Apple @ Ya
We’re currently riding through the boondoggle mountain country of West Virginia. We are waiting out a rainstorm in a little coffee shop in downtown Buckhannon.
The first 70 miles in West Virginia was on the American Discovery Trail, which is a rail trail that spans the length of the U.S. It was refreshing to get away from the cars for a bit. We hardly even saw any humans on the trail. There were a lot of fun old train tunnels rumored to be haunted that we passed through along the way.
The minute we got off the trail, we had to confront the reality that we’re indeed in West Virginia. Yesterday as we were climbing a steep pass, I watched a guy chug the rest of a 40 oz. in his truck as he waited for me to pass the stop sign. After a few days here, we now just assume that West Virginia is drunk after 5 p.m. It’s a damn good thing that “practice makes perfect.” The redneck weirdo quotient has gone up a few digits in this here state. Everyone wears t-shirts with statements on them. Like yesterday we saw a morbidly obese guy wearing a shirt with an arrow pointing to his head that said “the man” and an arrow pointing to his crotch that said, “the legend.” We’ve also seen a lot of confederate flag window dressings along the way. The truck balls trend seems to be dying out because I haven’t noticed too many of those in these parts despite the abundance of trucks.
Last night I started to get antsy to stop. It’s pretty scary to ride around here at night and after someone screamed for us to “Get the fuck off the road,” I was more than willing to do that as soon as we could find a place to camp. We climbed a big hill and there was a church that we decided to set up shop behind once the parishioners left the premises. Jared cooked up a feast. We’ve been living off a half gallon of ice cream during the day (on special for $1.88 at Kroger, and some kinda grain + beans + veggies cooked up by Jared at night)
In the middle of the night, it started to rain unexpectedly and we had to get up and put on the tent fly and cover zee bikes. We woke up early enough to avoid detection by rabid christians. It’s almost unfortunate though, because I had a whole spiel that I was planning on delivering had we been found camping behind their place of worship.
We’re almost to Monongahela National Forest where the real mountains are and we’ll probably be wishing we didn’t have so much shit with us on our bikes!
-L
The word is spelled “spiel”… and it comes form German.
thanks!
cool, i rode the entirety of that trail a couple years ago when i rode from maryland to bloomington. it was nice. i ran into one of the guys that started the trail, he was the only person i saw. he was really nice and offered the buy my breakfast.
i really liked the tunnels. they’re super creepy! you never told us you did this trail, greg!
Pics or it never happened.
remember to check each others hair for ticks…they are everywhere up here…welcome to “gummo” land…
good call on the tick checking. i’m really scared of lyme disease too. it sounds terrible!
i thought gummo was xenia, ohio…but yeah i get the point. rural isolation. we didn’t spot any bunny eared boys walking around…
you guys are always bumping into christians
Cool that youz found an off road trail, after all!
That poor miniature horse has arthritis so bad it’s bow legged.
yup as we came upon the horse we were arguing about what the it was. “what the fuck IS that!’ it didn’t move at all. poor thing.
I know Jared’s tall, but how the heck did he manage to take picture #6?
I just held the camera above my head….