those run away trucks on the interstate. He could never have made the next curve just 100 feet farther on.

I stopped and helped him get his stuff together and he decided he would flag down a pickup truck to get him down the mountain. I rode on down and waited for him in Vesuvius. When he got down, we went to lunch at Gerti's diner in Vesuvius. It is an old filling station with about 7 ft ceilings. The reason I mention the ceiling is that it is completely covered with names, dates, and addresses of AT hikers and Trans-Am riders. Malcolm's hands were still shaking when we got up to leave.

When we got in to Lexington Va. We went to a bike shop to replace his brake cable, two women came to the bike store with a flat tire. They are also doing the Trans-Am. They had three flats about ten miles west of Lexington, and someone picked them up, brought them back to Lexington, waited,then took them back to where they had to stop. I changed the tube for them and showed them how to do it properly. They were a mother daughter duo from Texas. The mother looked to be early forties, and the daughter was 16. They passed us later in the pickup truck and we caught up with them later. We rode with them a while, but eventually moved on ahead. They started riding this morning farther West than us, so they were going on past where we are staying tonight. I'm sure we will see them again.

Tomorrow we plan to go to Radford Va., About 80 miles. There is not a good place to camp there, so I called my old high school Biology teacher, Jim Blakney. He lives in Pearisport and is going to pick us up and put us up for the night.