Day 5 - Mineral, VA to White Hall, VA (71 miles)

Woke up to the rain coming down a bit just as I was taking down my tent. During my sleep the night beforehand, I heard the train coming by and I thought that I had accidentally setup my tent on the train tracks. It took a solid minute before I realized that was crazy. We started taking off towards Charlottesville. I was feeling great about riding until I hit a bump in the spot betweeen the road and a bridge and my rear tire went flat. Boo. It was split right by the valve. At which point, I pulled out my one spare tube to find that the tube wouldn't hold more than 60 psi of air... maybe I should have picked up new tubes instead of the random one sitting in my car. I was finally able to get my other spare tube on the bike. The climb up past Monticello was rough, but I was replenished by some barbeque sandwich and sweet tea in town. We kept on rolling past to White Hall to camp at the base of the mountain. We met some pleasant folks painting (Virginia and Meg), grabbed a meatloaf sandwich at the country store and looked at the hills we were going to climb the next day. I setup my tent and prepared for the rainstorm. The rain was pretty light until 3:45 where it started to pickup. Rain was staying out, but the lightning from the storms that were causing the tornados were directly passing through. Crack... a few seconds, boom, Crack... two seconds, boom. Crack... one second, boom. We were staying in the yard behind a community building and when it turned to Crack.. boom! I ran into a shed by the building that stored their water heater. I shivered at waited out the lightning for half an hour. I came out laughing, and Dustin and Abe were doing ok in the manger (you know, like the type Jesus would stay in). I toweled a bit of water in my tent and then I set a few things to dry in the shed. I laid back down and went back to sleep. No tornadoes, no problem.