BOB's Day 10 - POSTCRIPT

POSTCRIPT Wednesday 11 October

Today I had to determine whether I had Covid or not. A RAT quickly determined that I had!

So I loaded up the bike one final time for the short dash to Roanake airport and the waiting rental car.  It was 8 miles of suburban traffic, quite different from that experienced in the past few days.  The first 5 miles were along good old US11, again two lanes with courteous drivers and some road works, where I was able to ride inside the barrels and thus completely separated from traffic.  Two turns later and I was within sight of the airport; an uphill to the tunnel under the runway slowed me somewhat but the tunnel itself was flat and had a wide shoulder.  It was noisy though!  A pedestrian walkway from my route to the terminal saved me a few hundred metres of cycling and soon I was in the car rental facility and checking out my car, a Toyota Highlander.

It was with a feeling of relief that I unhooked my panniers and slung them in the car.  With both rows of rear seats in the down position, the vehicle easily swallowed up my bike and all my gear.

 There was an inbuilt GPS which simplified an already uncomplicated route:  right onto I581N for a few miles, left onto I81S for quite a few hours, then right again onto I40W for not quite so many hours.  A couple of breaks and a 1-hour gain from changing time zones helped the drive go well, and after around 8 hours on the interstates, I took busy local roads to get to Bruce’s home in Hendersonville.

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