Jan 15, 9:30.  Well, it's 13 degrees, and it won't be getting any warmer.  And, it's been snowing since we got up this morning.  All in all, a beautiful day in the mountains.  So far, we've made coffee and hovered around the wood stove, but now I am really stressing about what to wear today.  I've got some handwarmer packs, so they will help, but nobody really makes gloves warm enough for this kind of thing.  There are 2-3 inches of snow on the road here in the valley, and I have no doubt that there will be even more on the mountain.

The plan today is a little different than we had mapped out--a little harder and a little longer, but it will keep me off the main road (where the coal trucks are so bad).  We went up to Kayford Mountain yesterday, but since Larry wasn't there, we didn't get to see everything we had wanted to see.  So, I am riding over the mountain again today with some better directions.  But there's no way Matt can drive over that route, seeing as how we couldn't even make it up yesterday.  Matt will drive around on the bigger roads, and I will take the little dirt (read ice & 4-5" snow on top) road by myself.  This is also a bit stressful, because if something happens, there isn't any cell service.  But we've worked out the logistics, and Matt knows how to get back to the backside of the mountain in case I don't show up at the designated meeting place on the other side.

Buffin (the dog) is outside in the snow right now--just chilling out.  I wish I had that kind of insulation!

Jan 15, 8:45 PM.  Today was an emotional day.  I woke up worried about Rebecca (my fiancé) because she has been having pain in her leg that may or may not be related to an old back injury.  Then I looked at the weather, and I got worried about the day's logistics.  Then we got this message from Missy:


My ride home Wednesday night was nothing short of emotional. Leaving Sundial, WV, home of Larry Gibson's Kayford Mtn, was heart-wrenching. I am no longer sheltered from the world. The mountains give us life and shelter. The dream ends. I took for granted the mountains would always be there. Now, we need to give shelter to our mountains. Where will we take ourselves to heal the wounds the world gives us if our mountains are desecrated, gone. Forever. I can't seem to cry enough...and keep thinking that surely I made it up. But it is all too real.

I love you guys and the mountains from the bottom of my heart and back! Take care and please, please be careful. Stay warm, and keep your head on your shoulders :-)

Missy is right:  we really are connected to places like these (or the places that were here before).  We need to be attached to the places that nurtured us—the places that created our histories.  Without a sense of history, we are unmoored.  When we get through building our towers of Babel, we will all be scattered and confused.  You could say that many of us are already.
 
It was definitely a good thing that my snow tires arrived earlier than expected:  Rebecca sent them to Larry Gibson in Charleston, which is where we are tonight.  But he got them early and handed them off to someone who was headed for the Coal River Mtn Watch house, so I got them before today's leg.  If I hadn't had them, there would have been no riding today.  Providential, you might say.  So many things that could have gone wrong on this trip have gone right instead; the universe wants us to succeed.  And although Missy was gone, I had the sense today that I wasn't riding alone.  I know that so many people are hoping for our success, and we're on the right side of history.
 
The riding was hard, but I had dressed warmly enough.  My studded tires really gripped the snow and ice.  When you're on clean pavement, the studs make a droning noise, but when you hit ice, there is silence.  There was a lot of silent riding this morning.  I hit the climb to Kayford and rode up without any problems.  As long as I stayed seated, the tires were locked in.  I made the turn that we missed yesterday at the top, and within a couple minutes I was at the aptly named "Hell's Gate."  Nothing could have prepared me for what I saw, and the pictures don't do it justice.  I looked over the edge into a pit that was at least 400' deep, where a mountain used to stand that would have towered over 600' above me.  They have taken over 1000' feet of mountains and pushed them into the streams.  I had to get out of there quick:  not only because I was freezing (it was probably about 10 degrees and very windy), but because I couldn't stand to watch the dump trucks in the distance crawling all over the remains of the mountain like so many maggots.

I shook the snow from my shoes and headed down.  It wasn't long before the road turned to pavement again, and it was pretty clear of ice because they salt it for the coal trucks.  The trucks just kept coming, and I wondered how there could be so many.
 
I ran into Matt pretty soon.  He had driven around the long way because there's no way the car would have made it over the mountain.  I got on the road bike and made good time until my derailleur cable broke.  After a quick bike change, I was off again into a killer headwind and driving snow.  Yes, the temperature was still in the teens, too.  15 miles later, we were at Larry Gibson's house.  Larry is amazing.  He has been working to stop MTR since the mid 80s, and he even walked to Washington once to raise awareness—a trip much like my own.  He has so much passion.  He told us tonight that if you see what's going on here and realize how horrible it is and you don't try to stop it, you are complicit in the murder.  And that's no hyperbole.  "Coal kills," he tells us.  He would know:  he has buried many of his family members from coal-related diseases.
 
I got really frustrated trying to fix my bike, because Kleins have that infernal internal cable routing.  I couldn't fish the cable through even with a magnet.  Matt took over and got it, though, and it was running again in no time.  Hopefully I'll be able to ride it tomorrow, but there's been more snow and it's definitely not melting.
 
We had a great talk with Larry (who you can see in the video on the front page of the site).  We've been promised "the best biscuits" in the morning.  I have no doubt that they will be, and we'll need some encouragement to get out of bed.  It's supposed to get down to -3 tonight, with windchills of -20.  I am going to try to call the Mayor of Ansted (with whom we have an appointment tomorrow at 2) to push the appointment back to give it time to warm up a bit.  Optimistically, it may get up to 10 by the time we leave.
 
Well, we're off to the grocery store to restock for the rest of the trip.  We may not be able to update tomorrow, because that is the night we're supposed to camp.  We'll try, though, so check back.

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