145

I pulled out of common ground (where I had been visiting Leah Green) before 7 am, and I put the peddle to the air. before noon I had cruised 50 miles to Roanoke. I ate lunch, thinking of how much stronger my legs were than when I started and wondering how everyone in Roanoke doesn't have wagon wheel stuck in their heads all the time. I walked around asking strangers where they were from and where they thought they would be headed just to make a clever facebook status comparing my self to the last verse of the song. I biked over the blue ridge for the second time in my life, and while it kicked my butt on speed I conquered that darned hill in the end. Hours of Appalachian foothills rolled by and I found myself nearing my destination with hours of sun remaining.
The plan had been to bike 90 miles, throw up my tent, and bike the another 55 miles to Guilford College the next day, but I got it in my head that I would bike all the way to Guilford that night!the thought crossed my mind that it was a stupid and dangerous idea. I could hurt my knees pretty badly from this much over exertion, and night biking thirty miles with one hundred and some miles of exhaustion on you was iffy. Then it crossed my mind this was the only time in my life I could do stupid stuff. My body is still young enough to handle a beating, and it's social acceptable for teenage boys to do crazy, testosterone fulled stuff. So I decided to bike all the way to guilford.
 I had made up my mind while I was on a down hill, and when the next uphill came I gave up the idea, but reaffirmed it on the next downhill. My resolution bobbed with my elevation for a while until I decided that once I reached Greensboro road (which held the last twenty or so miles of the journey) there would be no more hills. My mantra became "There are no hills in Greensboro. There are no hills in Greensboro. There are no hills in Greensboro." My tired brain became convinced that once I reached the 125 mile mark there would be a gentle down hill all the way to the front door of Guilford College. I continued to sort of believe that even as I biked up the hills on Greensboro road.
The sun went down and I was making good time. my ETA was before 10 pm with only about ten miles to go when my back up light went out. My primary light had lost it's juice, so I had switched to my secondary, and when they ran out of power I had no way to see in front of myself. I had one red flashing light that could have shown the cars behind me where I was, but I had no way to see the road. I had just about resigned myself to walking the final ten miles when a car pulls over next to me. The mans name was Will, and first he offers to put me up for the night if I needed a place. I told him I was staying at Guilford but my lights had gone out, so he offered to ride his car behind me and give me light the rest of the way there! So much to the shagrin of all the cars which now had to pass a ten mile an hour car rather than a ten mile an hour bike, I had a fully lit path all the way to Guilford College. I arrived, clocking in at 145 miles in one day.