In my book, any day you wake up to the smell of bacon is a good day. I came downstairs to find that Fran had put together enough bacon, homemade biscuits, scrambled eggs, and homefries to feed me and probably most of the town of Monongah. While I was eating, Bob arrived to install my new brake pads. It turned out they were the wrong kind, so he went home, rummaged around in his basement, found a new set, and brought them over. See what I mean about hospitality?

The rain and thunderstorms that had been raging all morning miraculously cleared up by noon to reveal a cool, sunny, windy, day, perfect for biking, which pleased me greatly since I was eager to get some serious miles in after my recent days of playing in watefalls and getting lost. I followed Bob's instructions and followed a combination of bike paths and roads for most of the day, until I reached the start of another bike trail in the tiny, unincorporated town (there are zillions of these in West Virginia) of Wolf Summit. There, I took a nap.

In the month I have been on the road, I have perfected the art and science of the roadside nap. The key is finding a clearing with some decent privacy, just so passing motorists do not see you and think you are a dead body and call the police. I take off my shoes, pull out my tiny camping pillow, curl up, and pass out. Thirty minutes later I wake up and, no matter how tired I was prior to the nap, I always feel completely charged up and super excited to ride. It is a wonderful thing, totally worth sacrificing a half hour of daylight for.

Perhaps because of this post-nap energy boost, I decided not to take the bike path after all. The path would take me due west, and I'd have to get off it and go due south to get to Charleston, basically forming a right angle. Instead I thought I'd be clever and bike along the hypotenuse of this triangle, thus shaving off dozens of miles, by venturing into a network of tiny backroads through more unincorporated towns.

I know, you're expecting me to say that it was horrible, that there were monster hills or crazy rednecks with guns. But, no, it was absolutely gorgeous and I was quite happy with my choice. These tiny roads are like capillaries: just large enough for one blood cell, or in this case one car, to squeeze through at a time, which is probably fine since I barely saw any cars at all, let alone two at one time. These are the smallest roads that the state still bothers to pave. Every side road was gravel or dirt, with names that used every possible combination of the words "fork," "rock," "lick," "salt," and "run." Fork Lick Road. Salt Run Road. Rock Fork Road. Lick Run Road. And so on.

And miraculously, though they take you through all kinds of majestic rolling hills, the roads themselves are graded and switchbacked so nicely that you don't feel the hills at all. Thus I sailed happily along this winding ribbon of aged asphalt past houses with so many chickens, pigs, deer, and other fauna milling about that I invented a new game called "Lawn Ornament or Animal?" Turns out I'm terrible at this game, and often mistook a wooden cutout for a pig, or a real deer for a statue of one.

I was having a great ride and felt like I could have easily gone for another 20 miles or so had the daylight not been fading fast. I assumed that in this land of vast grassy expanses surrounding each of the few houses it would be no trouble at all to find a spot to camp, and I was right. I knocked on a door, asked an elderly lady named Avanelle in a turquoise nightgown with a puffy hairdo if it was okay to camp in the field behind her house. After a brief dialogue ("Biking to California? Are you crazy?" "Yes, probably a little, but I promise I'm harmless.") she assented and I happily trudged my bike up the hill and started setting up camp.

It never once occurred to me, with all my family and friends advising me to be wary of strangers, that perhaps the strangers might be wary of me. I had cooked dinner and was reading by headlamp in my tent when I heard voices down by the house, followed by footsteps coming up the hill and a polite male voice. "Ma'am?" I unzipped my tent and said hello to a man who introduced himeself as Joe, Joe Quarter.

"Avanelle just sent me up here to make sure you were okay. That's Avanelle for you, she worries about everything."

I immediately realized that Joe had been sent to make sure I was "okay" in two different senses: "okay" meaning I'm safe and sound, and "okay" meaning I'm a decent human being who wasn't going to slit Avanelle's throat during the night. I tried to present as respectable and friendly appearance as possible. Joe lit up when he found out my last name is Merriman. He'd recently found some diaries of his great-grandfather's in which he described coming to the aid of a friend (also named Merriman) who'd been shot in an argument. Joe's great-grandfather drove Mr. Merriman all the way up to the hospital in Salem in a horse and buggy, left the team of horses there for him, and walked many miles back to Big Isaac. The last sentence in the entry was "I am tuckered out."

I guess Joe decided I was "okay" on both counts, because he finally bade me a good night, headed back down the hill, consulted with Avanelle briefly, and was on his way. The next morning Avanelle came up the hill as I was cooking my oatmeal in a turquoise suede jacket with lots of fringe (Avanelle likes turquoise). She handed me an envelope with her address written on it so I could send her something when I reach California, and asked if she could take a picture of me in my "cute little tent."

To confirm my suspicions of her suspicions, she told me she'd called around to a few of the other dozen or so citizens of Big Isaac last night to discuss my presence on her lawn. The neighbors asked a bunch of questions ("Is she clean?" "Does she look like white trash?") and offered several hypotheses, suggesting that I was either a runaway teen or fixing to rob the place. "But I told them that just don't make horse sense. If you was a runaway, you'd be hiding out in the woods, and if you was gonna rob me, you'd be pretty stupid to knock on my front door first."

Good old Avanelle.