Doing the Charleston!

Day 29: Grayson, KY to Charleston, WV

Us and our new buddy Daniel Bell, a voice prof at Kentucky Christian University

After a great breakfast, and a good night's sleep, we were on the 60 East again headed for Charleston.  We stayed with Daniel Bell, a voice instructor at the Christian university in Grayson, and we had a great time.  It's really cool how we can go onto couchsurfing.com, type in a city, and then get hooked up with really neat people like Daniel.  He has an enormous goldfish (apparently, if they are kept in good surroundings, they can live 30 years!), loves opera and showed us some of his favorite pieces, and all in all, has a really cool place on campus.  Daniel, if you're following us, thanks again for everything!  You really blessed two weary (and frustrated with exploded tires!) cyclists out!

Loved the color of these bridges.  This is going from Kentucky into Ohio.

We were sort of forced to go this route, so as to stay off the major interstates, but it was cool to be able to say we went through Ohio (be it only for 10 miles or so) too!

About an hour later we were in West Virginia!

After the first 45 miles we were, well, tired.  I can't say it was because we had headwind, or even because of hills, but it was probably due to having ridden for 6 straight days without an adequate rest day.  We stopped at a local Krogger (the Midwest/East Coast version of Ralphs) and had lunch and kinda just sat there letting food digest and allowing our muscles to rest. 

Another video just for fun...

I have always heard that the second half of the day a person's body has an easier time working out as opposed to during the morning.  Your muscles are all woken up and your blood is flowing, plus you usually have had at least two meals so your energy is up.  At any rate, Les and I had an AMAZING 40 mile ride from our resting point into Charleston.  We did it in about 2.5 hours and by the time we were done we sort of looked at each other and wondered if we hadn't skipped a road or found a secret short cut.  I really don't think we've ever done that many miles that quickly, but I bet a big lunch, rest, and the desire to get to Charleston (our rest-day city) all helped.   

What reads "Charleston" to everyday drivers and bystanders is interpreted, "rest day" to us.

A shot of downtown and a bridge.

While the second half of the ride was really quick, we also were sweating like maniacs, so I had to post a picture of it!

We rolled into downtown Charleston and noticed something quite peculiar right off the bat: there were barely any people.  What made this so strange was that it was a Saturday night, and there weren't more than 20 people who passed by in 30 minutes.  Strange.  We found a local coffee house (of course) called "Taylor Books" (it had a coffee shop next door) and jumped online to find out if we had a place to stay and where we could eat.  The answer to our first question was an affirmative, a man named Jerry would be riding his bike down into downtown at 7:30 to meet us and take us back to his place (and we'd get to stay with he and his wife for two nights!).  The second was more broad, but we chose a pizza place only 3 shops down.

We devoured a large pizza in ten minutes.  Sooo good!

Post-ride garb and hang-out attire.

Jerry rolled up and we talked for a couple minutes and before we knew it we were on our way to his place (he has two ridiculously steep hills right before his home that we weren't expecting...I was THIS close to having to walk!)

The Gilberts (Jerry and Jan) were more than happy to take us in, give us a shower, take us to their church on Sunday, take us shopping, make us food, etc.  IT WAS AMAZING!  But more on that in our next post about our day off...