Heading Home & WV: In Conclusion

Miles Friday: 192

Today we are headed back to Penmerryl Farm B&B for our last night on the road. We took 39 again and basically retraced our route, which was really pretty and twisty. I was listening to cello rock today and totally got in the zone. 

The weather was really nice. Clear and not too hot. 

We had lunch at Dirtbean in Marlington, WV again and they recognized us (and asked if we were from around here). We said no, but we'd been here before and were on our way home. 

We made really good time and got to Staunton, VA at like 4:30. We got ice cream and then an early dinner after much debate. Unfortunately it started raining while we were eating so we had to scramble back to our bikes in the rain and ride the rest of the way (20 min) in wet helmets and gloves. 

We got to Penmerryl Farm and our host Blair remembered us and asked how our trip was. So we caught up with him and waited for the rain to subside before bringing our stuff to our room. 

Miles Saturday: 179

We rolled out after another amazing Penmerryl breakfast. We forgot that Rolling Thunder participants would be making their way to DC this weekend and there were a lot of groups of cruisers out. The weather was great and we got home at 2:30, and turned over a new leaf: we immediately unloaded, unpacked, and started laundry. CRAZY. 

This is all of the stuff that was on my bike, except for in tank bags which is another couple of liters. Left = 35 L left pannier (clothes), middle = 30L topcase, and right = 35L right pannier (camping gear), plus a 20L bag for the food & coffee. 

This is all of my clothes (left pannier) unpacked and unfolded, including souvenir shirts which were packed in the right pannier:

I need to invest in packable wicking base layers. I just use my workout pants and some shirts I got a few years ago, which do the wicking but are not optimized for packability. I think I could get by on one bandana every other day instead of every day and that would save some space as well. I did wear all of my layers so I think I guessed that right. And for this 15-night trip, I packed 5 sets of clothes plus the one I was wearing and that worked out about right. 

West Virginia In Conclusion: 

Trip total miles were 1,859 for Jaron and 2,138 for Julie. Julie was on the road for 2 additional nights for the class and had one day on her own while Jaron took a break. Jaron also went to Charlottesville to chase down Julie's front brake lever. 

This was the first trip we did without a far destination, like Michigan or Nova Scotia. We wanted to try not being in such a goddamn all of the time. There were a lot of things we didn't get to do on those trips that we wanted to, and there were some really long days that we had to do in crappy weather. It certainly sounds more impressive to say you're going to Michigan versus noodling around West Virginia. But honestly, my post-party depression wasn't nearly as bad as it has been on those trips. This is because there were both fewer expectations and fewer things we were unable to do. So we both liked this format. 

The idea was that we have a day-trip radius of about 4 hours -- that's all of the places we can go on a day trip. Then we have a weekend radius of about 6-8 hours, which is all of the places we can make it to on a weekend. Beyond that it's all out of our reach unless we go on a long trip. Part of "getting away" is going somewhere you can't normally go and we didn't know if staying relatively close to home would give us that same feeling. But it was nice to know we weren't that far from home when Julie needed a brake lever and when Jaron got injured. 

Camping also goes by the wayside on a trip with a far destination, because you lose almost a full day of riding time because you meed to quit early to have time to set up camp, and it takes time to break down camp. As it was we did only camp 2 nights. I really wanted to camp more, but we ended up extending our stay in Glen Ferris because it was a great place and it kept raining overnight. 

West Virginia had some really awesome roads and scenery. It was kind of funny, I found myself comparing the mountains and rocky scenery to New Mexico. The rocks are more brown in WV than the red in NM, and obviously it's a lot more green. 

We had a lot less trouble on two lane roads in WV. Most of the time people pulled over and waved us on, and we did not have any close calls while passing. 

The local cuisine in NM is a lot tastier than in MI or WV! But the food in WV was all fresh and made with love. 

I could take a few more trips to WV to see more of the places and routes I read about. We really enjoyed getting to see more of WV. We always go to my dad's, but there are a lot of cool and beautiful things to see around the state. 

The Hovercraft and I got along pretty well, too. Outside the class I only had 1 drop, and it was on too step a turn to make from a stop on wet gravel. I'm getting pretty good at balancing the bike, using my one foot to balance vs trying to push against the ground to hold the bike up. I also used my upper body to counterbalance several times to avoid a tip-over.