Day 47- Lexington to Charlottesville

The first 20 miles to a little place called Vesuvius already had a
fair amount of steady climbing in it... That was just the warmup
though! The climb from Vesuvius to the top of the Blue Ridge (one of
the two parts of the Appalachian mountains, either the young or old)
was only 3 miles long but very steep. My legs were burning so much,
and I reached a new low speed record- I usually climb at 5-6 mph
(heavy gearing! most touring bikes allow you to climb at down to
2.5mph) but I got down to 3.8mph today. So to go that slow with my
gearing means I was essentially doing very heavy single leg presses,
ouch! Once I got to the top, I rode 25miles along the Blue Ridge
Parkway, a beautiful quiet road with some stunning views of the
mountains and the valley below. I passed two cyclists who I met again
later at the motel- they recognised me after reading Luke's blog, and
told me they were afraid that Luke would catch them up again because
of me! After coming down from the ridge, I ran into another cyclist
and we rode to Charlottesville together. Charlottesville is a really
pretty university town- it actually reminds me of the Harvard area!
Now I've got about 190miles to go to Yorktown, luckily with minimal
amounts of climbing... Oh nearly forgot something again- I'm pretty
certain I finally saw a black bear today! It was walking across the
road about 70m ahead of me, it looked like a cub so I stayed back
because its mum was probably nearby, and you don't want to get in the
way of mummy bear!