Part 1: Day 1, 26 May 2018 – Yorktown VA to Glendale VA, 62 mi, 1523 ft ascent, 6.5% max grade, 13.0 mph avg.




My TransAm adventure started on 26 May when I met my cycling companions, Rob H (RustyCrank) and Steve H, for the first time at the Victory Monument in Yortktown, VA.  We met through the Companions Wanted forum on the Adventure Cycling website.  All we knew about each other was that we wanted to start our adventure on the same weekend in May, and that we had similar plans for the journey.  After introducing ourselves and checking in at the visitor center we got a photo dipping our back wheels in the James river and then we headed off on our journey.  The start of my adventure was full of excitement.  My body was rested, I was well fed and clean, all my gear was clean and in good order, my bike was tuned, and the excitement of conquering the unknown lay ahead.  We were riding in the tidewater region so the terrain was quite flat and a mixture of roads and bike trail.  We discovered that Steve H, Rob H and I had a lot more in common than we realized; we are all educators.  Steve H. is a provost at a small university in KY, and Rob is a teacher at an art college in New York City.  I guess that is not so surprising because who else has summers off but teachers.  We rode on the Capital Trail from Williamsburg almost all the way to Glendale.  We didn’t see any real hills until we left the trail.  We rode up one 6.5% grade that we thought at the time was pretty steep….little did we know what was to come.  The first time you ride a loaded touring bike up a steep grade is a bit of a shock.  My bike weighed about 80 lbs without water or food, which is about 55 lb more than my road bike.  You can’t be in a hurry; just downshift and spin.  We stopped for the night at the Willis United Methodist Church.  There was no one from the church there when we arrived, but there was one other touring cyclist who showed us around.  We never did see anyone from the church.  We stayed in the rectory and laid our sleeping bags out on the floor.  There was a kitchen and showers, so we had everything we needed.  We rode a mile or so to a local convenience store to get groceries for dinner, which forme was beef stew and a beer.
The ceremonial wheel-dipping


The TransAm is designated Bicycle Route 76


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