Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 4, 1993 TAG: 9307010053
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURA WILLIAMSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: TENT CITY LENGTH: Long
Emblazoned like an omen on T-shirts for sale in the Floyd County High School parking lot, a bicycle helmet strapped to his head as he pedaled toward a treacherous mountain slope, the goat hung silently from the rack, unobserved. Around him swirled 1,200 cyclists, eager to register for a five-day bike tour of what they expected would be the gentle, rolling countryside of Southwest Virginia.
From Florida, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Indiana they came - 32 states in all. Families, couples, friends reuniting and single seniors seeking companionship, all of them looking forward to pedaling over the "flat to gently rolling" terrain advertised in the Bike Virginia brochures.
They should have noticed the goat.
"We're going to buy topo maps from now on," said Beth Zurheide, of Milwaukee, after completing 300 miles of grueling roller-coaster trails between Bristol and Floyd.
Her companion, Doug Kowalski, said the course rivaled some of the toughest in the country.
"You'd have to look long and hard to find a trip this hard," he said.
Still, they survived. At the end of the trip, the sixth annual cycling tour organized by Bike Virginia of Williamsburg, the list of injuries included one broken collarbone, a broken vertebra and a lot of road rash, but nothing that couldn't be walked away from.
Some even exalted in the ceaseless uphill challenges that greeted them each morning. Others - many others - rode shamelessly in the "sag wagons" that swept the trails, collecting the weary, the injured and the overheated.
But even those who routinely turned down their thumbs to flag a ride said it was worth it.
"This is the kind of thing that will get me motivated for the rest of the summer," said Brenda Oldfield, a Peace Corps worker from Alexandria who sprawled onto the grassy shoulder of the Blue Ridge Parkway halfway through the last day.
Oldfield traded an extended visit to Central Asia to join the tour. She suffered almost immediately from heat exhaustion and had to sit out a full day's ride. Yet she harbored no regrets.
"I've never seen Virginia like I've seen it after I started biking," she said.
And Southwest Virginia had never seen anything like Bike Virginia.
Well before the June 19 mass start launched a colorful two-wheeled Spandex parade through Bristol, the townsfolk crept out to see what had descended upon them.
Bristol bears the unusual distinction of straddling two states - Virginia and Tennessee. Yet here, where the yellow line down the middle of State Street creates a jurisdictional nightmare for local police, halting them halfway across the crosswalk in hot pursuit, the onslaught of cyclists tweaked curiosity.
When both states agreed to stop traffic for a welcoming block party Friday night, Helen Fields and Jane Campbell reached for their lawn chairs and headed downtown.
Campbell, a retired nursing home worker, hugged some of the cyclists in front of a mural commemorating one of Bristol's highly celebrated events - the first country music recording.
"Well, we're real glad to have you all come down here," she said through a toothless grin.
Over at the Sapling Grove Cafe, owner Ruthie Blair shifted from pleasure to frustration over the sudden rush in business.
She expected about 250 cyclists for dinner that evening. Five hundred showed up.
They ate 100 pounds of pasta, 20 pounds of couscous, 15 cantaloupes, two watermelons and several cases of bread. She was carefully doling out the last scoops of ice cream at 9:30 p.m. and wondering whether she'd have enough food for a bridal shower the next day.
"I will be here early in the morning counting mushrooms," she said.
By then, the cyclists would be well on their way to Abingdon - and their first glimpse of what lay ahead.
It came 35 miles into the trip - just after they rolled over the Holsten River and saw the two-mile marker signs to lunch. With 85 humid degrees pressing down on them, the cyclists realized that both those miles would be tough ones - straight uphill.
Many abandoned the struggle halfway up for a dip in the river and a view of the waterfalls. But those who pushed on met unwelcome news.
As they crept to a halt in front of White's Mill, one of the few remaining water-powered flour mills in the state and their host for the midday meal, a local woman stepped outside the 18th-century building with a dire announcement.
"This is the lowest point in the county," she said.
Indeed, the ride after lunch promised another 4.5-mile climb to Abingdon High School, where the bikers would pitch their tents for the evening or catch shuttles to motels.
A hilly prediction was not something Samuel White, of Fort Washington, Md., wanted to hear.
"The best way to describe it is, we're hurting but we're not dying," he said as he and cycling companion Lenora Inabinett wiped the sweat from their brows.
Several miles later, Tom Tragle, a Yorktown planning commissioner, felt worse. After turning a corner and facing yet another uphill stretch, he and his friends let out a few expletives and dropped onto somebody's back lawn.
"Worse thing you could do is shoot me," he said, "and how bad is that?"
And so it went.
Day after day, mile after mile, hill after hill they climbed, pumped, pedaled, coasted and pushed their bikes through Virginia's breathtaking - and breath-sapping - countryside. At night, they pitched their tents like a field of colorful gumdrops outside the local high schools, where boy scouts and high school football players toted their luggage in exchange for tips.
Nearly everywhere they went, the townsfolk turned out to greet them.
At a rest stop at Rivermont Farms, owners Jack and Cynthia Barker trotted out their award-winning Arabian horses to entertain cyclists as they refilled water bottles, loaded up on bananas and paused for Porta Potti pit stops.
In Saltville, the salt capital of the Confederacy, a train ride through town accompanied by cowboys on horseback offered a journey back in time.
At the Rural Retreat Drug Store, where they say Dr Pepper was invented, cyclists stopped briefly to swallow free samples.
They lingered longer, however, in Crockett - population 300 - where the Classic Klickers clogged their hearts out all morning in the post office parking lot.
"Crockett hasn't had this much commotion in a long time. Or ever, probably," said Betty Sult, who sold biscuits for the Crockett Extension Homemakers.
Further down the road, at the base of Stroupe Mountain, Ethel Harrah and 10 of the neighborhood children sat on her lawn with a tray full of fruit-flavored dinosaurs and Ritz crackers. Harrah probably handed out more advice than she did snacks, as weary cyclists queried her on the route ahead.
"When you get to Cripple Creek, God help you," she told them, sounding what had become an all-too familiar refrain.
Others simply rocked in the shade, pausing on occasion to wave or slowly nod at the stream of rolling tourists.
" 'Bout all I got to do is sit out on the porch," said Marshall Coe, whose view of the North Fork of the Holsten River was punctuated by bikers Sunday. "I got to watch 'em whether I want to or not."
The porch gazers may have been surprised by some of what rolled past.
Like 6-month-old Molly Dedmond of Southern Pines, N.C., strapped into a trailer that bounced along behind her father's bicycle. The youngest cyclist on the tour, she required more frequent stops than most - for diaper changes, constant sunscreen applications and breast-feeding.
Or 75-year-old Bill Davis, a retired North Carolina psychiatrist. Davis pedaled from a more comfortable position than most as he reclined on his recumbent bicycle, a concession to the arthritis in his neck and shoulders.
The recumbent offers a sling instead of a saddle, pedals that extend horizontally from the hips and handle bars that rest conveniently below the legs, allowing riders to sit back.
It rolls just as quickly as most bikes, except for the uphill work, Davis said.
"I have to kind of just lay back, as they say, and kind of twiddle up the hill," he said. "Sometimes I get out and walk."
He wasn't the only one. Before the end of the trip, many were calling it the "hiker/biker" tour of Virginia. Particularly when it came to the three miles of switchbacks creeping up Walker Mountain, an option many declined in favor of a $2 lift in the back of a pickup truck.
But not cycling enthusiast Richard Kelley, executive for business affairs for the Roanoke school system.
Kelley designed an elaborate course of his own that involved driving his car each morning to the day's final destination, then doubling back on his bike. The extra mileage never bothered him, he said.
Neither did Walker Mountain.
He rode it twice.
Bike Virginia, run by Allen Turnbull out of Williamsburg, covers a different part of the state for five days each June. This year's course began in Bristol on June 19 and ended in Floyd on June 23. Registration was $125 per person, with proceeds going to the Special Olympics.
Next year's tour has been tentatively scheduled to begin June 24 in Bedford, climb to Lexington and Charlottesville and finish in Richmond on June 29. A fall ride in the Shenandoah Valley has also been scheduled for Ocdt. 15-17. For more information call (804) 229-0507.
by CNB