Taking the Toad to Damascus

Day 68

Damascus, VA

Distance: zero miles (non-cycling day)

Things to do in town: not much

Things done in town: even less

Yes, this toad has lain still in Damascus, VA, wallowing, lounging, resting the legs…which, come to think of it, look a little bit like toad/frog legs these days what with all the hills.

After my sensible night, I woke stupidly early, while it was still dark, and ventured out to the gas station for coffee, water and snacks, figuring that if it had gone to sleep before me, it should be awake by now… it was.

Crawling back into my bed, I downloaded “A Walk in the Woods” by Bill Bryson on my Kindle App. It’s a book about him walking the Appalachian Trail and one I’ve read before. I remember laughing out loud on the tube to it last time, and I was already doing the same here “on site” within minutes of starting it this morning.

But Damascus is a curious little town, which I discovered when I finally ventured out properly around lunchtime.

Steed and I made our way down to the bike shop to pump up his tyres and buy a replacement bottle cage. Both bottle cages have been broken for some time now and I have done nothing about it since, curiously, the bottles are easier to push in and pull out with the break in them. But yesterday, I found the front one looking scarily “gapey” and realized that I’d be b*ggered if it broke on the road, and the super glue didn’t work, so…

And it was as Steed and I were ambling, toad-like, along the main street that I noticed all the stores that had closed down. I also learned that the Laundromat had closed, which is surely unthinkable for a town that is best known as being a place of civilization for hikers of the Appalachian Trail.

How many of these hikers arrive here after many nights of eating re-hydrated food and sleeping rough, in their nasty, hideously-styled walking clothes, stinking of sweaty geek, and stamp their boot-clad, or sandal-with-socks-clad feet and say “why”?

Well, I don’t know how many, but I do know why.

Apparently, the Laundromat was taken over a little over a year ago by a couple from “out of town” when the people who had run it for 27 years decided to call it a day. By “out of town” I mean, a few miles out of town. But enough, it seems, for someone (or more than one someone) to sneak in at night, taking advantage of the trusting 24hr opening policy, and pour powdered cement in every single washing machine. True.

“I guess they don’t like outsiders in this town,” the guy who told me said, and he was himself from out of town.

Ah dear, and so I do know, but I am still left asking “why”?

But on a happier note, I found a great place for lunch today. An Inn next to the river, where I ate fried green tomatoes, and the freshest peeled prawns you could hope for, washed down with a couple of glasses of top notch Californian Chardonnay.  Oh, and I bothered the geese and the ducks by pointing a camera at them too.

Hamstring problems too?

Contenders, you will go on my first whistle...

Mallard, Kaylee Dewee, happy in her work,
 "Honey, I ate LeBron James, well, some of him."

Ah, the Princess may not have too many clean clothes (I did do a little hand-washing) but she’s happy.

Fingers crossed that the hammy behaves when I set off tomorrow. Massage therapists in Damascus? 

You’re having a laugh!

Me x