The Mo Mo Tour: Day 18 continued – That’s a Wrap

I went to the rental car place as soon as it opened. They did not have the SUV I reserved. Instead I settled for a white Dodge Charger. I was prepared to drive to WalMart up the hill to buy a bike rack if necessary but the Charger’s back seats folded down giving me room for The Mule and all my stuff. Impressive. (Note: I did have to take off the front wheel and lower my seat.)

The drive to Berea went on a parkway west to London and north to Berea on an interstate. It took about two hours because, despite my sporty car, my brain had been dealing with 3 to 35 miles per hour for over two weeks. Big trucks were zooming past me as I puttered along.

The terrain was very mountainous until I arrived at Berea (the second “e” is long). It was like someone threw a big geological switch; the town was basically flat.

The drive gave me time to think. The original point of this tour was for me to complete the eastern third of the TransAm. I had already bypassed 20 miles of it from Hindman to Hazard. Now I had blown off roughly 110 more in the car.

Most journals I read were all dated five or more years ago They made it sound like the dog problem was no big deal but the eastbound rider I met at the Cookie Lady’s house was still stressed out about his dog experiences in Kentucky over a week later. The hostel contact in Booneville sounded downright scary. The rental agency person in Hazard had all kinds of tales about indifferent dog (and pony!) owners. Owners who don’t neuter their animals so when the puppies get big enough they turn them loose in the woods. A person in Berea told me that Booneville is near an old coal mining area. Since strip mines have taken over, these old coal mining families are screwed and bitter.

(Another thought about doing chemical warfare with loose dogs: I have ridden past a half dozen gun shops, most of which displayed signs advertising AR-15 style semi automatic weapons. Gulp. My wife’s uncle Terry lives in southern West Virginia. When you drive onto his property there is a sign that say’s “You are in range.” Terry’s a pretty funny guy but I’m not entire sure he’s joking. And he isn’t economically distressed like these Kentucky folks. (I’m pretty sure Terry doesn’t have an AR-15 but

So I get to Berea and I have a choice. Do I continue on by bike in a totally stressed out mental state? I took two Advil PMs last night and still didn’t sleep a wink. I am physically and mentally exhausted. The dog problem is supposedly no big deal west of Berea but I really, really, really do not want to deal with them anymore. It was time to call it a tour and head home.

So I investigated my options. I can fly for free on Southwest with credit card points so I checked to see where the nearest airport was on Southwest’s route system. It was Louisville, about 160 miles by bike. Not gonna happen. I called U-Haul in Berea. They only had a 15-foot truck which would have cost over $500. Nope. However, the U-Haul guy said to talk to the car rental agency in Berea. Maybe there was something we could work out.

So I went to the car rental agency and talked with Chelsea, a very intelligent and personable person. She said it was indeed possible to do a one-way rental. All she had to do was talk to someone up the corporate food chain. That person freed up her software to allow her access to interstate one-way rentals. So we closed out my rental agreement from Hazard and opened a new one. Recognizing that I had been needlessly charged for the Hazard to Berea rental, she marked down the price of my trip from Berea to home. Chelsea is the best,

So for the cost of having someone pack and ship my bike, I hit the road in a sports car, driving over 500 miles from Kentucky to home. Google Maps has a sense of humor. It routed me through central West Virginia on two-lane mountain roads for about an hour.

Now that I’ve had a day to mull it over, I can’t exactly call this a failure. After all, I did end up riding 840 miles which is more miles than my 2000, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2015, and 2016 tours.

That said, I have to admit that my last two tours have been a mental challenge for me. I love the riding parts of the tours. I won’t soon forget the fantastic ride to Damascus on this tour, for example. But I can really live without church hostels, campgrounds, Warmshowers homes, hotels, lousy GSCS food, etc. As my toddler son used to say over 25 years ago, “I want to go home. I want to sleep in my own bed.”

My advice to anyone who is planning to do the TransAm is: don’t. It’s glory days are long gone. The dog situation in Kentucky is just one example. Many of the towns in Kansas on the route are virtual ghost towns. The traffic in eastern Oregon is godawful. The legendary bike accommodations in Guffey CO are dreadful.

When the TransAm was designed in the mid-1970s, touring bikes were heavy and had ten-speeds and only rear racks. I can’t imagine how the first riders did the whole 4,000+ miles. (A friend who participated in Bikecentennial, the 1976 event for which the TransAm was established said that she was doing fine until Kentucky. Her knees were trashed when she finally left the Appalachians.

There is a new alternative to the eastern half of the TransAm. The Eastern Express goes from DC to Colorado in a more or less straight line. It was designed specifically to avoid the dogs and hills of Appalachia and the Ozarks. Or design your own route as I did in 2018.

And for a two-week tour, Yorktown to Damascus isn’t bad idea.