Dan Casey

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By 10 a.m., a light mist that welcomed in Sunday had evaporated under the rising sun. The sky was still hazy and the road was mostly quiet. Then, as my wheels spun past Mason's Cove Elementary School, an idiot driver began leaning on the horn.

I was about two feet off the pavement's edge, a reasonable distance under any circumstance. The obnoxious honking continued. I moved over just a bit, and a blue-gray van whizzed past, the passenger side mirror missing my left elbow by half an inch. That was too close.

I gulped and gave the driver a one-finger salute. The van's brake lights popped on. As it stopped, I pulled around to the driver's side and rolled up to the front door. The jerk behind the wheel lowered his window.

"You're supposed to be over on the right!" he snarled.

"I was, you ass!" I shot back.

"Farther over, all the way over!" he shouted.

"No way! You need to go around me!"

"No I don't!"

"Yes you do!"

Our tantrums would have continued awhile, but the driver peeled off in a huff. He gave a wide berth to Dick Howard and Steve Smith, the two bicyclists up ahead. The confrontation left me shaking my head, wondering what his problem was.

Then it dawned on me: we were on Bradshaw Road. The infamous Bradshaw Road, where a handful of the natives once cheered the idea of shooting bicyclists like wild deer, or running them off the pavement for sport.

A venerable route

It was Dick Howard who lured me out for this ride, which began at the ungodly hour of 7 a.m. It's no secret that Howard, undisputed granddaddy of mountain biking in Southwest Virginia, indulges in a road ride now and then. His secret for biking in summertime's heat is simple: finish before 11 a.m. He promised this one would be cool -- and it was, in more ways than one.

We were joined by Steve Smith, an engineer from Salem, and Jim Palmieri, director of the science program at North Cross School. When Palmieri's not cycling or teaching, he's flying around in his hang glider or writing books about them.

Our ride was the venerable Bradshaw Loop, a roughly rectangular concoction of roads that wind through Roanoke County, Montgomery County and the city of Salem. It's one of the most popular Roanoke Valley rides in the 30-40 mile range, and by the time we were done, I understood why.

This ride has climbs, but no killers. Most of it is in the country, cow and emu (really!) territory. Even four-lane U.S. 460 west of Salem has that sparsely traveled rural-road feel early on a weekend morning. The ride's highlight is Bradshaw Road. That's because of a long, low-grade descent where you can spin out in your highest gear and feel like a champion.

The locals' wrath

Calling some of the regular drivers on Bradshaw impolite is kind of like saying Adolf Hitler was misguided. It's an enormous understatement. These people celebrate their unkindness to cyclists. They honk their horns, gun their engines, shout from their car or pickup truck windows. They brag about it in letters to the editor of The Roanoke Times. In the bicycling community, those rotten apples have given all the normal and nice folks out there a bad name.

There was a particularly long run of those nasty letters in the early 1990s. And judging by my own experience that recent Sunday morning, the anti-bike sentiments are still alive.

It started in October 1991 with Jackie Wimmer, a Roanoke County resident who believes adults don't belong on bikes. In her letter to the editor, she called cyclists "fools...yuppie little boys in their hot-pink nylon suits."

Then, Wimmer got really nasty.

"People move to rural areas to get away from these people and they should have enough common sense to know that we don't want them to follow us," she wrote. "There seems to be an overflow of two things in Bradshaw: One is deer, which we shoot. The other is cyclists, which we'd like to shoot!"

That started a war on the editorial pages, and it was followed by a community meeting, during which Wimmer quite sincerely asked a Roanoke County police officer if it was OK for drivers to intentionally hit bikers. About 15 other meatheads at that meeting actually cheered the question. Much to their chagrin, the answer was no.

A couple years later, Wimmer was back at it again. In a 1993 letter, she wrote that bicycle races were as boring as art shows. "The art doesn't do anything, it just looks funny," Wimmer wrote.

Enough said.

The route

We started at Green Hill Park on Duiguids Lane in Roanoke County, just west of Salem. We took a left on Duiguids and followed it out to West Main (U.S. 460), hung another left, and began a long ride out the highway.

Normally I shy away from four-lane highways. They attract too much traffic and the cars tend to go very fast, which vastly increases your odds of a serious injury should you get hit. But at 7 a.m. on a Sunday, U.S. 460 west of Salem is an exception. The traffic tends to be exceedingly light, and though a haze hung over the mountains and wisps of it drifted across fields, the road was clear. We were easily visible to the few cars that were there.

We passed a couple of Roanoke County industrial parks, coasted downhill past Dixie Caverns, then began a series of intermittent climbs as we headed into Montgomery County. Soon after we crossed a bridge over the Norfolk Southern railroad tracks and the Roanoke River, we took a right on North Fork Road.

North Fork is a meandering and narrow road that heads north alongside the North Fork of the Roanoke River, climbing a few small hills on the way. The very beginning of it off 460 is commercial, but it quickly gives way to pasture land and small homesteads. You may be able to catch some cows grazing along the right, next to the river.

A few miles down, keep your eyes on the right. Bradshaw Road is more of a fork toward the right than it is a sharp turn. Way up here in Montgomery County, it's narrow, and it starts out with a series of small up and down dips. You'll follow this road all the way until it dead-ends on U.S. 311, a good 15 or so miles. See if you can spy the emu pen on a farm on your right. But watch out for dogs. There are plenty of them, and not all are tied up or penned.

Dan Casey | The Roanoke Times

Steve Smith (left) and Dick Howard riding along delightful, lonely, Bradshaw Road.

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• Map of Bradshaw Road

About nine miles into Bradshaw, you'll come to the top of the low-grade descent. The next four or five miles are speedy ones. You'll want to pedal in top gear, because it'll be easy: 33-35 mph is easy here. You're on your way home. When you pass Masons Cove Elementary School, you're getting close to U.S. 311.

Take a right on U.S. 311. This is a dicey road, because it's two lanes, and the speed limit for much of the way is 55 mph. There's no shoulder. When U.S. 311 ends at a stoplight on Virginia 419, take a right. There are two grocery stores here, good places to catch a snack.

Go about 100 yards down 419 and hang your first left on Kessler Mill Road. This follows the Hanging Rock Trail, a packed-cinder greenway, back to Main Street in Salem. Take a left on Main, and then, at the McDonald's on the next corner, a right back onto 419.

Cross the railroad tracks and veer right onto Texas Street. Follow Texas about three blocks, and take a left on 4th Street. Follow 4th Street for eight short blocks and make a left on Union Street. Take Union across the Roanoke River, hang a right on Riverside, and follow it all the way back to where it ends in a T-intersection with Duiguids, right near Green Hill Park.

Getting there

To get to Green Hill Park by car, take West Main Street west out of Salem, past Wal-Mart and Kmart. Look for the Hardees on your left. Make a left on Duiguids at the second light past Hardees. Cross the railroad tracks, and Green Hill Park is on your right.

A few notes

This ride takes about three hours. Bring some food and plenty of water. There are precious few places to stop until you get to the intersection of 311 and 419, toward the end of the ride.

Dick Howard advises that anybody, no matter how experienced on a bike, is a fool to try to ride on U.S. 311 at any time other than early on a weekend morning. I think he's right.

Be careful of the dogs on Bradshaw. More than a few Roanoke Valley cyclists have suffered broken arms, wrists or collarbones after a canine collision out there.

Try to keep out of the cars' way on Bradshaw. Intentionally antagonizing unreasonable drivers is a good way to get yourself hurt, either at the hands of a weapon they might be packing or the two-ton weapon they're driving. Your bike weights less than 30 pounds, so the odds are against you in a collision.