Day 59 – Dogs and Hills - and the Kindness of Strangers

Another perfect weather day: temp in 70’s, low humidity, and little wind.  Sunshine all day.  I biked 79.1 miles from just east of McKee, KY to Emmalena, KY.

Dogs were my concern today, and appropriately so.  It started out rough.  I had not gone two miles down the road this morning and I came upon a dog.  He was in a fenced in yard.  I breathe a sigh of relief.  As I ride by, he slowly gets up, slowly walks to the gate.  At that point I realize the gate is open and at that point he charges me.  I didn’t have enough momentum to out run him.  I tried yelling at him to stop.  Finally I fired the pepper spray in his direction.  Didn’t hit him directly (that is my last resort), but enough to get him to stop.

Not more than another four miles down the road two large black lab-looking dogs snuck out from behind a house and came at me as I passed.  Again, I did not have the momentum to out run them.  I tried to shout them down, but they wouldn’t let up.  Finally a couple indirect shots of mace stopped them.

For the next 60 miles I had no encounters.  But, my dog radar remained on red alert.  There were dogs.  Mean looking dogs.  Loud angry sounding dogs.  Fortunately they were all chained or behind fences.  I thought maybe I had this dog problem behind me.  Then two more encounters as the day was ending.  One of them required a direct shot of pepper spray as he charged straight at me.  I hate doing that.  It is not the dog’s fault.  I am completely perplexed by the type of person who owns dogs like that and doesn’t contain them.  And I also find it strange that the problem is concentrated in eastern Kentucky.  Bikers I have met coming from the east warned me of the dog problem in this area, and that is indeed the case.  I can’t wait to get this behind me – it is putting a damper on the journey.

A nice distraction from the dog problem was hills.  The hills I enjoy.  At this point I need to pause and explain that I really don’t know what defines a hill versus a mountain.  I assume there is some technical explanation.  But after the height of the mountains out west it is hard to call what I am climbing now anything but hills.  Today’s hills rise up 500 to 1,000 feet and they are steeper than the mountains (as steep as a 12% grade today).  They are also much more challenging than the mountains.  Whereas climbing the western mountains was a challenge due to their height, there would usually only be one or two or three a day.  The hills I climbed today just keep coming one right after another.  In fact today, I climbed a total elevation of 6,175 feet.  That beats the previous daily record by almost 900 feet!  Also, this was the fourth day in a row of climbing over 5,000 feet.  Prior to this run of four days there have been only three other days the entire trip I have climbed more than 5,000 feet.  In reality, the western mountains were a good warm up for the current hills.  I love how things work out.

One final story from today. As I was nearing the end of today's bike ride, I stopped beside the road to text Jill my location and coordinate a pick-up. As I toiled away on my phone I heard a loud truck coming up behind me. I turned to see an old red pick-up backing up (on the wrong side of the road) toward me. He had his arm out the window and he was waving something. Now what? I had just dealt with the last dog of the day and my irritation level was high. What does this guy want? As he got closer, I noted he held a map in his hand. "Is this yours?" he asked. It was indeed my map. I have no idea where or when it fell out of my pocket. He had seen it on the shoulder a ways behind me, stopped to pick it up, and then backed up to ask if it was mine. I can't imagine how I would get through the rest of the trip without that map. I thanked him and his girlfriend profusely. We small talked for a while - they were very interested in my journey. I thanked him again and went on my way. And just like that, I went from disillusioned about dogs to thankful for the kindness of strangers.

One of the roads biked today.

Another road biked today.  Note the rocky sidewalls.

A rest stop after a strenuous climb.