Day 4- The ride toward Charlotte

Alas, the days are ticking by. After staying in a tent 5 nights in a row we were going to be getting to Charlotte and staying with Sharon's parents! It was going to be a good day.

As I traveled the roads got more and more flat.

Welcome to Hollis, North Carolina...

Here's a video of a ride down a hill.

I found some cows.... they made me happy!

This town was Lincolnton. I was pretty tired so I took a break by the courthouse and ate a granola bar. The small communities I drove through were awesome. Southern towns have a very unique layout.

Holy cow?! Those horns were crazy!

Ahh yes, a bike lane. Bike lanes are awesome for cyclists, helpful for motorists and ridiculously expensive for taxpayers! This is a whole other discussion!!! Anyway, as I approached the Charlotte area I got to ride on two really short bike lanes. They were so short I questioned why they had spent the money to even try? This lane lasted long enough for me to pull out my camera and take this shot.

This was a massive, and I mean MASSIVE indoor "flower farm." I suppose it was a greenhouse but I have not seen a greenhouse this big before in my life.

Driving north of Charlotte was crazy. I never actually cycled in Charlotte but came north through Huntersville. This was an area where the sag wagon helped a lot. The traffic was crazy and on the North Carolina DOT traffic flow map the road I went through on could see between 25 and 50,000 cars a day! Sharon came behind me with the van and helped encourage people to use the other lane as they passed me. It would have been an awesome blog video but I lacked the right mount for the GoPro (something that affected the whole trip!).  All that to say I have no video or pictures of the chaos. God was kind and I made it through unscathed. It was such a relief to get out of all the traffic I actually felt energized and knocked out an extra 10 miles for the day. While the traffic was crazy the drivers were kind. The next driving chaos would come when I rode into Wilmington... that was bad.

The weather was beautiful but as soon as I left the mountains it got HOT HOT HOT!

That took a while to blend off... lol.


Mountains- Check
Charlotte area: Check
Wilmington:  ...

Day 4 stats
Average Speed- 15.5
Maximum Speed- 40.7