Less biking. More distance.
This biking thing is going better and better. I can actually feel that I’m having less trouble hauling my 25 kilo luggage around, keeping reasonable speeds no longer feels as if I’m climbing the Mont Ventoux 8 hours per day! Victory! As we would say in Dutch ‘De aanhouder wint’. 
I can actually say I’m a better biker. And the climate is getting more reasonable too: I no longer have to be on the bike at 6 in the morning to be able to get a few hours in there before excruciating heat. And to be fair, the whole getting up super early to exhaust myself on a bicycle was never really my thing. I enjoy taking my time in the morning, to take my time to wake up, maybe read a little bit, brew some coffee. I’m definitely not the kind of girl that can just get up, break down her tent and start biking like crazy again. But hey, distances of over a 100 km -praise the metric system!- per day now no longer seem like something only a professional rider could do. Victory!
Nothing is impossible until proven so. An important lesson I have learnt this week. Extremely last minute couchsurfing requests? – not a problem. Hitchhiking 600 km with a bicycle in one day? – Hard. But not impossible. Remind me of this in a couple of weeks when I’ll be struggling to find my first Big-Girl job: I hitchhiked 600 km with a bike. In one day. Finding a job should be a walk in the park now. 
I started this week in Charleston, and ended up in Washington DC. From Charleston it took me 2 
days and 2 flats to get to a little place called Surfside beach – I was kind of disappointed not to have seen any surfers there -, where I spent 2 nights with a lovely young family. Here I started realizing that I had to make a choice. Sell my bike, and be able to actually see Washington, and maybe Philadelphia. Or bike, suffer, and not see anything of the country at all. I chose to bike to Fayetteville, where I would sell my bike and continue my trip hitchhiking. But hey, plans change!
The next night I stay with Nick, on his wwoofing farm (www.wwoofing.com) in Tabor city. Nick is a self claimed ex-hippie -but to be fair, he still has a fair amount of hippie in him-, who invites volunteers into his house to help him in his organic farm, and in return they get to learn about organic farming. He tells me about a place called ‘South of The Border’, a tourist trap right off highway 95, and convinces me to try to hitchhike with my bike to DC. Why not? If it works, I would get to bike from DC to New York, and it would be truly amazing to actually bike into the Big Apple!
The next day I get to South of The Border at about half past 3 in the afternoon, I decide to give it a try for a couple of hours. No luck, people are not willing to take a smelly hitchhiker with a bicycle. Understandable. I camp out behind a church, and decide to give it another try the next morning, worse case scenario, I can always bike to Fayetteville and sell the bike there. At 12 I get thrown out of the gas station where I had been asking people for a ride. Auch. What to do?
I decide to give it one last shot, and actually stand on the ramp of the highway, in the hope that 
someone will pick me up! Bingo! 20 minutes later I’m on my way to Rocky Mount, a small town about a 150 miles north of where I was. From there I easily find a ride about 40 miles further. It’s already 4 o’ clock by then. Maybe I won’t make it to DC… I decide to try untill 6, and find a place to camp after that. 10 minutes before 6 I get picked up by … a 20 year-old chain smoking, gun carrying anglican priest -I really don’t know how to describe this person in any other way-. He drives around after work, because his parents won’t let him smoke by the house. He drives me past Richmond, just because.
After he drops me off at a truck stop, I don’t know what to do… it’s past 7, I should find a place to camp out. But on the other hand, I’m only about 150 km from DC. I could make it. And I did. I get a ride with a family of self-proclaimed gipsies, on their way to Washington. On the way, they make a quick stop. To get engaged. “It was perfect we ran into you”, they say, “now we have a photographer”. What a crazy perfect day. It ends with me, drinking a Leffe, in a Downtown DC apartment. Life isn’t all that bad.
So here I am. Enjoying the Capitol for a couple of days, before I hit the road again towards my final destination: New York City! I’ll make it. It will work out. It always does, as lang as I keep trying. 
thebyciclediaries 