Tuesday, June 4th, 2024
Oakton, VA -> Linden, VA
64.1 mi, 3,881 ft elevation
We began our day near DC at the home of our generous host Heather. After finalizing packing and sorting through bike gear, we set out on our journey.
Our route started on a pleasant bike path that led us out of the cities and suburbs. Meanwhile, Amulya was running around all the bike shops in the DC area collecting Garmin Edge 540s because of a bike computer mishap (tl;dr: if you buy discontinued Garmin products from Amazon, you might get a bike computer with the Europe cycling map that doesn't have enough space for the North America map oop).
The real challenges began with our first significant fall: Hank took a tumble on the road but got up and was okay. We stopped in a very cute town for lunch before hitting the road again. Jess stopped for a "life sustaining acai bowl" which she shared with the team.
About an hour after lunch, disaster struck again: Sophia and Rebecca's bikes broke down. They had to be picked up by Amulya, our driver for the day, to get them fixed. The rest of the group began to scatter and continued to ride through the scenic roads of horse country. We stopped at local houses for water and everyone was super helpful!
Our host Jen’s place was down a few gravel roads which some of us half walked and half biked. Unfortunately, Jess took a bad fall very close to our host’s house and had to be picked up by Jen who greeted us with tacos and lots of vegan meal options!
As we finally tried to catch our breath after this long day, Rebecca noticed that the tires on our rental were worn out. We initially planned a night expedition to salvage the situation but realized it wasn’t reasonable given that we were all really sleep deprived. We decided to switch up the order of the next few days and take a rest tommorow to handle everything that's going on.
Thank you so much, Jen, for letting us stay two nights in a row and being so accommodating!!!