Let There Be Flight

One month ago, just outside of Montauk. That was when I last used my tent. I don’t know what’s harder to believe – that it’s been a month since I used my tent, or the fact that Montauk was a month ago. Either way, my blog doesn’t lie (much) and I just looked back over my entries and confirmed that I last used my tent on September 11th.

Despite the month long absence of tenting, last night’s return to the tent was good. It didn’t hurt that the weather cooperated fully. It’s October and I barely needed a sleeping bag. That fact was not lost on me, nor taken for granted.

I woke up early this morning but well rested. I also woke with very little idea of what my plan for the day would be. Where would I go? What would I do? Where would I stay? I can’t be sure, but I think I may have heard someone in the distance singing “Que Sera, Sera”. Or not. Anyway, I pretty much anticipated my day going one of two ways. One would have me hang gliding over the North Carolina dunes. The other would not. Spoiler Alert: It was the latter.

Before I embarked on that potential adventure, I had to take care of some minor business – in the form of a bank machine. Finding the bank machine was easy. Making a withdrawal, on the other hand, has raised a potential problem in that I couldn’t actually make a withdrawal. Even though my card is supposed to work here. I see long phone calls with my bank in the near future. And I’ll be calling collect!

With the money issue unresolved, I turned my focus to hang gliding – a much more pleasant thought. The lessons in question are offered by Kitty Hawk Kites in Nags Head – about 18 km away. That would be my next stop.

The ride along the coast was once again very easy and before I knew it I was riding beside the very large dunes of Jockey’s Ridge State Park. This would definitely be worth checking out. But first, I had to inquire about gliding. Most of my gliding experience has been with winch towing and aerotowing. My experience with foot launches is limited to my lesson at Lookout Mountain last March. Based on this, I was going to have to sign up for the beginner lesson course. And they were fully booked for the day. So, before signing up for one of tomorrow’s courses I decided I’d wander over to the dunes to see the current course in action. To make a long story slightly less long, I decided not to sign up. But the dunes were very impressive.

With hang gliding no longer on the table as a possible activity I needed a new plan. It was approaching noon and I felt like that was too late to head out on another 100 km trek. As much as I dislike backtracking, I decided I would take a leisurely ride back to last night’s campground. This ended up being a good decision.

Along the way back, I stopped at the Wright Brothers National Memorial. If I wasn’t going to fly today then at least I would visit the site where powered flight originated. And I have to say the site was very inspiring. I can only imagine the excitement they must have felt during those initial flight attempts. After wandering around the site for about 90 minutes, I really wanted to fly. But since that wasn’t really an option, I got back on the bike and hit the road again.

I should probably mention that the North Carolina weather has been absolutely beautiful since my arrival. It was sunny and mild when I woke up this morning and the temperature rose steadily with the sun. By 1:00 it was a beautiful 28 degrees (that’s 82F). By 4:00 it was still warm but storm clouds were starting to form. I’m not going to lie, that offered some motivation to get back to my bike and get moving.

The Wright Brothers’ Memorial is a fairly large site so it takes a bit of time to wander around. As you might expect, the first rain drops started to fall as I was about as far from my bike as I could possibly be. Realizing there was nothing I could do I just continued my walk – as more rain fell. Fortunately, it was a relatively quick shower which left behind clear skies again. Or so I thought.

I was back on my bike about 15 minutes later and, after a quick photo stop at the sculpture of the 1903 Glider, I was on my way back to the campground. Despite the short ride that remained, I still managed to work up a bit of a sweat. Did I mention it was 28 degrees? With the sun still beating down I decided to stop in at 7-Eleven for a frozen drink. When I came out of 7-Eleven everything had changed. I don’t know how. The sun was gone. Replace with dark – very dark – storm clouds. How did I not see them before? Clearly, that was irrelevant. What WAS relevant was that I was 2.8 km from the campground and the weather didn’t care if I made it there wet or dry. I, on the other hand, very much preferred the dry option. I wasted no time getting back on the road.

I pedalled. I pedalled until my muscles burned and my veins pumped battery acid. Then I pedalled some more. (Yes, that’s almost a movie quote). The whole time I was pedalling I was considering my options – most of them dependant upon me beating the rain. My hope was that I could get back to the campground, set up my tent and get everything inside before what seemed to be an inevitable downpour. If that didn’t work out I would head directly to the covered area near the washrooms.

I arrived at the campground and I was still dry. So far so good. Rather than stop in at the office to pay, I opted to set up my tent right away. This was made significantly more challenging with the high winds that joined the party. In hindsight, I probably should’ve staked the tent down first. But, in my defence, the wind wasn’t a factor initially. I’m not going to lie, putting the fly on the tent was not pretty and at one point I just barely caught my tent before it had a chance to do its best Wright brothers imitation. With the tent assembled and finally staked down, the rain started to fall. I grabbed the bags off my bike and tossed them in the tent, before racing into the campground office. Two minutes later (I’m not kidding) the downpour started. A serious downpour. A downpour that would last for about 15 minutes while I took shelter in the office.

When the rain finally passed I considered firing up my stove and making some dinner. However, I wasn’t completely convinced that the rain was gone for good. Nor was I convinced that the wind would allow my stove to be remotely effective. A night of fasting was looking more and more likely.

At the moment, I’m hoping I’ll still be here in the morning. To say that my tent is flapping in the wind would be a severe understatement. The downpour from earlier in the afternoon has been followed up by very strong winds. I’d say “hurricane-like” winds but Carolina actually gets hurricanes and I’m reasonably confident that those winds would be much worse. Oh, and it’s raining again. Looks like I will be fasting after all – well, once I finish this bag of Snack Mix.

Today’s totals:
Distance travelled: 46.82 km
Time on bike: 2:13:14
Maximum speed: 39.17 km/h
Average speed: 21.06 km/h