Cycle Across America — Part 09
Virginia: The Eastern Shore and Getting Killed
Excerpts from the journal of my 1996 solo cycle across the US. Read the entire story from the introduction in Boston or see links to all segments of the trip.
Facing a trip of as much as 120 miles, and over 90 to the Bridge Tunnel, air conditioning and a good night’s sleep would’ve been nice. Woke at three and had another can of the beer that made Milwaukee famous — to help me sleep. Come five I decided I’d go at sunrise. Then I fell asleep. Woke after eight, a problem facing that distance.
From the call box I rang 2 people about a contact in Virginia Beach tonight but got no answer. Too late for breakfast and/or stocking up on food so instead had the last 2 pretzels from Vinny’s huge barrel in Philly.
Rolled through downtown Princess Anne which was nicer than the corporate centre but there was nothing there. And it wasn’t that nice.
Annoyed with myself for not fully checking distances on the Delmarva (DELaware, MAryland, VirginiA) peninsula once I had changed my route to take it in. Have unnecessarily left myself with an almost impossible trip to Virginia Beach. It was looking like there’d be as much as eight miles on the far side of the bridge just to get to the beach itself.
Rejoined Route 13 and upped the speed. Kept it at 14mph for an hour on a very comfortable wide shoulder on a road with little traffic. Here was Pocomoke City where I should’ve gone to last night to keep today’s mileage down. Came off the main road to have a look at the centre and it was lovely.
Plenty of shops but no food so came out of town the far side and decided on McDonalds for the first time on the whole trip. A man coming out with his son said I’d be better off biking up to Hardees. The queue was big and moved slow. I could’ve done without that.
Ordering my food I spotted ‘Hot Tea’ on the menu. I’d had tea adventures everywhere I’d stayed, so here I had to find out what would happen. I was given a huge cup, called ‘regular’, of hot water and a Lipton’s tea bag. I asked could I get some milk for the tea.
-For the hot tea?
-Yes
The teenage kid shook his head and went off and got a small carton.
-You want to put milk in the hot tea? In the hot tea?
He was about to pour some milk into the hot water when I told him I’d buy the carton and put it in myself. As I walked away with my tray he just kept shaking his head and saying
-I ain’t ever seen anybody put milk in a hot tea.
The tea allowed time for the food to go down so I wouldn’t get a stitch. Pulling up out of the car park onto the shoulder of Route 13 again was such a good feeling. I was just like all the cars who had stopped for breakfast and now were going onwards on their long distance trip. It felt so good turning onto the shoulder and moving up through the gears.
Back on the dual-carriageway with the huge shoulder lined by trees, I entered the Commonwealth of Virginia, my ninth state, reflecting once again on the lack of photographs I’d taken of the state I was leaving. I’d just cycled through hundreds of miles of beautiful landscapes of corn and soya bean crops with woods all around, dotted with wonderful houses and gardens, and the odd pretty village. Good-bye Maryland, now I was entering the Eastern Shore of Virginia.
Road construction made traffic too heavy to go across to the central reservation for a photo of the ‘Welcome to Virginia’ sign. As I was fighting time to get to the end of the peninsula so I could cross Chesapeake Bay to Virginia Beach in daylight, I didn’t have time to indulge myself in the Welcome Centre for tourist information. I kept my pace up, averaging 14 mph. The heat didn’t bother me and I had drinks well organized. Then again it was the low eighties [28C] and according to all the weather forecast the ‘ideal weather’ for the weekend.
All the traffic going past seemed to be holiday bound. R.V’s, cars with roof packs, boats, lots of bicycles on the back of vehicles. 30 miles after breakfast, according to a sign, was a joint Taco Bell and Kentucky Fried Chicken. I reckoned 45 to 50 miles into the day was perfect for the lunch break, leaving me with 45 to the Bridge-Tunnel.
Enjoyed reading all the big signs. Seems the Ward brothers are the most famous decoy painters in this part of the world. I’d seen a few by now, indeed some people specialise in paintings of decoys (paintings of painted carvings of water fowl, seemed strange when you can paint real things). Many people had decoys in their gardens.
Passed a sculpture factory with familiar figures of cowboys and lone Indians on a horse. Stopped briefly at a food-stop for some cold drink. Two black women in the queue in front of me told me I could go to the other line as this one was for the lottery. Two pickup truck loads of people in work clothes spilled in. They bought beer and spoke Spanish. Back on the road I passed the Christmas Shop. It was huge like everything else — but this is early August and it was open. Trees and billboards. Hot but pleasant.
Very much a holiday atmosphere kind of day. I suppose that comes mostly from the traffic. There wasn’t much in the way of traffic lights but when there was, I enjoyed being stopped at them in holiday mode like everyone else. A billboard suggests you listen to a certain radio station where “Elton, Whitney, Bolton, Eagles, and Rod” were playing now. Fancy that, Rod Stewart reduced to single-name fame status.
It was hard to accept that I really had left Maryland. Whatever lies ahead, there’s always a chance I would possibly visit New York or Philadelphia again — but Maryland? No. It’s up there with Rhode Island in that it deserves a visit but would I have a reason to take me there? I was thinking of Earl and his workshop, and Peg watching daytime soaps on the portable TV at the picnic table in the trees, sprinkled with sunshine and soothed by the breeze. I think those kids will have such good memories growing up there.
The problem with reflecting on Maryland was that I was missing out on Virginia. It was a new state, Liam. Time to accept it and move on.
Good names on Route 13. Temperanceville and Mapsville. For miles I looked for the right angle for a photograph that would capture this landscape. I didn’t find it. What looked like a satellite dish was in fact a sculpture of a spider on a web.
Thirteen miles after lunch in a place called Onley at that joint KFC /Taco Bell and I was at Exmore. Time to turn off Route 13 and find State Highway 600 — a Virginia by-way which runs parallel. A beautiful laneway really, called Seaside Road I think. There wasn’t too many villages but they were nice.
South of Nassawadox near Birdsnest I saw my first Confederate Flag. It was there proudly in the centre of someone’s garden. I haven’t seen any more since. I was still seeing the odd U.S. flag too but nothing like on the scale of previous states, and usually accompanied by the Virginia state flag.
Very little traffic. Every 3rd or 4th vehicle waved an acknowledgement at me as if I were in Cavan. It would’ve been easier if everyone waved or everyone didn’t. Instead I had to concentrate on every windscreen and see if a wave was coming. No black people waved. A white woman putting her trash out about 50 metres from the road waved.
Very little corn here compared with Maryland — otherwise the landscapes were similar. There were also some fields of tomatoes. Hundreds of acres of rows and rows of them with supporting sticks the same height. For areas the size of the Phoenix Park’s ‘Fifteen Acres’. Without the Phoenix Park I probably wouldn’t be much good at measuring land, even if the ‘Fifteen Acres’ are much more than 15.
Frequently there were old school buses — the yellow ones — parked in the fields with workers out in them in the distance. They were all too far away to wave unlike in Maryland where all those young people were in a human-chain throwing some large vegetable into a truck. They all waved.
The houses were different here. Pretty much what I expected of the South. I was becoming very fond of the Eastern Shore. I knew the ocean was only a mile away to my left — the east, and Route 13 seemed very far away out of range of sound a couple of miles away. And I knew I was heading down a funnel-like peninsula where my road, the ocean, Route 13, and Chesapeake Bay would all meet soon enough. It would certainly be over 90 miles from Princess Anne in the morning by the time that would happen.
The birds were good. Lots of robins. Kids playing on swings or on trampolines. Sometimes miles between houses. Often woods which were nice and cool on the road. Bends in the road, curves, slopes — the kind of features on a road I hadn’t come across since upstate Connecticut. The Eastern Shore of Virginia was becoming idyllic and perfect for cyclists.
Finally I was staring at the entrance to a wildlife preserve and knew it was nearly over. I had gone over 90 miles. Highway 600 turned west towards Route 13. The nature reserve had closed at 4 p.m. It was now after 5 sometime I reckoned looking at my shadow (honest!). It was all so quiet, still and peaceful.
Route 13 had by now very little traffic itself but it was going fast. Signs said 1,500 feet to the toll booth for the Bridge-Tunnel. Other signs said no hitch-hiking. Traffic cones forced vehicles into a single lane, except for wide loads. The admin office was closed. The police office had a no entry sign on the back entrance. An officer came out. He was unfriendly and said there was no such thing as any facilities for getting a bicycle across.
This Bridge-Tunnel complex spans 17.6 miles of the bay and including the lead-up roads is 23 miles long from toll to toll booth. This is the reason I didn’t want to come this way originally. Lots of waterways cause problems in trying to cross them, but most of them are relatively short so a taxi or money thrown at somebody with a vehicle can sort them out. But this was just so big.
Hitched for about an hour. Only three pick-ups went past but nothing looked remotely like it would consider giving me a lift. Despite the clear sky there wasn’t much time to darkness now.
At an expensive looking pink motel called the Sunset Beach the two women on reception rang a grandson, their friends, and taxis either side of the bay. I apologized for my scruffiness but they said no problem. They rang the bridge police who said I should sit tight and wait for them. Hours later the receptionist told me the police now said they would do nothing. I was considering I should stay there the night — for $80 — and try and get over in daylight in the morning, as I wasn’t going to see much of Virginia Beach in the dark at this hour, when I was told a friend of theirs was coming to take me across. Too late to say no now. It was maybe 8:45 and pitch black when we put the bike in the pick-up.
The man who took me was black. A nice man but not too chatty, and refreshingly he wasn’t interested in me or the bike. Nowadays he only crossed the bridge once a month but when he carried grain he used to cross it every day. He said companies in Norfolk, Virginia Beach would transport employees backwards and forwards in vans or minibuses to keep costs down.
As it was dark I was deprived of the view to boot. They had begun pile-driving for a parallel bridge so they could have a north-bound bridge and a south-bound bridge. The existing one is single lane and very narrow. Two sections of it are mile long tunnels which allow channels into the bay. There are several man-made islands some of which hold souvenir shops. The literature proudly proclaims how the Bridge-Tunnel was renamed after its founding visionary, yet they still insist on calling it the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel. And I can’t remember his name.
He dropped me at the toll booth on the far side, and gave him 50 dollars. I don’t think it was enough.
I put my reflective belt, my lights, and my helmet on. A big big road but there was no traffic. The first chance to get off it was Shore Drive. Had I not turned off I would’ve ended up on an interstate. I turned left on Shore Drive towards the coast and the centre of Virginia Beach. The hostel was about 8 miles away on 24th Street but because it was dark I would go to the first place I found.
Shore Drive was big and it was busy. Worse it had no shoulder and it frightened me. After a couple of hundred metres I laughed at myself — I had just put my helmet on because I was expecting to take a spill, no not a spill I corrected myself, I’m going to get knocked down. Americans aren’t used to seeing cyclists at night so I’m just going to get knocked down.
And then it happened, this terrifying violent impact which was such an horrific rush. From behind. This incredible frightening rush of pain and movement as I seemed to go forwards uncontrollably through the air flipping over backwards. Somewhere in the pain, and the movement, and the violence, and then the confusion, was the understanding that I was dead.
Read the next segment: Part 10 — Virginia: Aftermath
See: links to all segments of the trip
Read from the beginning of the trip in Boston
