It was very cold when I woke up the next morning but I had lucked out and avoided any midnight showers. Just before falling asleep the night before the groundskeeper had come out and warned me of the possibility of a storm that night. It was cold and one of the corners of my rain fly had blown itself undone during the night and was thrashing about. I broke down camp with my bed sheet robed around myself and was on the road before 6:30. I was glad to be done with Rodanthe and soon I pedaled my way onto Pea Island, another nature preserve and had a serene morning ride with nice ocean views and minimal traffic. Pea Island would be the last refuge of sanity I would have while in the outer banks. I entered the city of Nags Head and the population density increased immediately. The route took me along beach front houses avoiding the bypass road that carried the heavy through traffic in this part of the island. The vacation houses all looked the same and lined both sides of the street. There was a multi-use path on the side of the road but I stayed on the street as there was no traffic and the path was uneven and carried a fair amount of morning runners. Though the sun had risen the sky was overcast and there was little evidence of its presence other than the grayness of the sky had been turning somewhat lighter. Ahead in the distance the clouds were darker, more menacing. The morning exercise crowd was out and about as I imagined they were everyday although something felt off, like I’d ridden into some twisted world out of the mind of Stephen King, the type of story that’s viewed through a gloomy grey, where everything appears to be normal in the surface but something sinister lays directly below in waiting. My maps didn’t sync up to the landscape and my sense of distance became disoriented. What should have been 4 miles felt like 8 and the road was making unexpected turns. I wasn’t worried about getting lost as I was on a small strip of land and could only go one of two ways.

I kept on and started feeling unnecessarily fatigued. I then Noticed that the wind had been blowing with enthusiastic gusto directly into me, slowing my pace immensely. Then the rain came down, slow at first but then the intensity increased. I wanted to hit the Virginia state line by sundown so instead of waiting for the rain to pass I pushed on. Then the rain really started to come down and I could barely see. All the houses here are on stilts to avoid flooding damage during hurricanes and I was forced by the weather to pull off the road and hide out underneath one of the homes. I picked one that had no cars and waited angrily. Once the rain let up I continued on, the rain barely a drizzle but the wind still impeding my escape from the island. Puddles started forming on the road and I was forced to ride in the middle of the lane. The the fabric of my shirt was the quick dry wicking material and within 10 minutes my shirt was mostly dry and I wasn’t as cold as I’d been a few miles earlier. With my spirits somewhat lifted I continued on into the wind with increased vigor knowing I only had 15 or so more miles in the island. Slightly before reaching the down of Kill Devil Hills the rains came crashing down upon me once again, completing soaking me once again and snubbing out my renewed spirits. Again I was forced off the road as the torrential weather continued its assault on my morning. This time I was fortunate to have reached a place where I could seek real shelter. I forget the name but it was a combination convenience store with a deli plus a souvineer/beach shop full of tacky crap commemorating people’s wonderful experiences on the island into car decals, magnets, and a plethora of other goods people feel compelled to buy at the time only to question the how and why of the purchase weeks later before putting the objects into storage or the trash. I bought a coffee and ordered a pastrami sandwich from the deli. It was 9:00 a.m. The sandwich was perhaps the first indicator that I might start to be missing New York. The girl who rang me up was both impressed and curious about my trip and asked me several questions about it and a few other patrons seemed interested as well. I asked to use the bathroom after breakfast and the counter girls face gave a somewhat panicked look and said she had to ask her manager. Policy stated that no one, not even customers were allowed to use the restrooms, which made me even angrier with the state of the island. The policy speaks not only of the nature of the people in the area but also the attitude of the island in general. The manager turned out to be a very petite woman with a strange accent of a nationality I couldn’t quite place. At first she said no but with after explaining my situation and a few good words from the cashier she begrudgingly acquiesced to my request. Throughout all this it was still raining heavily. After using the bathroom it was still raining but not hard enough to keep me off the road. Normally I would have waited longer but the demeanor of the place rubbed me the wrong way and I left feeling more comfortable in the rain. By then the sides of the roads were giant puddles of water and I was riding in the middle if the road, at times still biking through inches of water. When there was traffic I had to slowly veer over into high water, my feet dipping in and out of water with every stroke. I continued forward, misery on the rise. A mile or so later I had to stop. The cars coming up the road were partially submerged, some wheels fully underwater. The road had become a motor-canal and by the time my brakes were finally able to stop me I was up to my knees in flood water. I turned around, found a side street, and worked my way up to the bypass. The bypass was similar to the other roads that had strung out my nerves in South Carolina. High speeds, no shoulders, dense traffic. The main difference this morning was that it was raining, puddles were forming on the roadside forcing me further out into the lane, and most cars that passed me showered me with a refreshing spritz of road-water, the type of stuff mixed with all e rain and dirt and oils found on heavily trafficked roads. Fortunately I only had to endure about 3 miles of that before I could turn off. A few miles later I was rolling my way onto the bridge to take me out of Kitty Hawk and onto the mainland. The bridge was 3.5 miles long and the sign reading “High Crosswinds” was put in place for a damn good reason. The winds constricted my pace to a dull crawl, and whenever a truck would pass me the winds would twist up and send me veering left or right until I could steady myself again. It was brutal across the bridge. The sea below me rolled with whitecaps and my outlook matched the grey skies. It was a brutal ride across the bridge, the islands one last effort to crush my soul, but once I made it off the round turned and the winds died down immediately. This was when I noticed that my feet were starting to hurt. They had been soaking in the rain all morning and had taken on that pruney texture that comes from sitting in a bath too long. I stopped at the first gas station I passed and took some napkins and tried to dry them off. They didn’t look good but they were covered in various kinds if road dirt or stains from my sandals and it was hard to get them clean.

I carried on, by now the rain had stopped and the road had nice shoulders and the wind had turned and was now at my back. The road was recently replaced and was smooth and I was finally able to put some distance between myself and the outer banks. I was stunned at how quickly something so beautiful became so atrocious. I was thankful that someone had enough sense and was able to fight to have such a large portion of it preserved.

Another problem I started to have was the battery Lu of my phone. It was waning and due to the rain and the overcast skies the past few days my solar charger was serving no purpose other than weighing me down. 20 or 30 miles after the gas station I stopped at a seven eleven, ate some terrible gas station food and sat there for forty minutes charging my phone from one of the outlets outside of the building. My destination in two days would be my aunt and uncles house just east of Richmond and I would have to deviate from the route and follow google maps. The deviation would be taking place another 15 miles up the road and a charged phone was a must. Looking at googles instructions, they had me taking a path to cut north west through the dismal swamp and then go north to cross into Virginia. Once I left the route I was glad to have been making good time. This happiness ended as soon as I reached the Great Dismal Swamp. Google, again, he’d led my horribly astray. The “path” through the swamp was more of a ditch that had been hacked out some time earlier but nature was slowly taking it back. I’d gone several miles along country roads to get there and there was no outlet to go around except going all the way back to where I parted ways with my maps directions. I figured if I was able to brave the off-road path outside for Charleston I could do the same here. So I proceeded through the branches and plants and rocks and dirt and hanging brambles and sand and sticks and reeds and the swamp surrounded me completely. Fifteen minutes later I was only slightly more than a mile in and it was past 5 o'clock and I still had 9.5 miles to go. I was bleeding from several scratches from the various plant species and a little amazed my tired were still inflated. I came to the realization that making it through this path would be incredibly difficult to traverse before sundown and of all the places to get stranded in North Carolina at night the Great Dismal Swamp was at the very bottom of the list. I was forced to turn around and backtrack the way I’d come, burning precious daylight and cursing myself for being trying to take on something named so aptly fitting for its setting. The way I ended up taking was the actual route the maps told me to follow in which I rode along the southern edge of the Great Dismal Swamp which I might have at a different point in time considered it to be very pretty in a swampy kind if way if I hadn’t wanted the whole damn place to collapse in a giant sink hole. To make matters even worse, my rear tire had sprung a slow puncture, no doubt from that dismal, Dismal swamp. I changed my tire as the sun began its final descent. Shortly thereafter I finally crossed the state line and vowed to leave all my hatred that had been stewing and brewing in North Carolina the past day in North Carolina where it belonged. As the sun was setting I began considering where I should sleep for the night. After the entire ordeal of the day I considered a motel room but they just don’t put motels in the middle of rural Virginia, or campsites for that matter. A few miles up the road I saw a middle aged lady talking with an elderly lady at the end of their driveway. I stopped, introduced myself, explained what I was doing and then kindly asked if they would mind if set up my tent on the edge of the property for the night. They smiled big smiles and said no, citing reasons that their dogs wouldn’t like me. The told me to maybe try Mr. Jackson’s lawn a few houses up the road as he had a big yard. Everyone had a big yard here, and Mr. Jackson wasn’t conveniently standing in his driveway and I wasn’t going to just camp on someones front yard without permission in a state with liberal gun laws as the two ladies had suggested.

The sun wasn’t getting any higher and I continued on, eventually passing a thicket of woods with a small opening. I wheeled my bike a few meters into the woods and then started to set up camp. Whole doing so, I noticed that my spare liter water bottle had fallen out of its cage, again the Dismal Swamp’s doing. My other water bottle was nearly empty as was my 3 liter bladder. I didn’t have any water to clean myself off, brush my teeth and had to ration my supplies as I still had a few miles to bike the next morning before hitting a town where I could refill. I got in my hammock and laid down stinky and sweaty and thirsty. When the sun set I could feel the temperature drop. I loaded my hammock with a few shirts and two pairs of shorts along with my bed sheet so I could “layer” myself so I wouldn’t wake up shivering. Then I slept, exhausted after enduring what was easily the worst day of the entire trek.