Last week I finally took a ride. It was about 20 miles of well surfaced trail along an abandoned rail line, the Norfolk, Franklin, and Danville, in Brunswick and Mecklenburg counties at the southeast corner of Virginia's Fifth Congressional district. As I had hoped, there was very gentle grade along the entire trail. It seemed vaguely uphill the entire way, but I knew from route planning that it was mostly downhill. Backward glances confirmed this, as did later reports from local residents.
My current conditioning could handle little more than this ride, and as it stood, I paced myself with frequent dismounts and rest periods where I read a book I brought along and updated Twitter on my progress. Spaced along the route were tables and platforms for mounting horses and outhouses. The route was largely forested with ample shade. In many was it was an ideal ride. But I still took about seven hours to complete 20 miles. The one hardship was no access to fresh water along the trail until very near the end, where in Brodnax I found a convenience store where the main road, US 58, paralleled the trail for a couple miles. The last several miles of the trail were asphalt. This portion, between La Crosse and Brodnax, was well used. The first 15 miles of gravel surfaced trail was lonely. I saw not a soul the entire distance.
Part of my intention, expressed since I started to consider doing this in 2012, was to get outside the Charlottesville bubble and to appreciate the many communities and people my Representative in Congress was called to represent. At the time it was Robert Hurt. Currently it is freshman Congressman Tom Garrett. Both have been good at the electoral strategy of sneering at liberals and elites, both in Washington and Charlottesville. I'm not sure what harm we've done to rural America that we should be so despised. My theory has been that we fail to validate them as persons. I know the feeling, in a small way, of being an invalid. There are certain traits of the Fifth district that I would not care to validate, principally the hostility to non-Europeans and even certain Europeans. Tom Perriello was one of those end-in-a-vowel names like Pelosi that drew sneers from Virgil Goode (silent e doesn't count) and subsequent Republican candidates.
Lawrenceville, the start of my journey, came to my attention when it was reported that Saint Paul College, an HBCU established by the Episcopal Church, had been closed for a couple years when a large influx of unaccompanied minors fleeing Central America crossed our southern border. The Federal government had arranged with the owners of the school to repurpose it house a portion of these refugees. The community would not have it. Robert Hurt supported their refusal and eventually the settlement never opened and the school continues to lay vacant. I was allowed to walk around the campus and take a few pictures. I've not published them yet and may not. My pastor's sister attended St Paul's in the 60s and I took the pictures for her benefit. I hope to see her at homecoming in early July. I asked the guard what he could tell me about those days. "The community didn't want it" was his terse response. I had tarred that attitude with the Bubba brush, but a different dynamic seems to have been in play. The community, at the west bound of a majority black region centered on Emporia, with a Democratic delegate in Richmond running unopposed, is the sort of powerless community that environmental justice tells me gets forced to accept what might better be sited nearer where I live, but prosperous and powerful neighbors keep away. NIMBY works for me better than for them. Majority Black or not. I has wondered why my outrage at the time was never shared. I still feel troubled by the refusal to accept the refugees.
The trail had several interpretive signs highlighting sources of community pride. The railroad days, certainly. Local flora and fauna. Thoroughbred breeding in the early 19th century, some of the most prestigious blood lines. And the culture of tobacco, indigenous, colonial, and the heyday. And adjusting to the decline. Upon reaching La Crosse, the old rail route had been given to roadways and the trail shared the road as it headed west to Halifax county. The trail through Brodnax also shared the road. La Crosse is adjacent to South Hill as well developed freeway exit community along I-85. I stayed the night at one of the Bada Book Bada Boom hotels. In the morning, I rode into the old part of town, which seems to have fared well in the presence of big box stores near the freeway. I got a ride to my car from a person who picks up customers of Enterprise Car Rental. I enjoyed her company on the trip. She was a native of the region. In retrospect it was a wasted opportunity to pick her brain on regional pride and politics, but the conversation took its own natural course. She certainly isn't eager to leave or badmouth her home. Back in my car I stopped briefly in Alberta, a less commercial freeway intersection with a branch of the Community College system and small depressed downtown. I got directions to a church whose pastor had come from Charlottesville. I didn't meet the pastor, but photographed the church for friends up this way. There was a sign there about a ruse which led to the capture of a Union raiding party during the civil war.
I had come down through Nottoway, which is not in the Fifth district. There the highway follows an active rail line and the towns show the prosperity that brings. Modest, but substantial. Going home, I stayed in the Fifth sort of randomly, but followed Jeb Stuart highway for quite a while. That will remain such, I'm sure, long after some resolution is reached about Confederate monuments in Charlottesville and Richmond. When I reached US 15 I headed north, stopping at Fishing Pig along the way, a Farmville restaurant with a newly opened franchise in Waynesboro that I'd been wanting to visit since first planing bike routes 5 years ago. It's good to have bitten the bullet and finally hit the road.
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