My wonderful daughter walked across the stage at Mary Baldwin University yesterday, and it was a fantastic celebration of her undergraduate education here in Staunton, Virginia. I joined the family via an adventure on a train, ferries, and of course, the bicycle.
Summary TLDR
I took the overnight train from Birmingham, Alabama to Greensboro, North Carolina. After getting handed my bike from the baggage car in the rear, I rode 235 miles to Williamsburg, Virginia taking the Jamestown Ferry across the James River. It rained unexpectedly off and on all day keeping the temperature quite mild. I had a nice, but quick, stay at an AirBnB arriving around 10pm and out the door by 4am.
It rained most of the morning as I made my way from Williamsburg across the York River and the Rappahannock River with periods of heavier downpours intermixed with breaks in the rain. It had stopped raining by the time I made it to the Sunnybank Ferry across the Little Wicomico River where Captain Will took just me and my bike across on his cable guided small ferry, which was a highlight of the 235 mile ride from the Chesepeake Bay all the way into the foothills ending in a cabin at Harland College outside of Orange, Virginia.
After another quick stay (arrived at about 9:30pm and left by 4:30am), I made my way north towards the DC area turning west after riding in the city of Manassas. I slowly made my way up to Winchester, where my friend Brian Barnett met me at a gas station to hang out and catch up. After a much needed rest in the shade, I headed southwest towards Staunton into a brisk head/crosswind. This was the longest and hilliest day at 248.7 miles of riding with 16,726 feet of climbing. I rolled into Staunton well after midnight, but added on a couple miles anyway riding through town to bring my distance for the day up to 400km.
Almost Finishing Virginia?
One of my life cycling goals is to ride in all the counties in the country. With this trip, I finished riding in all the counties in Virginia. But Virginia is different than most states in that its large cities are not part of the surrounding county. This is an important distinction in Virginia, as somebody who is not from a city will sometimes tell you which county they are from rather than the nearest town. Because of the train delay, I had to cut out three of the cities in coastal Virginia. But as it turns out, I was still missing two other cities. So while I have ridden in all the counties in Virginia, I’m still missing five cities: Hampton, Poquoson, Norfolk, Radford, and Galax. The last two will be easy to route myself through on a future trip to or from seeing my daughter, but the first three are in a very busy and difficult to reach part of Virginia and separated by several rivers where bikes are not allowed to cross, and there are no ferries b/c there are several interstate bridges/tunnels instead.
The details
I had to shorten my trip, because Amtrak had oversold the number of bike slots available on the train. They upgraded me to a sleeper roomette and rescheduled me for the same train the next day. But it meant I had to cut out about 115 miles of my original route and ride straight to Williamsburg, Virginia as you can see on the map below.
Day 1 – Birmingham, alabama to birmingham, alabama
No, that’s not a typo. On the first day, about an hour before I leaving to bike to the train station, I got a call from Amtrak saying they are refunding my $20 bike ticket because there wasn’t room in the baggage car for it. They just assumed I would complete my trip without the bike, that it wasn’t really necessary for the trip. That is a glimpse of how a large part of our society views bikes – unnecessary toys.
When I finally got in touch with Amtrak (on hold for at least 20 minutes), they said I could box the bike and check it as a bag instead, so I set out immediately to get to the train station as fast as possible. Josiah was going to drive over with a bike box and my pedal wrench so that I could take the pedals off and not have to carry a heavy pedal wrench with me for 800+ miles. But when I was halfway to the train station before my son had even left the house, I got a call back from Amtrak telling me they did have room for the bike after all. So I called Josiah and told him that he didn’t need to come to the train station.
I made it to the station by 4:30 with the train arriving about 5pm and leaving at 5:24pm. The ticket counter agent was confused why I was showing up with the bike, but I told him that Amtrak had called me back and told me there was room after all. They called and verified this, gave me a baggage claim ticket to put around my bike marked GRO (Greensboro), and instructed me to take the bike to the back of the train and hand it to the baggage conductor.
There was another passenger with a bike that I chatted with, and he told me that they had also called and told him there wasn’t room for the bike but then called back to say there was room. So we were chatting and then the train pulled up and we went to the back to hand the bikes up to the baggage conductor. The other cyclist gave his bike to them, and then when I went to hand him my bike he said “that’s it, there’s no more room”. I begged, but he said there was nothing he could do and told me to leave.
I went back down to the ticket desk with about 15 minutes before the train was going to be pulling out. The ticket agent called back to the conductor, but apparently he was refusing to take the bike no matter what they said. So they called back up to headquarters and eventually offered me an upgraded ticket to a roomette (but only to Charlotte) with a coach ticket from there to Greensboro for the exact same train the next day.
I was out of options, brainstorming all the possible ways I could somehow make it to Greensboro or somewhere close enough that I could make it to Warrenton, NC where I already had an AirBnB booked. But the only option I could think of that made sense was to take the upgraded ticket and skip that first AirBnB and go straight to the second one which I had already booked, too. The advantage of that would be that I would be back on schedule. The problem would be having to ride a long distance combining two days into one after spending the night on the train. I would need to shorten that combined route taking a more direct approach missing out on my wandering around Norfolk and Hampton entirely. And even with that shortened route, I would be arriving late and needing to leave early making for two nights in a row of very little sleep. But I was out of options, so I biked back home and planned out the abbreviated route.
Day 2 – Birmingham, alabama to Greensboro, North Carolina
Since the train doesn’t leave until 5pm, I had pretty much a full day at the house, and I was able to put together “Privacy Zones” for mybiketraffic.com, which has been a long requested feature. After quick stop by a company cookout, I biked to the train station. And this time everything went smoothly.
The train route follows US Highway 78 from Birmingham to Atlanta. I have biked many tens of thousands of miles along this route. Looking out the train window was awesome remembering all the adventures crossing the tracks.
By the time we made it to Atlanta, it was quite dark and I needed to sleep since I wasn’t going to get much sleep the next night. Sleeping on a train, even in a roomette, isn’t great, but I did fall asleep. Amtrak was only able to book the roomette to Charlotte since all the roomettes were booked from Charlotte to New York City. So I had to set my alarm for 4:30am, get all my stuff back together, and move up to coach, which was jam packed. It took a while to wake people up to get them to sit back up and get back to their original seat since a lot of people were boarding the train at Charlotte. Even though they gave me a window seat, the guy who had the aisle was sound asleep up against the window. I wasn’t going to wake him up. And with only two hours from Charlotte to Greensboro, I probably wasn’t going to get much sleep anyway.
Day 3 – Greensboro, NC to Williamsburg, VA
We made it into Greensboro about 10 minutes early, and I could see the baggage conductor peeking his head out the window to see if I was coming back to retrieve the bike (which I was) so I started jogging to make it to the back before the train pulled out again. He handed the bike down to me, and I started putting all my equipment back on the bike since I was carrying some of it by hand since my backpack didn’t have enough room.
After partial reassembly, I walked/carried the bike down the stairs into the train station, where a kind worker helped hold my bike while I found the bike ticket to give him. I asked him about a bathroom, and he told me where it was and the code to get into it. I mention this specifically because bathrooms can be hard to find when riding through really rural areas where I would be heading out into soon. This bathroom was quite old and in great condition. It was cool to see the old tile and design/layout that looked straight out of the 1950’s still in use. So much of cycling to me is a time machine where I travel back in time to an increasingly forgotten mode of transportation in increasingly forgotten parts of the country.
I pulled out of the train station on my bike at 7:30am in the morning into a fairly light rush hour traffic. Within a mile I came to a road closed for construction. I was able to get around on the sidewalk, which was still open. A few miles later, I saw signs about a “bridge out”. I looked at the detour possibilities and there was one fairly close to the creek where the bridge was likely “out”. But sometimes even when a bridge is closed, you can still get across on the bike. This time, however, the bridge was completely torn down and the new one wasn’t connected across yet. So I backtracked to where I could detour around in the general direction I was heading.
Tailwind, rain, more rain, tailwind
It didn’t take long to realize that I had a massive tailwind blowing me east/northeast as my average speed climbed up well into the 18mph range despite a fair amount of rolling terrain. I kept seeing storm clouds to my left and wondered if I could make it out north ahead of them by the time they made it far enough east. Unfortunately, I did not, and it started to rain kinda hard. This caught me by surprise as I was thinking it would just be some light rain. Still it didn’t last long and I opted not to put on any of my rain gear which led to everything getting soaked. Then after a series of start/stop rain showers where it always felt like it would only last a few minutes, I finally decided to take out my rain jacket and rain shoe covers. I’m glad I did because it did end up raining for the next hour or so. The rain also meant the end of the tailwind as the wind basically died down completely.
Ferry #1: Scotland to Jamestown
A few hours later, I was pretty sure the rain had stopped for good, and the wind had picked up again, this time as another strong tail/crosswind as I turned in a more northerly direction. My goal was to try to make it to the Jamestown ferry before dark, and as I got closer and looked up the ferry schedule, I realized that I could make the 9pm ferry if I really picked up the pace. Since the ferry only runs once every hour overnight, I would be losing an hour of sleep if I missed that ferry. So I rode pretty fast, and made it to the ferry dock with 10 minutes to spare.
The sun had already set around 8pm so it was pretty dark, but there was still a little day glow left in the western sky. After just a few minutes, the cars on the arriving ferry had disembarked. I was in the middle of the line of boarding cars, but the bridge/road was so narrow I couldn’t get around anyone to walk up to the ferry. I knew that they generally like bicycles/pedestrians to board the ferry last, but I was in a line of traffic and there wasn’t a reasonable place to pull over until you were practically on the ramp. So I just rode right on. When the worker on the ferry directing cars onto which side of the ferry (to evenly balance the load) saw me, he flagged me down to move over to the side out of the way of the vehicles boarding behind me. I dutifully pulled over to the back left of the ship and then once everyone else was on board, walked up to the front so I could see better. Immediately hit by a gust of wind, I walked back to be sheltered by the main part of the ferry from the cold wind blowing across the James River.
The crossing took about 20 minutes. By the time I made it off the ferry and onto the main road through Jamestown, it was 9:30pm. Thankful to be relatively traffic free with no cars coming from behind because the ferry wouldn’t be returning with more cars for another hour, I headed into downtown Williamsburg where the traffic did pick up a bit. After a quick gas station stop to get food for the night and morning, I made it to the airbnb where another pair of guests was staying in one of the other rooms. They had a cute dog they were training who was still a bit too scared to come up to dirty/smelly me with all my bike gear on and everything. But it was nice to chat with them for a few minutes as I got stuff plugged in to charge for the few hours that I would be there.
Day 4 – Williamsburg, VA to Orange, VA via the sunnybank ferry
Asleep by 11pm, I set my alarm for 3:15am. I woke up on my own at 2:30am and thought I should just go ahead and get up since I was decently awake, but I opted to go back to sleep until my alarm went off. Whew, that was a mistake. My alarm did indeed wake me up, but I was sound asleep when it went off and quite groggy trying to get up. It took me forever to get everything ready and I wasn’t even out the door until 4:15am. The roads were soaking wet with puddles everywhere, so it had rained quite hard overnight. I was thankful it wasn’t raining as I left town, but there was so much spray coming off my tires I was getting quite wet anyway.
With trains and two major highways near where I was staying, it was tricky to make my way over to Yorktown. By the time I made it there it had started to rain again. I was surprised by the size of the Yorktown naval station as it took a while to ride by and through a small section of it at the front (open to the public). Most of the traffic I saw was heading into the station.
Lots and lots of rain
When I made it to the bridge over the York River (US Hwy 17), in the main downtown historic part of Yorktown, it had started to rain pretty hard. It was almost 5am, and there was quite a bit of traffic coming the other way on the bridge from the north. Thankfully, my side was mostly empty. The crossing was fine except for the nasty slats in the bridge. They had a metal plate over top of them on the far right of the shoulder and I used that plate at each junction. The slats were plenty wide enough for a road bicycle wheel to fall straight through.
I stopped at a gas station on the far side only 25 miles into my ride because I had forgotten to fill up my water bottles before I left. Crossing back over the highway was tricky, and I had routed myself on some frontage roads and one cool road that went back towards the river and then through a quite hilly forest where I saw one of the coolest / scenic churches of the entire trip.
The Rappahannock River was my last main obstacle. VA-3 crosses this on a tall, high, and narrow bridge (one lane each way with no shoulder) with trucks and traffic. Shortly before I made it to the bridge, I was able to pull over and let a truck leading a long line of cars and other trucks pass me before the bridge. Afterwards, there was a big gap so I took off across the 1.5 mile long bridge. It climbed up gradually, but with a heavy cross-headwind, I was not moving very fast. A few cars passed me, but as I got to the top of the bridge a large truck caught up to me. There was no shoulder or place for me to pull off, and no way for him to pass me with fairly steady oncoming traffic. So he had to wait as I finished the climb and then accelerated across the top and down the other side.
I pulled off the bridge immediately after crossing so that the line of cars could pass. There was so many cars that had caught up behind the truck, I had to wait a few minutes for them all to pass. Then it was back onto the narrow, busy state highway (VA-3) until I made it the next set of backroads taking me over to the highlight of the day for me – the Sunny Bank ferry across the Little Wicomico River.
Ferry #2: cable guided ferry across the Little Wicomico River
I had re-planned this day of my route once I found out about this ferry, which is a cable routed ferry – meaning there is no way to steer the ferry boat. It simply goes straight across and straight back with a cable sliding through a pulley on either side of the boat. A similar ferry in Alabama crossed the Alabama River southwest of Montgomery. That one was tiny and could only take two cars across at a time. I thought this one would be similar, but it was bigger — able to take six cars across at one time. That’s quite small for a ferry, but it was still larger than I had anticipated.
When I made it to the landing, I saw that the ferry was on the other side of the river. I looked at all the signs to see if there was a phone number to call, but didn’t see anything. I also saw somebody moving around on the other side of the river so I went right up to the edge and waved my arm around trying to indicate that I needed a ride. Captain Will saw me and started the ferry up and came across the river. Given that it came perfectly straight across, I couldn’t tell if it was moving at all until after a minute or two I could hear the engine and see a few waves breaking in front of it.
He picked me up, and after checking to see if anybody was driving up (nobody was), we started back across the river. It was nice to chat with him for a minute, where he was surprised to find out I was heading that day to Orange, VA up in the foothills exactly where he had family! He said just hop back on the highway and you’re there. Well, yeah, but over 100 miles on that one highway to get there. I wasn’t heading straight to Orange, though, I was making my way south of Fredericksburg first into several counties in the area I had never ridden in.
Into the mountains taking towels to a cabin with no linens
I eventually made it to Orange a little after sunset. I had “GETFOOD” marked as a stop on my map because I still had nine miles to go to get to the cabin I had booked, and this was the last place to get food. I loaded up for dinner that night and breakfast in the morning. As I was leaving town, I remembered that this was the place where I needed to bring my own linens. My plan had been to buy a large bath towel to sleep on and a smaller bath towel to use to dry myself off after a shower. With all the food and all the stuff I had my backpack was overflowing and I did not have room for the towels. I ended up strapping the towels onto the back of the backpack and successfully made it the 9 miles on US Highway 15 north with these towels hanging off my backpack.
The cabin was only $52 / night and slept up to 8 people, a steal even for me as a solo traveler, but imagine if you have a big family and can all fit in the same room for $52. I did have to buy $16 worth of towels from Dollar General on my way out of town which I folded up neatly and left in the room for the next traveler, but it was still significantly cheaper than any of the hotels that I could find online. There was a really cool looking place called Round Hill Inn at the top of a tall hill in the middle of town that I saw when I was biking through still with miles to go and needing to buy the towels. At that moment, I regretted my choice of booking so far away, but it all worked out.
The cabins had been added onto the campus of a small Christian college called Hartland College. “No smoking, no drinking, no parties” – no problem, I was asleep quite quickly after eating and a quick shower, using the small hand towel I had bought as my main bath towel and then sleeping on the larger towel on top of the bare mattress. I used my backpack as a pillow. Temps were bottoming out in the low 40s that night, but thankfully there was a baseboard heater which warmed up the room quite nicely. As a bonus, I could dry out all my socks still wet from all the rain in the morning.
Day 5 – Orange, VA to Staunton, VA via the Dc area
The main goal for the first part of this ride was to head over to Manassas to ride through its city limits before heading west to make it up to Winchester riding through all the counties along the way. While it started out very cold with temps dipping down into the 30s as I left the cabin, it eventually got quite hot.
I also ended up on a lot of awesome gravel roads. One of the things I found out from my friend Brian Barnett who lives in the area is that a lot of the farms in the area are sold with deeds that require the stonework fences to remain and for the farming to continue on the land for many years. I was amazed at how many miles of stonework I rode by instead of white picket fences.
By the time I made it to Winchester to connect with Brian, I was struggling and getting slower and slower. So it was a much needed break to just rest in the shade on the concrete and get caught up with each other. Rejuvenated, I left and headed through easily the most beautiful stretch of the entire trip entering the Shenandoah Valley crossing the Shenandoah River first and making my way up the north fork valley for a bit before turning at Strasbourg and then climbing up through the middle of Massanutten Mountain through the town of Fort Valley. At the end I climbed up and over Massanutten at a pass before absolutely bombing down a steep fast descent maxing out at 48mph, but I think it was bad GPS speed as it felt significantly faster than that (and I’ve done my fair share of fast descents).
After dropping down from the Massanutten ridge, I was in the south fork valley and continued climbing up river pretty much all the way to Harrisonburg first and then finally Staunton. Hill after hill after hill, but I made it by about 12:30am and then added on a couple miles to take the distance up above 400km (248.5 miles), but there was no way I was going to add on another 8 miles to get up to my Eddington goal of 256 miles. Too cold and tired and too ready to be done! I found the AirBnB where the rest of the family was staying and snuck in quietly a little before 1am ready for the graduation festivities starting in just a few hours with Analise’s dramaturg presentation of Bold Stroke for a Husband.
Vehicle Data
Lateral passing data
I’m putting this section in to force myself to write the scripts to analyze the lateral passing data. The challenge is that when a vehicle passes, you get a ton of sensor readings, so how do you decide which lateral passing “number” gets assigned to that vehicle?
Do you just use the lowest reading? That sounds like the obvious choice, except the data can be a bit noisy when collected by a LiDAR sensor mounted to a bicycle bouncing along a road getting passed at high speeds. You collect a bunch of readings and some are farther away because it’s catching a deeper part of the vehicle or perhaps even underneath a taller vehicle. Or it might just be a bad reading. Some readings are closer for similar reasons. Averaging helps smooth it out, but you don’t want to average in the higher readings which take away from the fact that the only thing that matters to a cyclist when a vehicle passes is the closest part. The lower readings capture that part of the vehicle, but you still want to average them to smooth noise. How many readings should you include? This is all part of my research to design the algorithm that produces the highest accuracy from the sensor data being collected.
UPDATE: I’m still working on this, but I’m going to go ahead and publish without the data for now. Hopefully, I will come back and update, or more likely just make a new post!
Graduation
It was so awesome to be there with friends and family and see Analise graduate! We had a great few days together before driving back home to Alabama.
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