RICKY, DAY 12: FROM ELIZABETH CITY TO RODANTHE, NC
After tidying up the house and locking the door behind us we were off to start on the leg of the trip that I was definitely looking forward to- we were headed to the Outer Banks. Being the route planner I made sure that we took this slight mileage-adding detour. Regardless of how many times people warned me of hurricanes I felt the decision was worth it. This was our chance to experience some different scenery and possibly enjoy a day or two at the beach. For this leg we used our Adventure Cycling maps as it provided a route from Elizabeth City along the Outer Banks and even provided some information on good placed to stay. Our destination for the night was about halfway down the coastline where we would camp at a RV park/campground.
The start of the day was just like the others. I remember it being a little more dicey than normal due to construction and the condition of the roadway leaving Elizabeth City. We eventually made it onto a pretty major roadway headed out towards the barrier islands. Even when we were over 80 miles away we saw billboards for campgrounds in the area where we were staying. These were reminders of how far we had to travel, but the anticipation was also exciting. We were going to the beach! As excited I was for the destination, the ride that day actually was a lot more mundane. After navigating to the shore, we were on one road, Route 12, for our entire time which was over 100 miles in a straight line. This would later cause some issues but in the beginning we were too busy visiting the Wright Brothers Memorial in Kitty Hawk. None of us actually realized that we would be biking right past it. While I knew a little bit about the Wright Brothers I didn't think that Kitty Hawk was at the beach. I mean it seemed so strange to me that this serious part of American history would be so close to your beach town standards of inexpensive hotels, shopping centers, and unnecessarily fried foods. Anyways even though we were on a mission to get to our campground we took the time to bike to the museum and admire some history.
After that, there really wasn't much notable about our ride, and as I alluded to before this banality mixed with a rouge trash can would eventually cause us trouble. We were biking through one of the more populated beach towns with houses on either side of us; Gabby was in the front, followed by Phil, Brendan, Sameen, and I in the back. We were on auto pilot; the ground was flat and it was windy so we were drafting off each other. Our tires were inches from the cyclist in front and we would just mimic any changes in course that the lead made. Since visibility was an issue when drafting we used hand signals to communicate any potholes or obstacles to one another, without them, riders in the back would not be able to move out of the way in time. Writing this, it sounds like we should have expected something to go wrong. About 20 minutes after settling into a nice biking rhythm, Gabby passed a trash bin that was a little too far out into the road, Phil had to avoid the can, Brendan couldn't notice it fast enough and had to twist his body narrowly missing it, and then Sameen just slams right into the thing. He goes down and falls from his bike. I'm right behind Sameen so I see the whole thing happen, but I'm also right behind Sameen so I can't do anything to prevent me just crashing into his bike. I flip over my handlebars and bounce onto the pavement. It all happened so fast everyone was pretty rattled. Other than a few scratches on my freshly shaven legs I was fine. Sameen had somehow landed on his feet after falling off his bike so he was also okay so the only casualty was Sameen's bike. Our collision had resulted in his large gear getting bent in half making it impossible to keep riding. We called the SWAGon and they met us at our crash site. Until then we just hung out on the side of the road.
Side note, so we were in a pretty populated tourist town and a bunch of people had to have seen us crash, yet only one guy asked us if we were okay. What's up with that? Through some sort of magic or compact with the bicycling gods Phil managed to fix Sameen's bike. He used his pliers to bend the gear back into a presentable shape and while it wasn't perfect, the bike could move forward! After talking it over with Ramon, Jovelle, and Natalie Sameen decided that he would try to make it the rest of the way with us and if anything happened then we would load him and his bike into the car.
From that point on the road ventured into more isolated territory. We biked through the part of the island that was a state park and it was beautiful. There was nothing but sand, dunes, and surf. I was actually pretty disappointed that we weren't camping in one of the parks that night because it would have been awesome. The most notable feature of this stretch of road was the wind. We were biking directly into the headwind and we were going to do it for the next 30 miles. That was terrible. As much as I disliked hills, at least they required intermittent and relatively short bursts of energy. Biking into the wind is like riding uphill constantly so that part was pretty miserable.
Another major challenge was the bridge because it completely exposed you to the wind and there was not a very big shoulder. For the entire ride we had to draft off of one another, otherwise it would have been way too tiring. After a few miles the lead would switch to the back and the rider in the second position would be in front. We settled into another rhythm and eventually made it through the wild beach territory. It took us until 5pm. Weary, we celebrated by visiting our favorite symbol of civilization, Diary Queen, and each ordered giant ice cream cones. I actually had to buy Sameen his cone because I lost a bet about how many miles the day would be- I was under by less than a quarter mile.
We got into the RV park and made camp. We then ran into the ocean and swam until we were hungry. That night Ramon, Jovelle, Natalie, Brendan and I laid down on the dunes watching the stars and the ocean. We could see families along the beach lighting campfires that seemed to extend in either direction for miles, dotting the coast with flickers of light. We were off the next day and while there were many chores on our to do list, we didn't worry about them at that moment. We just talked for what seemed hours. Best of all it was about things that really mattered. It's funny that for all the time we spent with each other, we really didn't have many moments during the day that we shared details about our lives with each other. A pattern started to emerge of long, uneventful, tiring days and hectic nights trying to prepare for the next day. It was nice that this day mixed that up a little bit.
