Abigail DeLashmutt, our fearless correspondent, has embarked on an epic journey across Virginia’s Piedmont in a tour of the Journey Through Hallowed Ground. Check out the previous installment of “The Tour de Piedmont” here.

By Abigail DeLashmutt

It’s the eve of the Tour de Piedmont; I spent my day purchasing s’mores ingredients, unearthing moth-eaten sleeping bags, and getting a primer on how to shift the gears of my bicycle in the parking lot of Plum Grove Cyclery in Leesburg. While a real cyclist demonstrated, using extremely simple words, how to make it “easier” or “harder” to pedal, all I could wonder was “Is it too late to start blood doping?”

Today my four team members and I launch our four day bike trip down the Journey Through Hallowed Ground starting from Point of Rocks, Maryland, the northernmost point of our Virginian route. While I’ve been ransacking Chez DeLashmutt in Loudoun County for essential equipment, my fellow team members have prepared in their own ways. Brette and Harvey have squandered their energies inventing slogans for a team t-shirt that I am repeatedly forced to reject (How do you like “Riding on top of Virginia”? I don’t know what that means either, but it’s out). Jay, the only member of the team with any proper biking experience, is the Scotty of this enterprise, and has been patiently explaining to me the principles of roadside bike repair. Oliver has been peppering me with increasingly hysterical equipment questions, especially regarding how many tire tubes I intend to carry. (None. Ha!).

Planning is not my forte. Neither is biking for that matter, but regardless, I am incredibly excited about our trip. We’re spending four days cycling from Taylorstown, Virginia to Charlottesville, stopping at vineyards, B&Bs, campgrounds, historic homes and museums along the way. What are you doing this weekend? If you don’t have plans, feel free to borrow from my surplus: We’re going to be hitting five festivals in the next three days, starting tomorrow with the Waterford Fair. On Saturday we’ll visit The Plains’ “A Day in the Plains” Festival, and the Remington Fall Festival. On Sunday we’ll hit the Culpeper Harvest Days Farm Tour, and the Fall Fiber Festival of Virginia at Montpelier. Come out and see us! We’ll be the five twenty–somethings in padded shorts hopped up on cotton candy. And if Oliver tries to hitch a ride from you, please do not give him one.

P.S. Was that a Star Trek reference, you may have asked yourself? Yes, it was.