Struggling in the Impermanence Tour

I woke up to freezing rain.  And in case that sounds like hyperbole - 2 degrees centigrade, and bucketing down.  It's thing about seasons - they really dont matter in places that dont really have them.  I was pretty light on warm riding stuff that would stay dry (ish, even).  I streched the departure as long as was possible - eventually heading out into the horror at 11.30am

Blue ready to go - owner not so keen - cold and wet and just kak generally.  Knives in the knee for extra suffering.  

All in all it was a minus zero fun shit day - with cannoning wind and freezing rain.  I'd set my sights on the town of South Boston - 93km away - and it felt like I was trying to ride to the moon.  Dark dark places out on that road.  What on earth am I doing here?  Why don't I rent a U-haul (unhelpfully I rode past some) and drive to Greensboro?  It went on.  I stopped every chance I got, guzzled calories and coffee.  Eventually the knee warmed up to being only mildly savage.  I'd dealt with the other side of my other problem by applying great scoops of Prep directly to the pad inside the bike shorts - bring on the ass volcano darling.

Putting on a brave face - drenched and miserable on the side of some perpetual
stretch of highway.

By the afternoon there were patches of "it's not raining, its just plain old cold" appearing.  But I had crawled over the hump, coffeed and hotdogged and say-no-to-u-haul van'ed my way 92km through the nastiness to the town of South Boston - population 8142 in the 2010 census (down a few hundred from the 2000 census).  It's probably unremarkable - but to me oasic - and I was especially pleased to see the Fairfield Inn and Suites.

It's that Marriott smile - this is how good one feels arriving after a day of freezing rain.

Nice room, nice laundry facilities - but nowhere to eat, a by-now-familiar-problem.  This time the hotel was only about a ten minute walk to what I was assured was a great restaurant, the Mexico Viejo Mexican Grill. And it was; it really really was.  Fantastic.  The only challenge was getting there.  Walking seems to be part of impermanence in America.  Between the restaurant and the hotel, no street lights, no sidewalk, just a dual carriage main road, with cars barreling down it.  I had on black jeans and a dark blue jacket, black shoes... had to go back to my room to get my bike lights.  One in each hand I flashed and strobed my way to mexican paradise :-)

Day 3 - Farmville to South Boston - 91km