Day 3: Glendale, VA to Ashland, VA

Tuesday May 22, 2012,  30 miles - Total so far: 92 miles*
    * Miles ridden on the TransAm route
    Odometer miles - Today - 36.7   Total to date - 118.9 miles

Our shortest riding day, first camping day

Today was the shortest riding day of the trip except for our shakedown ride to Yorktown.  Only 30 miles on the route plan.  Embarrassingly, map geek that I am, I made three wrong turns which turned my day into almost 37 miles.  Fortunately it wasn't on a long day, but I'm going to have to pay more attention to the details in the map narrative, particularly the mileage notes.

Glendale (VA) National Cemetery - just across the road from Willis Methodist Church

I was riding the second half of the day with Simon and we were talking so I wasn't paying enough attention to the map.  I was also working harder than I'd like just to keep up with Simon's pace.  This will probably be the only day I ride with him.  He's a neat guy and I enjoy chatting with him, but his pace is way faster than mine.  It was OK today, knowing we didn't have far to go.

Even with wrong turns we arrived in camp about 1:15pm.  We set up our tents for the first time.  I didn't put my fly over the tent right away, but after a bit Paul pointed out that the black clouds in the distance looked like rain so I put it on.  We got a bit of rain shower about 20 minutes later, so my timing was fortunate.  I sat in the tent and caught up on e-mails and some other business while it rained about 30 minutes.

A couple of our group took a wrong turn (I won't name names) and ended up near the Richmond airport early in their ride.  The got a ride back on course from a friendly guy named Tom, so it actually made for an interesting experience.  But because they were a couple of hours behind they got caught in some stronger rain with thunder and lightning a bit away from our camp location.

We're staying at a KOA campground adjacent to I-95 south of Ashland, VA.  There's a lot of highway traffic which is particularly noticeable after going to bed.  There are laundry facilities, nice showers and wi-fi so the amenities are very good.

Our campground at the Ashland KOA.  Paul and the van are out shopping for food for dinner and tomorrow.

My bike and my tent

I-95 just beyond the edge of our campground.  Traffic is slowed to a crawl southbound heading into Richmond.  Very typical for I-95 in this area.

I'm writing this in my tent in the middle of a rain storm with some thunder and lightning nearby.  It's raining pretty hard right at the moment, but so far I'm dry and it cooled everything off.  The humidity has been a bit high with temperatures near 80 for today's high.  Tomorrow's weather is supposed to be more of the same.

One problem I discovered as I was writing this entry during the rain last night - the KOA wi-fi network didn't work for me, even though it had during the day.  So I got a chance to try out my broadband USB modem, which worked great.  I pay for data usage on that plan so I'll only use it when we don't have wi-fi, but it allowed me to do most of this entry last night and to finish it up this morning.