Day 6 - Charlottesville to Keysville, VA

TRIP: 26,508 Calories, 524 miles - 613 miles per gallon

Day 5 - 3620 Calories, 83 miles - 712 miles per gallon

Thanks to favorable wind conditions, this was a fairly economical day. Over 700 mpg,--bringing the trip mileage to nearly 10 times the EPA rating of Honda's Insight.

After waking up and driving to Performance bike in C'ville (this one was open) to purchase 2 spare tires, then leaving my phone in Wendy's car and having her to return from work to deliver it to me, I was sent off with good wishes by Wendy and her pup Dusty.

It was pouring with rain--cue garbage bag booties. It was really coming down for the first 40 miles of the day, and the rain jacket I thought I had was actually a wind breaker. I got soaked to the bone immediately, but it was 70 degrees and bearable-even enjoyable. The fenders worked really well and although there was some spray on the drivetrain from the front wheel, no water got on me.

The ride was pretty tame, although there were some very pretty roads along the way. A herd of cows caught my interest, and I snapped off a few pictures. I had to yell and moo in order to get their attention. Here is the best one-

It got sunny and I got hungry. At Tom's General Store at the intersection of Rte. 15 and some other road (483?), I enjoyed a delicious Tom's Super Sub, but when I got back on the bike the speedo wasn't working. No speedo means no odometer. Normally this would hardly matter, but on a ride for fuel economy the speedo is paramount, so my heart sank. I got off the bike and scraped the contacts which connect the speedo and sending unit. No luck. I then realized that water must have gotten into the sending unit (the speedo extrapolates wheel speed from the amount of time between each pass of the spoke magnet). The entire thing is one piece of plastic, so I didn't know how I was going to fix it-thoughts of getting another one fed ex'd to me, or putting the malfunctioning one in an oven to burn off the water raced through my head. But then I realized that I could blow the water out. I looped back to the gas station and blew a shot of compressed air into the sending unit. Voila, a speedo.

I carried on and passed this, which looked unlikely to push the penguins sign off my rack

Then I got to the hotel, and there was a wonderful fog over a field full of cows overlooked by a farmhouse. It was quite beautiful in the dusk, and I stood at the fence looking at it for quite some time.

Soon it was time to go to Food Lion, where I got a whole bunch of food- way too much for me to eat or carry with me. Only used the beer, apple, tomatoes, 10 pieces of bread, half the gatorade, 5 pieces of cheese, a spoonful of mayonaisse, and one of the meat packets. And all the chocolates!

On the way back from the store I passed a forest full of sleepy pirates of varying heights, who had luminous eyelids. They turned out to be lighting bugs. I made it through 7 postcards before falling asleep.