In the morning, just as I was pedaling out of Christianburg, a beat-up old brown pickup matched speed with me, and the woman inside called out something. I couldn’t make out what it was the first time, but it sounded friendly, so I prepared my usual list of answers for people who talked to me from cars: “About ten weeks.” “4500 miles” “Florence, Oregon.” “It’s not really that hard.”

The woman shouted, “Excuse me, do I know you?”

“Pardon me?” I answered, turning my head. My jaw dropped. It was Stephanie! We both pulled onto a side street to talk.

Stephanie seemed excited and gave me a big hug. It turned out that she worked in Christianburg, and lived in nearby Ellett. She recapped her adventure. She had toured in Colorado, got caught in a lightning/hailstorm on a 12,000-foot pass, went into Arkansas, and finished up on the Mississippi River, where her boyfriend picked her up. Steph said that the road ahead was an exciting downhill for miles.

I wanted to see Natural Bridge, which was hailed all over Virginia as being the “8th wonder of the world.” I couldn’t locate the thing, or even the park where it was supposed to be, so I stopped at a campground for the night.

I have a vague memory of camping under a shelter, and seeing a pea-sized tick-like bug crawling across the concrete. It wasn’t a spider. I put a drop of repellent on it, but it didn’t die.