Mood:  energetic

The final three days to Raleigh begin this morning.  I've had over 5 full days of rest in Wilkesboro, and it is time to finish what I started on May 26th.

Originally, I was going to meet my childhood friend, Ted Pfeifer, at his sister and brother-in-law's home in Salisbury, N.C.  We planned to spend a day together before I moved on.  He, however, was not able to make the trip from his home in Pennsylvania.  Yet in talking to Ted's brother-in-law, Neil Pierce, I could still stay overnight with he and his wife, Sue.  That seemed like an excellent idea.

I needed to figure the route from Wilkesboro to the Pierce house near Salisbury, a distance of around 70 miles.  In talking to several locals, I decided on Highway 115 south to Statesville, then east on Highway 70 to Salisbury.  Highway 70 was a newly paved four lane highway.

North Carolina, someone told me, consists of three areas:  the Mountains, the Coast, and the Piedmont.  The Piedmont, apparently being a rolling, more level portion of the state.  There is actually a fourth, sub-catagory, called the Foothills, and that is where Wilkesboro is located.  Hillier that the Piedmont, but less hilly than the Mountains. 

Finding Highway 115 was easy--it started about a mile from the home of my brother Tom.  At 7:50 AM, I had left the house and soon was on 115.  It is a typical state highway:  narrow with no shoulder, and several times on hills, I pulled off the road to let traffic pass.  But once out of Wilkesboro, the traffic lessened.

It would be interesting to see how five days of rest was going to affect me.  I had eaten a relatively light breakfast, just a couple of bowls of cereal, so after 1 1/2 hours of riding, I stopped for a breather, and ate some Trail Mix.  Not much later, though, I came across a convenience store with a grill, so I stopped and had breakfast #2.   It seemed that since I was heading south on 115, I was bisecting the Foothills, and there were more hills than I had expected, though none of them difficult.  They just slowed me down.

Statesville, 37 miles down the road, was a neat town that looked like it was doing well.  Downtown I found a restaurant that looked like it had potential.  When I entered and saw the tablecloths, I almost turned around, but the prices were fair, and the servor insisted I was dressed fine.  As the day was starting to heat up, I drank a seemingly infinite amount of iced tea along with lunch.  Leaving Statesville, I found the newly paved Highway 70.

Unfortunately, newly paved does not mean that all four lanes are open.  Only two lanes were open and with the shoulder not marked by a white line, the cars tended to give themselves more room to the right.  The highway became divided but still only one lane of use each way.  I finally moved over to the other side of the paving barriers, and rode there, thus freeing up the cars and trucks from having to deal with me.  On occasion, usually when workers were in the lane I was in, I would move back over to the far right.  It seemed to be a good solution, moving back and forth, but mostly secure on the left side of those large traffic cones.

In Salisbury, I knew that I took a wrong turn somewhere, but the need of a Gatorade drank overruled any other concern.  It was starting to warm up but never got into the 90's.  While guzzling a 32 ounce bottle of Gatorade, I chatted with a young man who had ridden his motorcycle up from Charlotte to pick up his girlfriend as she got off work.  When a local stopped to look at the bike, I asked him for directions and he re-directed me. While doing so, the young motorcyclist, who was listening in, would interject his comments.  His girlfriend apparently lived over that way, so he was familiar with the area.  I bought another Gatorade that would fit in my water bottle holder, and then took of for the Pierce house. 

Salisbury and the adjoining town, Spencer, were nice towns to ride through.  Spencer was a town formed around the railroad, and now featured a Railroad Museum along with numerous rail cars.  I found the turn off the main road and knew I was 5-7 miles from the Pierces.  A motorcyclist honked at it passed me.  It was the young man from the convenience store. He had picked up his girlfriend, who was on the back.  Up ahead, some work was being done next to a church.  As I was passing, a lady across the road, who was harvesting apples, held one out for me.  That is all I needed to pull in and chat while munching on a fresh apple.

A bit after 4 PM, I found the Pierce home.  It is situated very nicely on a lake which is one of a chain of lakes.  How nice to sit out in there enclosed porch overlooking the lake, drinking large glasses of iced tea.

After dinner, we had a discussion as to how to get up to Highway 64.  It led almost all the way into Raleigh, was a major highway, and probably had a very nice shoulder.  Unfortunately, the only way over the Yadkin River included a brief stint on the Interstate, which is illegal here for bicycles.  So we piled into their car and drove over to see if there were any alternatives.  Apparently, there had been an accident on the northbound section of the Interstate because traffic was backed up for miles.  We noticed some traffic going to a little side road and we wondered if that road led around the Interstate to a spot where I wanted to be.  It did!  Now I had a route that I could take in the morning without needing to be carried on a trailer over the Interstate Highway.

Sue and Neil were terrific hosts but it was getting near my bedtime.  I had clocked in 75 miles today, and had a plan for tomorrow.  Only two days from the terminus of the trip.  Tropical Storm Faye was heading our way and it would be nice to be in Raleigh before it hit town.  We'll see how my luck holds out.

Will McMahan