Our oldest son graduated from college this spring and married in July.  Our youngest son began a new life as a college student in August, but I don’t think he has plans for marriage yet.  Nina and I packed everything into a rental truck, hooked the Honda to the back and burned bridges all the way across the country from Tumwater, Washington to Franklinville, North Carolina.  We’d lived on the West Coast for twenty-three years and it was past time for me to try somewhere else.  We talked a lot about North Carolina the past few years and after considering several other options, we decided to go for it.  By taking everything with us, we wouldn’t be able to afford going back.  We did stop in Grand Junction, Colorado where we lived for seven years after we married.  We stayed with two of our best friends, Mike and Nancy, for a few days, but Colorado has become too expensive for us so we stuck to our plan and left Colorado once again.  Three days later we were in North Carolina and found ourselves in the midst of record heat and record dry.  One of the friendly people we met since we’ve been here told me that we aren’t seeing North Carolina at her best.  That lady told me that, right now, North Carolina looks like she’s got a bad hangover.  That’s saying a lot since Franklinville is in Randolph County and Randolph County is a dry county.  This year it is really dry.

    Anyway, we stayed at the Deep River Campground for three weeks or so while we shopped for a house, made an offer on a house, and suffered through the problems that delay closing on a house.  Finally, we left the campground and began camping at our new home.  It is a great house built in 1945 by the man who lived in it until he died.  He’s buried in the cemetery across the road and we are surrounded by his friendly kin.

    Since we moved in, I have been up to my eyeballs in projects, but I manage to take my bicycle out to run errands and try out the roads.  Today, I took the day off and went for a day ride.  I love it.  The roads are beautiful and they go everywhere, hither and yon.  People tell me their families have lived here since the Civil War and they are still finding roads they didn’t know about.  I get excited when I come around a corner and realize I am on a road I do know about.                      

    Today I spent the day on roads that were pretty much all new to me.  They are winding roads through the woods and past old farms.  Every few miles I spot an abandoned cabin in the woods or see an old chimney or foundation that is all that’s left of a house long gone.  The mountains are a hundred miles or more from us here in the Piedmont, but there’s noting flat in sight.  It is all hill country and none of the roads go straight.  And they are nice roads.  They aren’t wide roads, and they don’t have shoulders, but the traffic is light and they don’t seem to have ever heard of chip seal.  I determined that one nice thing about not having shoulders is that bicycles get to ride on the same part of the road that the cars use, not on the shoulder where glass collects.  I don’t think there would be too much glass around here though, the people don’t seem to be as big of litterbugs here as they are in some areas.  I guess it’s almost always that way in rural areas and it happens that most of North Carolina is rural.

    I think I’m going to like it here and I look forward to meeting more riders because bicycles are popular here in North Carolina.  Oh, and did I mention that today, September 17th, it was a beautiful day with temperatures in the mid seventies.  It’s supposed to go on like that for another couple of months or so.  Then there is a short winter and a long spring.  Oh yeah!