Jan 11, 5:00 PM.  We spent last night on Wells Road (Norton, VA), named after Adam Wells’ family, which has lived there for generations.  The house sits by an old log cabin where Adam’s ancestors were born and raised, right off the Guest River.  It’s a beautiful river in between 2 ridges, and it would have been idyllic if it weren’t for the moutaintop removal mine at the headwaters of the Guest.  You could tell that their water supply had a lot of metals in it, even after it was filtered through conditioning tanks.  You could smell and taste the iron and sulfur.
 
This morning I woke up to the gentle sounds of Matt talking in his sleep:  “Dirty kitty, you need a bath.”  After a laugh, we got up and had an amazing breakfast (yes, I’m pretty sure I’ve gained weight) with pinto beans, cornbread, avocados, homemade hot pepper jam and scrambled eggs.  It was snowing, but it didn’t get cold enough last night for the roads to freeze over, luckily.
 
Adam gave us some info about how to see some real damage from mountaintop mining without adding too much mileage to the trip, so we took off up the Guest River Rd and climbed for miles up to the headwaters.  Adam was brave enough to ride up the first mountain with us.  Once we got past the houses, the climb was really pretty—but not for long.  Just as we were passing a section of the Guest with snow on the banks and snow in the trees, we got our first glimpse of a mountaintop removal mine.  And it was carnage....mountains flattened and the valleys ‘filled’ with the mountains’ ‘overburden’.  (Tell me again who these mountaintops were “burdening”?)  All in all today, we saw 17 valley fills—that’s 17 illegally destroyed streams.  This is what our petition aims to prevent.  You can download it and read it, but it basically asks EPA to redefine fill (to the old definition, before Bush changed it) to exclude “waste,” and to make it explicit that mining “overburden” is a waste.
 
Adam turned around to ride back, and we descended off the other side.  We were all sick; there was no hope or joy there at all.  After a chilly descent, we turned north on a bigger road, and the snow turned into sleet.  We climbed for a few miles to the Kentucky border, where I won the second state line sprint.  Then I got a county and city line sprint on the descent.  Take that, Missy.  Since I started today with a 7-6 lead, I was up by 4.  I had a feeling that today would be the day to seal the deal!  But Missy was tenacious, and she took the next one.  She got the coveted Pikeville sprint, too.  Final tally after today:  10-8.
 
Just after the last sprint, we were surprised to see mine and Rebecca’s neighbors from Knoxville, returning from visiting relatives.  Seeing Phillip and Julianne really lifted our spirits after a long, cold, hard day of climbing.  There wasn’t a millimeter of flat ground on the entire leg today.  Now we’re at Wayne and Tracy Hancock’s house in Pikeville, warm and clean.  Wayne and Tracy are UT law alums, and they were gracious enough to host us on very short notice.  It’s a beautiful old house in a pretty little town.  A great finish to a great day.
 
-sam and missy

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