Day 4: Country Roads, Take Me Home…

Luray, VA to Waynesboro, VA — 62.5 mi, 3,900 ft

Today we awoke in our campsite and EVERYTHING WAS WET!!! We had foolishly left all our belongings strewn about the campsite, including bike shoes we had to wear this morning and fresh laundry that now needed to be re-run. Although there had been no rain in the forecast, all our bike gear and camping tents were now covered with a generous layer of morning dew. After a couple of “it’s over” “it’s chopped” “it’s buns” “it’s cooked”, we packed up wet tents in wet bags and did some knee stretches (pictured below) and put chamois butter on our butts (not pictured) and I spent some time trying to pick which audiobook to listen to only to realize that not only do you need to pay for Audible you need to pay for the audiobook as well (!!) and after three hours we were ready to leave the campsite at 9 AM. 

Realization number 1 today: America really is so beautiful. The song was literally made about this place (O beautiful for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain, For purple mountain majesties above the fruited plain!). We biked through rolling meadows and lush green grass everywhere and fluffy cows and houses with pretty porches and tantalizingly inviting pools. We were biking along the Shenandoah River, and when I realized that I was literally biking down the country roads John Denver was singing about, it felt like I could actually sense his deep nostalgia for the countryside and felt a surprising burst of American patriotism that I haven’t felt in a long time as he sang in my ears…

Almost heaven, West Virginia

Blue Ridge Mountains, Shenandoah River

Life is old there, older than the trees

Younger than the mountains, growin’ like a breeze

Country roads, take me home

To the place I belong

West Virginia, mountain mama

Take me home, country roads

We kept the good vibes going for a long long lunch where we stumbled upon a perfect oasis where we had a glorious picnic, brought out our big floatie but never went into the water, and instead laid down on the grass and took a group nap. 

Wow that was a beautiful sentence. Well-deserving of its own paragraph. Writing this blog is making me retroactively even more grateful for these moments. Sometimes you don’t realize how awesome you have it in the moment.

Realization number 2 today: calling people and listening to them talk like a personal podcast is the hack of long-distance biking. I called my dad who is really good at debriefs and he told me the story of how he wrangled the thousand pounds of luggage I left him on his flight to California. I called my mom who is really good at reminding me of the things I haven’t done and she talked to me about how I need to eat a lot of protein and how I should become even more shameless in asking for Spokes donations. I called my best friend Albert who is really good at laughing and he told me about this new TV show Girls that he’s been watching and indulged me in my fantasy of daydreaming about all the things we will do when we both live in the Bay Area together post-grad. I called my other best friend Ria who is really good at talking in general and she didn’t pick up. I called my friend Maanas who is really good at giving advice and he gave me some more wisdom from his post-grad bike trip from UT Austin to Alaska. I called my teammates Nunu and Tatiana so we could talk even more while biking even though we already spend every single waking hour together. Becoming a Caller is actually one of my goals this summer. It’s such a good way to keep up to date with my friends lives as we all move to different corners of the world, and I am so notoriously bad at keeping in touch with friends that I don’t see regularly that it is a serious fear of mine that the strong friendships I’ve built in college will fade with inactivity. If you’re reading this, please feel free to call me anytime this summer!!! 

Our ride ended in Waynesboro today as our next host, Pam, picked us up in her truck over the mountain to her house. (Don’t worry, we will resume biking from Waynesboro again in order to have a contiguous route across America). 

When we arrived at Pam’s place, we were greeted by a literal enchanted magical fairy forest. Pam lives on Shannon Farm, a hippie community founded in 1973 and where she has been a member since 1979. My goal in graduate school at Berkeley is actually to become a hippie so this was an amazing pregame for me. As we gathered around the dinner table and feasted on the delicious barbecue pulled pork sandwiches and potato salad and baked beans and corn on the cob she had made for us, we asked her about her life and her community.

Pam hands-down has lived one of the richest and most colorful lives out of anyone I’ve ever met. She was an activist protesting the Vietnam war in her college days, she’s been a nurse in clinics, peace walks, and wilderness all over the world, she’s raised two amazing children, she’s gone to Africa multiple times to rehabilitate chimpanzees and baboons and monkeys, she was the chairman of a primate sanctuary in North Carolina where she met Jane Goodall, and most admirably, she greets every person and experience she meets with a beautiful and warm and open heart. Pam, you are truly an inspiration to all of us, and I can only hope to internalize and pass forward some of the warmth you have shown us. 

I forgot to bring my journal on this trip so I’m going to end my blog journaling to you all with some personal thoughts. This is the first time I’ve been a part of a team in my life, like not just a school group project or a friend group or workplace type team but a true, blood-sweat-and-tears sports team. We are all bound by this shared and really difficult mission of somehow biking across America, and I can already tell that by the end of the summer, we will know each other in different ways than the rest of the people in our lives are used to seeing. It’s also insane how competent everyone on the team is; everyone is constantly working to lift the entire team up and doing more than their share of work during tired evenings and rushed mornings. I’ve never experienced being the one that feels like they aren’t pulling their weight, especially because I didn’t come in knowing any special skills relevant for this trip like fixing bikes and mounting overhead storage on the car and efficiently packing gear and all. On top of that, I’m definitely one of the slower bikers, and I found out today that I’m apparently the slowest to get ready in the mornings too 😭😭

Fighting these feelings of inadequacy is something I’ll definitely have to learn this summer. It’s good in the sense that it means I really am doing something that is out of my comfort zone, because I actually never do things that I’m not good at. It’ll be a learning experience to first just accept my weaknesses as they are presented to me (putting aside my pride, the biggest of my seven deadly sins) and then actively work on them for the betterment of the team.

I do have a few goals I’ve been thinking about for this summer. One I already mentioned was to become a Caller and learn how to stay in touch with people. Another is to complain less. As the people in my life (especially my dad) can attest to, I enjoy complaining, but I enjoy complaining more as a shared activity, like let’s all complain about how annoying something is. But it’s really not the same when nobody else on the team is that into complaining so then I just seem like a big chud. I’m not going to list too many goals already on Day 4 because a laundry list of goals is ripe for falling through on all of them, so tune in for my next blog, every Thursday.

Thank you for the many people who have been donating and supporting and keeping up with our journey, I love you all!!

Aarushi ❤