Surprise! Blacksburg is At the Top of a Mountain

At began to rain the moment Geoff and I brought our bikes and panniers outside as we prepared to depart from Fleda's house to Blacksburg, VA.  That sounds like literary exaggeration, but I swear to you, uncanny as it was, the rain began as soon as we found ourselves outside preparing to mount our bikes to leave.  Take that as you will.  After a week and a half in Roanoke I was mentally prepared to head out regardless of what weather was thrown at us.

But before I go any further, I feel it is appropriate to take a moment in recognition of our remarkable hostess, the benevolent Ms. Fleda Ring.  I believe that thanks to the generosity that she showed to me and Geoff, I am forever indebted to the universe.  Since it is unlikely, given the randomness of life, that I will be granted the opportunity to repay Fleda for her kindness, I instead will spend the rest of my days trying to pay forward her generosity.  It is a burden I will gladly bear.

I won't divulge too much about Fleda, because from what little you can learn about a person in a week, I certainly learned that she values her privacy.  But I did find Fleda's artwork and her lifestyle interesting enough to share.

I know nothing about art, so I won't elaborate on style, media, themes, or anything else that will just end up making me look like a poseur.  I can say that Fleda's art reflects her personality.  It is very open and genuine, revealing to its audience an image very easy to grasp and comprehend.  Yet in all her work, even the most cursory look beyond the apparent external image reveals a depth of meaning and experience.  And here I'll stop because art critic I'm not and more words will be fluff and likely miss the true intent of Fleda's art.

Despite all I've said about Fleda - her hosting, introducing us to influential and interesting people in the community and generally entertaining us - I haven't mentioned her better half: Missy. Though Missy seemed to be more fond of Geoff, I was still quite enamored by her feisty personality.

Missy had her own misadventures in our presence. I misgauged both her sense of smell and audacity and the result was her getting into my panniers, digging out my bags of food and devouring a feast of cliff bars, fiber bars and trail mix.  Most intelligent people would learn from this experience, because, after all, what is more embarassing than being outsmarted by an animal.  However, this person underestimated this clever pup and took what in hindsight was clearly inadequate steps to conceal his food.  So there was round two of dog feast, which this time also included a Little Debbie Chocolate Brownie. Even with the embarrassing ravaging of my food supplies, Missy made Fleda's home a more loving space.  I hope she doesn't miss Geoff too much.

You may wonder why I titled this post as I did and then went on to talk about something else entirely.  The title of the post explains why I am forced to type this with the lights off. Geoff passed out as soon as his body hit the mattress at roughly 9:30pm.  Our first ride, after entirely too much time 'resting' wasn't the easy 40 mile trip we had planned for.  It turns out Blacksburg is at the top of a mountain.  Also, taking a 12-mile detour through the hills of southwest Virginia was inadvisable.  Lets hope Geoff gets a better handle on the GPS unit for tomorrow's ride.