The Mo Mo Tour: Day 16 – Breaks Interstate Park, Virginia to Hindman, Kentucky

This was a day that had it all. Which is not necessarily a good thing.

I slept poorly despite the lovely accommodations. I was groggy for the first ten miles. This is not a good thing because the road conditions here are bad. The shoulder of backroads often is a drainage ditch. Also, there were countless places where flooding broken off the edge of the road.

The day began with salad for breakfast because the park restaurant was closed. And because the salad would not have lasted much longer in my front left pannier.

I rolled out at 8 headed for Hindman, over 70 miles away because the small towns that used to offer shelter to bike tourists stopped doing so. No idea why.

I descended into the town of Breaks where I met a big floof of a dog at the side of the road. He seemed harmless and let out a WOOF then I started past him then he started growling. He began to chase me. In no time at all he had sunk a tooth into my right rear pannier. I was pissed! I stopped and, with the bike between us, confronted the dog. His face said,”Uh, oh.”

Then I began stalking him in a short green space along the road. He was totally freaked out. Where do I go? What do I do?

My actions caused him to completely disengage. Lesson learned.

I descended into Kentucky and came to the town of Elkhorn City.

I had decided to put my dog whistle in my mouth. A dog started trotted down a side road from a county building. I blew hard on the whistle and the dog seemed to say “fuck it“ and went back to the building. The problem with the dog whistle is that it is metal and rough on the teeth when bouncing along bumpy roads.

The country roads for most of my route passed homes, about half of which had a dog. Every so often I’d see a loose dog running toward the road. I tried my horn but discovered that it doesn’t work well when it’s not held vertically with the horn on the top of the gas cylinder. It did deter one dog, however.

Later two dogs started to give chase. The horn was peeking out and of my handlebar bag attached using Velcro. I hit the horn button three times and the dogs disengaged. Not bad.

Still the idea of waiting for a dog to be in full flight seemed like a bad strategy. So every time I saw a dog or dogs running toward the road, I stopped. This did away with panic pedaling with a dog snarling along side me. Instead the dogs chase instinct was short circuited. I still had to get past the dog but at least I now had some control over the situation. (When I watched a YouTube video describing this technique I thought the guy was insane. He has it right.) Of course, doing this slows my progress but after the dog disengages I’m much less stressed out.

One time a dog came off his porch and ran straight at me on a walkway perpendicular to the street. I stopped at the end of the walkway and told him to “Get in the porch” and he did.

Later I was chased by three small dogs. One of them was an old dachshund bitch that just wouldn’t disengage. I pulled out my mace and gave it a shot but she had pivoted in response to her owner and I only sprayed her butt.

The last dog was a somewhat muscular looking mutt. I stopped and yelled. There were kids and parents hanging out on a lawn about 50 yards from the road. They clearly didn’t give a shit about my predicament. After five minutes of my pleading with them to get their dog, they sent a ten-year-old girl to get it. The dog eluded her and kept harassing me. I appealed to the adults on the lawn but they didn’t budge. “He won’t bite you.” It took a good ten more minutes to gradually escape the situation with the help of pickups coming in both directions.

Dogs around here don’t chase motor vehicles. It’s something about the sound of a bike that sets them off.

There were five steep climbs on the route. I walked part of four of them, probably for a total of five miles. It sucked.

Backroads were pretty but the dog attacks ruined any ability to enjoy the scenery. Whenever I passed a building within sight of the road I went into scan mode.

The route did feature some fun downhills. One dog tried to give chase when I was hauling ass down one of these and the dog seemed to realize that he couldn’t catch me and stopped running.

I was on highways a couple of times. They were flat and had decent shoulders (marred, however, by rumble strips). It’s fun to cruise along at 15 to 18 mph and not have to worry about dogs.

I’m staying at another church hostel. These are big community rooms that have limited amenities. This one has a shower and a washer and dryer. There’s a take away pizza place across the street. I ate a medium all by myself. It was mediocre, a step above the Hunt Brothers variety on sale in every GSCS.

Mikes today: 71.5

Tour Miles: 818

Tomorrow I have the choice of a 60+ mile ride to a camping hostel at a church in Booneville or a semi-rest day of 20 miles to a hotel in Combs. I’ll decide when I wake up. Right now my back hurts and my hamstrings are so tight that I fall backward when I stand.