Day 3 (August 11): North Carolina Sand Hills and Piedmont

The morning was thick with fog for the first 20 miles. I rode from Spring Lake outside Fayetteville to Carthage early, where I met my sister and mom. Sarah and I then rode from Carthage to Albemarle, for a total of 84 miles (Sarah logged 54). We continued on Highway 24 West today, and part of the trip was my route to and from college in Raleigh, so I knew the road very well from the 70 mile-per-hour perspective. Albemarle is our home town, so riding through our (regional?) stomping grounds was really fun. I saw another cooler lid on the side of the road. That makes two cooler lids, one throw pillow, one bed pillow (both floral) and one mini-fridge door. Traffic accidents? My guess is pick-up trucks. The counties for the day: Cumberland, Harnett, Moore, Montgomery and Stanly. Harnett County had many bare areas where the trees had been cleared, as did Montgomery. My dad had warned us about logging trucks, and honestly, they and tractor-trailers are the most polite of the drivers out there. I guess I appreciate their politeness so much more because they are huge. In Moore County, I was on two actual bike routes, made official by the county’s signs. Stanly County also had them. There were ‘Share the Road’ signs in Montgomery and in Stanly Counties. The hills really kicked in today through the Uwharrie Mountains. There were several tough ones. One coming in to Troy, the Montgomery County seat, I named ‘Peanut Butter Milkshake Hill’ in gleeful anticipation of a peanut butter milkshake at the Better Burger in Troy where we (read: I) had decided to take a lunch break. Little did I know that I would soon encounter Peanut Butter Milkshake Hill #2! I made it up #2, down Highway 24 in Troy that was being repaved, and, with a full choir of angels singing, to the Better Burger, its celestial glow gracing the westbound curb of Highway 24 (right). They were not as thrilled to see us as we were them, and did not fully appreciate my admission that I had been looking forward to a peanut butter milkshake for the last 50 miles. I had not had a peanut butter milkshake from Better Burger in at least eight years, but it was fantastic. I also ate a hamburger and tater wedges (that's what they call 'em on the menu). It was all delicious, and Sarah’s and my lunch was $6.92. Stanly County (our home county) served us up hills that were worse than any other county so far. We felt slightly betrayed. Still, riding into town with my sister was truly lovely. Crossing the Pee Dee River from Montgomery County, the view across is always beautiful (right, the bridge over, from Stanly County). On a bicycle, you get to enjoy it longer. On a political note, the water in the Pee Dee is currently in dispute in my hometown (and state-wide, thanks to some of our active County Commissioners). A brief description of the issue an be found at www.ncwaterrights.org. We also passed Sarah's old preschool, two sites of my grandmother’s former store, our old elementary school and the town’s water tower in the schoolyard. Our teachers always made us race to it. We’d get there, and one kid would say “It’s falling!” And because the clouds were moving, it really looked it, so we would all scream and run frantically away, every time. Sarah approached our parents' street with trepidation: she had run into the telephone pole rounding the corner in June, having not been on a bicycle in 10 years. This is causally unrelated to, though temporally correlated with, my collision with a fire hydrant. Sarah successfully made the turn this time, and we pedaled into the driveway, which we haven't done together in 15 years. We may make this more of a tradition, though municipal utility collisions we are aiming to keep to a minimum. During the day, we made a couple of friends near Robbinsville in Montgomery County (John Edwards' hometown). Sarah bought a couple of peaches from a roadside stand, and one of the girls from the stand told us that a friend of hers had ridden across the country on his horse, pulling a mule behind him. I think that sounds scarier than riding a bicycle. We also met a man named Deaton who asked us if we were carrying a gun. I told him we were thinking about it.