Four States, One Day!

I pack and check over my bike in the morning. My next set of roads is simple: 236, the road that I turn onto after leaving Sarah's neighborhood to US 50, all the way west into Ohio, then to 32 right into Cincinnati and to my aunt and uncle's neighborhood. Of course, 236 is miserable for a long time. It takes awhile to get away from the urban guts of suburbia, and of course, the way is convoluted. I see a sign for 50 pointing to my right at one point in traffic, so I follow it, even though I know the map showed me staying on 236 until the two roads run into each other. Sure enough, the road I turned onto does lead to 50, but only after it takes me twenty minutes to move a half mile. And once I do start moving again, I see it would have been faster to stay on 236 when I notice where it merges into 50. What a pain in the ass. I can't believe how unnecessarily complicated people make roads sometimes. It drives me nuts because I hate wading through unnecessary traffic, and I hate wasting time when I have a lot of ground to cover. 50 is a nice road though, and if I wanted to, I could take it west across the entire country, but that would be backtracking. Some of the towns I pass through on 50 are picturesque Virginia towns with quaint, compact downtowns that I slowly drive through, surrounded by rolling hills with sturdy white fences going this way and that across them to pen off horses. Some towns I drive through suck and the signs for 50 lead you in every direction but what seems to be the fasted way, and I have to drive past bland industrial buildings or down a hill one way just to turn and go right back the same way nearly. The towns get farther apart slowly, and the hills get bigger. I am starting to get into the mountain country of West Virginia. I start seeing warning signs for curves and steep grades, and I know I am in for some fun like I have no had since I was going through the desert hills of southeastern California, or even earlier on Route 1. There are shady trees along the road which keep me cool as I bend and zoom up and down the mountains. I stop for lunch and gas in a township on the top of a hill that I can't find on my map, and a little girl at the pizza place I eat at keeps asking her mommy about "that stranger." No doubt this is a small town. I briefly pass into Maryland before I am done with West Virginia, and I know that geography doesn't recognize states or political boundries, but it seems like it because the short stretch in Maryland is more beautiful than anything just before or after it. Here the farmland has a different yellow in the fields, which roll off in all sorts of directions, and there are tall silos and red barns tucked off of turns and dips in the highway. It's like a short drive through a postcard. As the evening is approaching, I need to pull off for gas in Parkersburg. I am dangerously close to empty according to my trip odometer, and I miss the first exit where I can see there are the standard fast food restaurants and gas stations of a busy highway exit, so I take the next exit which brings me into downtown. I drive around about four blocks before I realize there are no gas stations here, and I navigate my way toward the first exit I missed and manage to get to a gas station before I run dry. I have only actually ran out of gas twice in the past eight-thousand plus miles, but that is enough for me. I get back on the highway and follow the signs for 50 but the highway I am on soon ends in construction, sending me and anyone else dumb enough to drive this far off on an exit. I am about to get pissed off at more inept sign posting until I see a sign for 50 at the bottom of the exit. Then I do get pissed off when I see it points me right back onto the same highway but in the other direction. Then I see signs for 50 East, which I have no interest in, and it's not until farther on that I see signs going west. I get off and monkey around in traffic through some congested part of town, only to realize that up there in the distance, at the light, is a sign for 50 and I am in the wrong lane. I could just work my way in, but I decide not to be a dick and just stay in my lane which goes to the right, planning on pulling a U-turn, and getting myself on track again. Of course, when I go right, it puts me right on a bridge back into West Virginia. At the other end of the bridge there is a toll booth. I hate this goddamn town. I pull a U-turn in front of the toll booth and gun it back over the bridge in a bad mood, and finally get back on 50 going west.
Dusk is falling when I get off 50 onto 32. This is not a bad road. It is wide, empty, and straight and in good condition for the most part. This is the final stretch of over one hundred miles to Cincinnati, and I just drive and space out and lose myself in my thoughts, and whenever I look down at the odometer to get a sense of time and distance, I am always surprised how little of both has gone by. There isn't much in the way of scenery, so I just sing songs to myself and drive until I start to get drowsy, at which point I stop at a gas station for a snack and an energy drink to keep me up, even though it will probably cause me some cancer down the road. After a lot of road has gone by, I am approaching Mt. Orab when I am getting low on the gas again. I pull off and fill up my tank and top it off. I fit in almost tenth of a gallon more than my tank supposedly holds, and I am lucky I filled it when I did. I call up my relatives, and get the exact directions to their house. It is nearly twelve hours since I left Alexandria, and well over five hundred miles. Not my longest day, but it's right up there.