First 100 miles down!

So, I got the bike from the UPS place and put it together out in the parking lot of the UPS center. The box was in pretty good shape, as was the bike inside except for the little bracket that my speedometer hooks into. Got changed into riding gear and mailed home one extra pair of clothes, then took off! So far, the ride between Newport News and the other side of the interstate has been far and away the sketchiest part of the journey, and I hope it stays that way. Went over to a bike shop and fortunately was able to buy just a replacement bracket instead of my third speedometer for this trip :). I asked about how to get up to Yorktown and was surprised to find that the local shop actually had a map printed up that detailed a nice route through residential areas all the way up to where I was looking to go!

It's apparently one of their weekly rides, good deal for me! Rather than following a very busy road, I ended up rolling through a mix of forests and small neighborhoods. The route was easy to follow, the weather was excellent, and there was some nifty Civil War scenery around. Made it to the Victory Monument in Yorktown, which is where the route officially begins, then went on over to the beach to get it started right. Then right from there over to the Yorktown Pub.

A burger and some fries later, I was on the road west! Rode through Historic Williamsburg, got minorly lost (they don't label the roads there - excellent toursit trap idea!,) and found my way back to the road. Pedalled on to a small convenience store that allows riders to camp for the night, bought some food, and camped for the night.

My knee ended up hurting towards the end of Monday, enough that I was planning on taking a short day today. It was still fairly painful this morning as well, but after warming up for a few miles, I found myself at the end of the shorter ride at something like 11am and was feeling much better, so I decided to head on another 30 or so miles to camp just past Mechanicsville, where I am now at a library. It seems that I'm back in the game of hammering out updates as quickly as possible while the library staff tries to enforce some crazy short time limit, so that's about all for now! Will do some editing and such later, maybe.