Nina called me a “Shop Potato” this morning and told me to get out and ride my bike.  The last couple of days have been kind of ugly around here with sleet Thursday evening and little icicles hanging from the bird feeder and a frozen bird bath yesterday morning.  Wednesday was sunny, but very windy.  And, I have been busy in the shop; and, on Tuesday, I was conscripted to install a chimney liner and insulate it to bring our chimney up to code of our new to us Jotul wood stove.  

    When I reached the battle ground, I expected to find out about a Civil War battle, but instead found that it was a Revolutionary War battle site, and finally, that it was site of a battle fought just prior to the Revolutionary War.  It turns out that some of the residents of this part of North Carolina, did not actually object to British rule, but did object to the way the royal government administered law in rural North Carolina.  A large group of farmers formed militias and called themselves, Regulators.  They did their best to disrupt trials, make tax collection more difficult, and just plain create trouble.  

    The royal governor, William Tyron was advised to put an end to the Regulators and he set out with a thousand militiamen under his command.  On May 16, 1771, Tyron and his men met about 2,000 Regulators.  Tyron insisted that the Regulators lay down their arms and disperse, but the Regulators responded by telling the governor they were ready for a fight.  As it turned out, they weren’t.  Nine of Tyron’s men were killed and 61 wounded, but the Regulators were badly beaten.

    The battle field is bisected by Highway 62.  As it turns out, the road predates the battle by quite some time and it was an indian trading route before it was a road.  It is fairly open ground now and probably was then.  It is surrounded by farms and woods.  It was pretty quite today.  Bill, the man who mans the small visitor center told me it was busy earlier, but had been quiet for a while.  There were two other visitors while I was there.  It was kind of hard to imagine 3,000 men shooting muskets and cannon at each other 237 years ago.

    I pedaled off as quietly as I had arrived and turned off 62 just a couple hundred meters down the road.  From there, I rode home on mostly quiet roads.  I say mostly quiet because I rode past, and pulled into, a drag strip where hot rodders were tuning their cars for tomorrow’s races.  They were loud and I heard them for a few minutes after I left.  Then, where Old Julian Road crosses Alamance Church Road, I stopped at a BP station where I bought some sardines and crackers to fuel my engine.  Around the pumps, there must have been a dozen pickup trucks with three times as many passengers.  They seemed to all know each other and, while some were getting gas, most of them were filling up the back of their trucks with beer and their cabs with cigarettes.  They seemed like a friendly bunch and one of the called me, Sir, before asking me how it was going.  I called the lady behind the counter, Ma’am.  I’m not comfortable being called, Sir, but that’s how we address each other around here since the Regulators stopped regulating.  (One of the first people to speak to me when we moved here is a waitress named, Lisa.  She called me, Honey.  I haven’t figured out when Honey is an appropriate substitute for Sir or Ma’am, but plenty of women around here seem to have figured it out.)

    A little further down the road, I was riding up a rise with a breeze right in my teeth.  I was spinning pretty good and looked at my cassette.  The chain was on the 16.  Hey, I thought, that’s pretty good.  Look at this spin.  As I brought my eyes back toward the road, I noticed I was on the small chain ring.  Oh well, I bumped it up to the big ring and lifted the chain onto the 18.  I still had a good spin, but I was working harder and going a little faster.

    When I got home, Nina was turning some manure into the garden plot.  We’re getting the early vegetables in.  She doesn’t call me, Sir.  It probably wouldn’t be appropriate just before telling me to get out of the house and ride my bike, anyway.