Monday’s ride took me through lightly wooded areas, with signs of imminent development. I stopped at the junction of highways 656 and 637, which must have been a meadow in the middle of the woods at one time. Bulldozers had razed it, evidently to make way for a small shopping center. I took a picture of the place for posterity.
656 is now SR-656 = sliding hill rd, and 637 is now VA-637 = Atlee Station Rd
According to my map, Mechanicsville was the ideal stopping place for the night. It was late in the day by the time I reached the town, which turned out to be nothing more than a suburb. A local confirmed that there was no motel, nor any campground. As much as I hated to stay in big cities, I was compelled to continue on to Richmond.
Richmond was one of those cities that showed up even on a fairly undetailed map of the United States. It was big. And dirty. I saw more glass on the streets there than in East LA. There was a lot of run-down housing, and a number of people on the street who clearly didn’t even live in that. From what I saw, the great majority of the city was Black.
I asked a man where the motels were, and he told me that they weren’t concentrated in any particular area. He knew about the Holiday Inn (which I had already noticed), but didn’t know about any other places, except for a “fleabag” called the Central Motel.
I went for the fleabag. It took a while to find it.
The motel’s office was like a drive-up bank teller’s. It had bullet- proof glass, and a metal drawer for passing money and papers. I asked the man if there were any vacancies.
“Got any ID?” he responded.
Assuming that this meant yes, I put my driver’s license in the drawer, which he examined several times, comparing the picture with me. He put a registration card in the drawer and pushed it back to me.
I had to ask several times to ascertain whether he would take VISA or not, and was finally surprised to find that he did. I put my VISA in the drawer, and he called up for confirmation. This was the first place on the whole trip that had ever actually called my card in.
The room certainly earned the title, “fleabag.” The carpet was greasy, and the flow in the toilet was so low, two flushes were needed. And of course, there were my friends the cockroaches. Thank goodness they were only the tiny indoor variety.
That night, someone was murdered in Richmond. No news to the locals.