Embarquation

Wholy poop.

So much has happened in the past couple days, it's day 3 of the ride. 3:26 pm in St. Stephen's Church. I think that's the town name. VA. I'll write what I can.

*disclaimer for the rest o the ride. I don't know how often I'll be able to update. I'm at a tiny little library right now. About the size of 3 trailer homes. Dunno how many places/ time we'll have

I may actually be able to update kinda often, though. Today is horrendously hot. Colleen's fancy pants watch read 99 degrees at about 1:30. We're talking about getting up at 5, roll out at 6, ride till we start melting, and get rolling after a couple hours till evening. Just to avoid the heat. We're not on the Adventure Cycling route yet, it doesn't start till a few days down the road. So we're on a scary little highway for a while- which doesn't help anything.

The first day, we got a ride to Assateague, MD. The beach. You're welcome. We all paid a dollar to dip our wheels in the sand. Jerks. The word got around bout where we were headed, and people started snapping photos of us. Celebrities, after the first day! I got attacked by a wave and couldn't wash all the sand outa my shoes. We almost died in the sand trying to get our bikes back over the dune-thingy.

We saw our first carniverous animal, a wild pony. The roads were beautiful and fun to ride. Very flat, wide shoulders, nice drivers (mostly). I think Anne got the first honk. At one point, the sun coming through the trees was just picture perfect. Of course I didn't get a picture. However, I did get a terrible picture of everybody riding by a used car lot. Ooooooh ribbons!

When it started getting late, we started looking for shady places on the side of the road where we could camp. Apparently, most of the land managed by the Bureau of Land Management is cool to camp on without permission. After not seeing anything kosher for a few miles, we decided to ride to the State Park a few miles down the road. Then somebody had the bright idea to ask some random house if we could stay in their massive yard. All us shady people chilled by the road while Colleen and Mims went to the door. I didn't really think we were welcome.

A few minutes later, we were setting up camp in front of her out of commission chicken-coop thingies. We made one of them our 10,000 square foot changing room. Walker and Mims sliced up an awesome spaghetti-zucchini-chicken meal. The lady that let us stay at her house demanded that we let her wash our dishes. We made a fire in her pit out back, and her high-school-age son ended up bringing us MARSHMALLOWS. I made a Clif bar+marshmallow on a stick. I dubbed it the Steven. I recommend you have a Steven sometime. It was too much.

And that isn't the half of it. More soon K?

Steven