Day 1 (April 30th)

I didn't leave til about 6pm Monday. Tying up loose ends and generally freaking out. But once I finally got on the road and starting listening to the Beastie Boys I got pretty relaxed and stoked.
Going south towards 85, I had to down 95 first for about 35 minutes. This means I passed Chester, home from ages eight to eighteen, and next I passed through Colonial Heights, home from ages 2 and a half to eight, and then through Petersburg to 85. It's sappy but I felt like I was traveling backwards through my past into the future.

Anyway, then I stopped at the Pamplin Park exit, fueled up, got a Dr. Pepper and a Blowpop, accidentally left with the bathroom door locked from the inside, and chatted on the phone with a friend who will be in Las Vegas as I'm passing through.
45 minutes down. 48-ish hours to go.
In Rawlings, VA there was nothing but a huge gas station with a smoking lounge. I met a mute and blind guy who was dressed like a classy baller, red bandana and suit coat and sweet kicks, etc etc, and kept playing Michael Jackson tunes on the jukebox. Clearly he staked out the lounge daily because everybody who passed through chatted him up in a sort of routine manner. He bought me a pizza and then I had to tell him I was vegan. Pizza rejection is always tough because I do love fun a lot, but this time was THE HARDEST. We could have had a cute date right there in the smoking lounge in the gas station in Rawlings. Dammit.
I entered NC, stopped at a wafflehouse in Henderson, played some country classic jukebox jams, rode my bike into the town and explored, and snapped some pictures. I could see that the town was really suffering, with most buildings shut down and all the stores advertising big blowout sales despite being mostly empty of merchandise inside. I sat down at a picnic table on the main road and watched zero cars pass for an hour. I thought Richmond was small but 4 days into my trip, I have discovered that I am wrong. In Henderson I had just begun accommodating the perspective of not crowded. I have been absorbed in Richmond for too long. American country has a lot more to offer than I gave it credit for.
So I looked up a statistic. As of 2000, 166,215,889 citizens live in 153 American urbanized areas that have populations over 200,000. That's 58.274 percent of people living in cities like Richmond, within the city limits.
Wikipedia says that as of 2008, 82% of people live in cities and suburbs, making the US highly urbanized. But I don't think the suburbs count really, and that is including cities with populations as low as 2,500 people, calling them "urban clusters". So to me anyway, that is a misleading statistic. My high school had 2,000 people in it. That is not a city. I'm sure the requirements are complicated or globally standardized or whatever but bottom line is almost half, or roughly 40 percent of Americans, live in cities smaller than Richmond. I'm trying to meet them!! Anyway the country is cool. This is getting boring. Peace yall