Who says you can’t visit someone in solitary confinement in a Supermax prison?\u00a0 With a basketball, t-shirt, and bicycle as my traveling companions, I took a 3-day bike trip from my KY home to Pound, VA, to visit my friend Pitt, locked up there at Red Onion State Prison.\u00a0 Technically no visitors are allowed because of COVID, because he’s in solitary, because I’m not on his approved visiting list, etc.\u00a0 but you know, a big part of a visit is just the fact of the visit, the anticipation, the knowing someone came, just as much as the fleeting few minutes talking on the phone through the glass.<\/p>\n
On the third day, I arrived at the road to the prison, on an old strip mine site.\u00a0 They “reclaimed” it with a prison.\u00a0 I stashed my bike over the embankment, changed into my shirt (“END SOLITARY CONFINEMENT:\u00a0 I’m tired of playing with myself”), grabbed my basketball, and went dribbling down the road the last winding mile or two towards where the prison was, according the the googlemaps satellite image i had been studying.<\/p>\n
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(7-9-22:\u00a0\u00a0 Pitt has been transferred out of state to Maryland, probably largely due to his fighting for the rights of those in solitary confinement in VA, as well as being part of an ACLU case.\u00a0 https:\/\/www.courthousenews.com\/appeals-panel-sympathetic-to-fight-against-solitary-confinement-in-virginia\/<\/p>\n