A Night at the Willis Methodist Church, Glendale, VA

Mileage Today 37.0; This Section 59.0 (2 days); Total Trans-Am Mileage 901.1 (25 days)

We wakened at 6:30 and had the motel coffee, toast, cereal, and bagel breakfast. The TB would have preferred eggs. We were riding the bike at 8:04 AM. It was an early start for us. The thermometer read 38 degrees. After a half mile I changed to my Seal Skin Gloves that perhaps are a little more wind blocking than the Performance Biking gloves. I was comfortable. Within a mile a work crew was building a new bike lane along the road that will go about 80 miles or so all the way to Richmond. At one stream crossing the road dips down some 30 feet into a stream crossing and a new million-dollar bike bridge goes straight across. This state is serious about this bike path!

Route 5 is a beautiful two-lane road with no shoulder, but also little or no traffic. It is somewhat of a bedroom area, but most of the traffic was headed east as I went west. The road is within a mile of the James River for 30 or 40 miles and has dozens of historic plantations along the way. One is the home of President Tyler who built a 300-foot addition onto the house after his presidency. Many of these are open for touring during the summer, but not now.

During the day we stopped and loaded up and drove some 50 miles to the Richmond Airport and met Millie as she flew in to visit Jody. We were able to see Jody and the new baby (now 5 weeks old) Andrew. He is cute and has grown a couple of pounds since we saw him at birth. We went to lunch with the family and then drove back and finished about 15 miles to the church. There were ups and downs, but I think I pedaled my best 15 miles of the whole trip on this section. There was a good climb up Malvern Hill to the church just one mile beyond. I pedaled through The Malvern Hill Battlefield of the Civil War where Union General McClellan was on the run south towards the James River and Confederate General Lee was in pursuit on June 1, 1862. On the Malvern Hill Battlefield they met in hand-to-hand combat. The TB informs me that General McClellan was later relieved of duties as he was “always in retreat.” The confederates used the Willis Methodist Church as a field hospital after the battle.

I pulled into the church at dusk having gone 37 miles for the day along with a three-hour break to the airport. Willis road is a narrow two lane for about 10 miles. The church community includes two or three houses and a visitor center for the Malvern Hill Battlefield. At the visitor center is a confederate cemetery where hundreds of casualties from the battle are interred.

As I pulled into the church a young woman, Ashley Royster, came out of the house next door with the church key. Ashley rents the house and greets the bikers. She said for the first half of summer she had cyclists every night stay at the church and she did BBQ for most of them. For the past month the traffic has slacked and she is seeing about one per week now. The church is 59 miles from the Atlantic so she is often the first or last night for many of the cyclists, but not us! We are here in two days! She has seen bicycles built for two, and one built for three. Last week she saw a tricycle. I don’t know how the tricycle would fit on these narrow roads. She has seen cyclists from England, Japan, Netherlands, and Germany. The church and phone number is mentioned on the back of our Trans-Am maps. The church has carpeted floors for sleeping inside or allows tenting in the yard. The cyclists have preferred inside for heat (now) or air conditioning (earlier in the summer). There was soda pop in the refrigerator, some packs of noodle soup, bathrooms, but no showers. But Ashley invited us to shower at her house. Then I learned she is not even a member of the church, she just lives the closest.

Rain is forecast for the next day. We’ll see what the morning brings. We set up our sleeping pads and bags and went to sleep with the TB in the fellowship room and me in the nursery room.