locked

Assateague Island, Virginia, 2021

We thought we'd planned for every basic bike contingency. But there we were, dealing with a situation we had not even imagined, much less planned for.

In both 2020 and 2021, my husband and I went on pandemic-safe vacations on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. Despite having lived in Virginia my entire life, I had somehow never been to Chincoteague and Assateague. And since the Eastern Shore is just a few hours from our house, we could drive there and then rent a condo so that we’d be able to avoid people.

Even better, the Eastern Shore is a great place to bike because it’s just so flat. Once we got to Chincoteague for our first visit in 2020, we parked the car and went everywhere on two wheels, logging an average of 15 miles a day. It was terrific.

Since we had so much fun in 2020 — and because the Delta wave was spiking — we did it again in 2021. Along with our bikes, we packed a variety of supplies and tools, just in case. We would be biking on roads, gravel trails, and sandy paths, so we took an air pump, extra tubes, various tools, chain lubricant, and more.

Most of this stuff stayed in our rented house, but we did carry a few small things with us on our bikes. Chincoteague is a small island, so if we had a problem, we could theoretically walk back into town from the beaches.

When people talk about going to the beach at Chincoteague, what they really mean is going to the beaches of Assateague, which is a 37-mile-long barrier island that stretches north-south along the Delmarva Peninsula and protects Chincoteague from the Atlantic Ocean.

There are multiple beaches on Assateague, including some that are only accessible by bike or hike. There's one to the north, not too many miles from the Maryland border, that is remote enough that the beach is often deserted. And of course, that's where we were when we had a bike situation.

We got to the beach's trailhead and locked our bikes to the sturdy bike rack. My husband had forgotten his lock, so we shared my 6' lock, looping it through both bikes' frames and attaching it to the rack. We picked up our stuff and walked to the beach.

The beach was absolutely deserted and we had it all to ourselves. We settled in to enjoy the fresh air and watch the waves roll in.

Eventually, we packed up and walked back to our bikes. We started preparing our bikes to ride back and I set the code on the bike lock and tried to open it.

It was stuck.

I tugged harder. Nothing.

I spun the letters on the lock around again, thinking I had made a mistake, and tried again. Nope.

My husband tried. Nothing.

We quickly concluded that we had the correct code but that the internal workings were stuck and possibly bent. We checked our bike bags for bike lubricant. Oops, we had left it back at the house. And of course, we didn't have a bolt cutter with us.

We yanked and tugged and tried everything. Nope.

I started mentally calculating how far we would have to walk to get assistance. We were in a remote part of the park that was not accessible by car, probably 4 miles from the entrance gate. From there, it was another mile from Assateague to Chincoteague. Okay, if necessary, we could walk back to the main park gate and call a cab to take us back to our rental, where we could grab our tools and drive back to the park. We would still need to walk the last two miles back to our bikes, but the overall plan was feasible.

We decided to keep working on the lock.

Finally, we grabbed a Swiss army knife and attempted to disassemble the lock. 10 minutes later, we had the lock partly torn apart. In desperation, my husband kicked it hard. It opened.

Such relief.

We hopped on our bikes and pedaled back to town and the house. And we managed to go the rest of the trip without any major bike issues.