Hey'all. Sara here with a short post, just to get us caught up, 'cuz come tomorrow, we're BACK on the ROAD.
It's high time, and we're excited. And we're also grateful to have had this stopover in C'Ville to do some adjusting and—most importantly—tend to Beau's knee. Over the past three days we've been paring down our packing list, stretching and rolling various important muscles, and doing a bit of M&R (bike and body). The biggest props go to Matt at Blue Ridge Cyclery, who met Beau for a spur-of-the-moment bike fitting check-up today and really helped him adjust some things (seat height, cleat placement) to try to ensure less stress on his knee in the coming days of riding. Thank you, Matt!
We replaced Mr. Bucket, an excellent plastic Folgers bucket that rides on Beau's front rack and provides a light food-storage solution — unfortunately, we got a little excited about painting Version 1.0 (see below), and the paint wanted to come off all over everything. So, flaky 1.0 is staying home, while clean and shiny 2.0 (his new name is Mr. Bouquet) comes with us. Also, we've committed to stickering our panniers, and I'm very excited about featuring several of my very favorite stickers (see below #2 — thanks to Josephine for the exquisite kitty and Beau for the immortal Darren Nichols).
And, ya know, we had some beers. Yay, C'Ville for having a bunch of lovely breweries who are doing outdoors, distanced service (shout out to Champion and Random Row among others!).
We're aiming for a short day tomorrow, taking it gently and making sure everything is in ship shape. Lucky for us, about halfway up Afton Mountain (a pretty brutal climb about 30 miles from here) there's a TransAm legend — the Cookie Lady's House! June Curry passed away 8 years ago, but for 35 years, she was known by cyclists as an amazing, cookie-making host along the trail. She was born and lived her whole life in the same house in Afton, and the house is still a monument to her today, and also filled with cycling memorabilia. We're psyched to pay homage as we start crossing the mountains.
So! Wish us luck, friends. We've got all our various extremities crossed as we set out again... Until next time, sláinte!