Arduous Uphills and Screaming Downhills

Some scenery from today.

It seems as though we have shook the bad bicycle karma for now because when we got up this morning, we noticed that the neighbors across the street from the church at which we spent the night left us all $10 each for breakfast. How incredibly nice is that? I was so deeply touched by their hospitable nature. I spent about 7 dollars at the grill down the street for breakfast. It was the largest breakfast I have ever seen for $6 and some change. I was amazed, and hungry. I did some damage on it, but I couldn't conquer it. Oh well, maybe next time. The climb up and over Clinch Mountain was long and pretty steep, but I didn't push at all. That made me feel like I could do most anything now. It was actually a lot of fun. I haven't really had a good hard handlebar soaking sweat in a few days. That was nice. Going down the other side of Clinch was a white-knuckled screaming descent. I hit 43.5 mph. Jacob hit like 48 or something insane. I can't bring myself to throw it all on the line and not brake at all. But I respect the kid for being able to do it. We stopped over in Honaker (Hoe-Naker--a phonetic guide for you out of towners) for lunch, and ate at this place called the Farmer's Table. The place was full of really nice locals, who were very friendly and asked us a lot of questions about the trip. They made us feel like we were physical specimens. They told us some crazy stories that could probably only happen in Appalachia...two involving horses and ponies on people's front porches. That was pretty funny. After lunch, we climbed for a mile or so out of Honaker, and then up another small mountain. This climb was only about a mile or so, maybe 1.5 miles. It was much more fun and rewarding that the Clinch because for the most part, it was all down hill for the next 15 or so miles. The descent was another screamer. None of us could get quite as fast as we did going down Clinch, but it was just as fun, with some hairpin turns and some steep steep downhills. The ride into Haysi (Hay-sigh...again for you non-locals) was fun. It ran along a river valley and we hit some flats for quite a while. I was cranking it at about 20 the whole way through the flats. That made me feel really strong. We're staying tonight in Haysi and hopefully we'll be able to wash up a little because today was hot and sweaty for a while.
On a somewhat random note, as I couldn't quite figure out how to work it into today's post...we've noticed that every single town name that we think we're pronouncing correctly is so incredibly off of how it's actually pronounced that it's laughable. We're soooo obviously tourists...