Day 59: Almost Hit By A Deer

It was a grueling day on the bike as we fought against the toughest areas in the Appalachian Mountains. Every steep downhill was followed by a long steep uphill. Today was a blast though because we got to fly down the backsides of these hills, today I hit my highest speed of the trip at 52 mph. Also, one of the craziest things I have seen all summer happened on our trip. We were riding in our pace line and a deer in the meadow to our right was startled and started bounding in and out of the tall brush with us. All of a sudden the deer sprinted ahead of us and darted into a wooded area where it disappeared. We too went into this wooded area and only 10 seconds after seeing the deer disappear we hear it charging at us and then see it bound over the guard rail and across the road only ten feet in front of us. We were all screaming and for the next 20 miles couldn’t stop talking about the wild experience.

The day continued to only get better as we worked hard on the hills to enjoy the quick descents. Today we crossed the border into Virginia which is supposed to have beautiful riding and is our last state before DC. Later in the ride we rolled through some beautiful rolling grass hills with endless views of relapsing mountains stocked with trees.

Over 6 hours of riding time we got into lodging at the Virginia Tech University around 4 PM. The campus here is very large and full of some beautiful buildings. Right when you come into campus you see the memorial representing the shootings that occurred just this last year on their campus. Tonight we had dinner at the cafeteria and I was starving, I had three plates of food it was so good. After a two hour nap everyone headed out to celebrate Cody’s 21st birthday. We have a late wake-up tomorrow so curfew wasn’t until 2AM!