It is a rare thing when one of your very best days on a bike comes a day after one of your worst but that’s what happened to me this month. The ride from Draper to Whytheville was a gawdawful slog. The ride from Whytheville to Damascus was joyful. Go figure.
Multiple dog attacks over the course of two days completely ruined my interest in continuing my tour this year. When people who know the scene tell you to carry bear spray, it’s time to stop which is what I did. Since then I’ve been looking through journals on Cycleblaze.com and Crazyguyonabike.com to see if I had overreacted. Nope.
Only a couple of bike tourists made it through “dog alley” between the Kentucky border and Berea, Kentucky unscathed. Two were bitten. Two were knocked off their bikes.
I filled out a survey about the US Bicycle Route System a couple of days ago. I commented repeatedly that my route US Bike Route 76, in Kentucky is downright dangerous because of the dog situation. It’s a shame because, despite the brutal climbs from Charlottesville to Berea, the USBR 76 is worthwhile.
I finished the tour with something like 835 miles under my pedals. After taking a day off, I rode 17 days in a row around home. During these period I tweaked my saddle and handlebar height to good effect on both The Mule and The Tank. Yesterday in high heat and humidity I rode up one of the steepest, nastiest hills in the area and didn’t die. (The last 100 yards were most unpleasant but I made it without stopping.)
With a nearly rain-free month, I cracked the 1,000-mile threshold at the end of the month, reaching 1,089 miles. For the year I’ve reached 4,991 miles, on pace for a shade over 10,000 miles, despite taking two weeks off. I have no designs on another bike tour this year (although the Natchez Trace is tempting.)
Maybe the best thing that’s happened this month is the big reduction in neck and back pain I have experienced. I was pretty miserable all fall and winter, but a visit to a massage therapist in May and a series of daily PT exercises have paid huge dividends. I am standing up straighter. I have most of the range of motion in my neck back (although the saddle tweaks aren’t helping in this regard.) And I can walk about 50 percent farther without experiencing pain in my lower back.
I neglected to mention an interaction with three old guys at a filling station. I stopped to buy a cold drink but this was an old fashioned filling station. Just car repairs and gas. The old men spoke mountain English. Fortunately I could understand most of what they said. “There’s a Faniky Dollar just up the road.”!one of them got up and fetched a cold bottle of water from his pickup and poured it into my empty bike bottle. Nice guy.
I should also mention the ten-year-old boy who helped me take my things up the stairs to the hostel.
I hung out in the hostel playing word games on my phone and trying not to think of steep hills and aggressive dogs. I skipped breakfast because mass quantities of pizza were still working their way through my tummy.
The hostel room is up some stairs from the street so it took some time to get started. I hit the road around 9:30. Two miles later I came upon this.
No bueno
A bridge was being replaced. This area of Kentucky was devastated by severe flooding in 2022. This bridge was one of the victims.
There was a steep, narrow dirt path on the other side of the equipment. At best I could get through in 15 minutes; at worst I could tumble over the side and die a quick death in the river. Now that I think about it, maybe I have that backwards.
I looked at Google maps and decided to improvise a detour. I backtracked to Hindman (just a couple of bored old dogs along the way). I headed over to Kentucky state highway 80, a four-lane road with very wide shoulders and rumble strips.
One kind of rumble strip was narrow and deep. If you hit them at speed you have to stop and pick up your filings. In Kentucky these strips are continuous, only broken when a side road intersects with the highway. That means you can’t cheat by using the travel lane then cutting through a gap in the rumble strip to safety.
The other kind of strip was quite shallow and spanned the entire paved shoulder (which was often 20-feet or more wide). I preferred the latter. It was no bumpier than the backroads.
After a long climb I came upon a detour sign that indicated I could return to my planned TransAm route. Nope. I like this four lane just fine. The only dogs I heard were caged at an animal shelter I passed.
Highway 80 – like riding out west. Note the deep rumble strip on the left.Looks nasty but it wasn’t bad
The highway cut through the tops of mountains that came about one mile apart. The climbs were significant but not very steep. No walking today.
It’s a good thing today is another cool day because there was absolutely no shade on the highway.
After about a dozen of these hills I saw a sign for WalMart. I knew there was one across from my hotel but I wasn’t expecting it yet. Sure enough my hotel was only a quarter mile farther.
The Walmart was part of a shopping district on the top of one of the mountains. I’ve seen this in West Virginia.
There are several eateries in this flattop complex. I chose Wendy’s for lunch. A chicken wrap really hit the spot. I lingered to kill time until check in.
There’s a rental car agency next to the hotel. It has dozens of shiny cars. So tempting until I googled a return route to home. THERE’S NO WAY OUT OF HERE!!!
Tomorrow is a long, hilly one with more dogs and a possible flood-related detour.
Miles today: 22
Tour miles: 840
Final note: Today is my 36th wedding anniversary. Wife and me: 36. Trump felony conviction: 34.
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.
A small hole from a big canine
I descended into Kentucky and came to the town of Elkhorn City.
There was a proper sign a mile with the Governor’s name on it later but this one sufficed.
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.
See. It’s pretty. Note the absence of dogs or an old man pushing a bike up a steep hill.
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.
A Few Spokes Shy of a Wheel 