First things first: I had some good quality riding here in B-town leading up to the trip. I was feeling good and riding well.
As far as the trip goes, I as giving the job of finding a cabin for 5 of us. There are a lot of cabins in the area, but it can be nerve-wrecking trying to find one. I finally fond one that ~seemed~ good online, but you never know what you may be actually getting. It turns out we got a totally plush pad.
So everyone was totally happy with the staying arrangement. Check. One detail the info of the cabin left out was that there was a 28% grade to get to this cabin (yes, it was checked w/ GPS). The loaded car barely made it up; and we were going to have to face it at the end of every ride! (epic addend 1)Once we got in and got our stuff unpacked, we set out for a smallish ride. We met up with several other team members and made this a a group ride. We rode from the cabins to Cades Cove in the Smokey Mountain National Park. this isn't a particularly hard ride, but it does have a 7mile climb to get into Cades Cove, which is then an 11mile rolling loop. It was a good little ride, nothing epic though. It did start getting dark on us and we have to ride a highway back, so we cut 2miles out of the inner loop to get back before dark.
We had a big ride planned for the first full day. It's a ride I've done a few times before that includes three mountain passes in 80-90miles. Great ride w/ serious climbing. Nothing especially epic there. As you can see from the pics below, it was a great day:
(josh and I going up the Tail of the Dragon [Deals Gap], an 11mile climb w/ 318 curves)
(me descending the dragon)What these sweet pics don't show is the weather radar. And what it would show was a big storm moving in behind us. Once we had descended the dragon we began the climb back over to where we staying via Happy Valley Road. It's nice and happy in valley, but the end of Happy Valley Road is one of the most feared pitches in the range, affectionately called "sweetie pie." It's a long nasty 26% grade. Well as soon as we turned up "sweetie pie" all hell broke loose: temp dropped, wind picked up, lightning, thunder, pelting rain, etc. As luck(?) would have it there is a Christian camp located right smack on top of the mountain and they let us duck on their huge wrap-around porch to wait out the storm. It was cool to watch the storm pass from so high up, but I didn't want to be sitting around. We took off and finished the ride in hard rain, but no lighting.
(epic addend 2)
We had a get-together at our cabin and everyone came over for beers and pizza. It was a lot of fun, but at one point someone noticed a rodent on the window sill of the kitchen. It was determined to be a flying squirrel due to the excess skin flaps it seemed to have. Luckily we had a veterinarian in staying in our cabin, so she went to exterminating, humanly (with a pizza box and a colander, I would have just chucked it down the garbage disposer).
(Janelle w/ her tools of the trade)
But after everyone left, we found another critter in the same place! I couldn't have been the same one because she put it out front and this window was around back. There may have been a family of these vermin.(epic addend 3)
For our second "big ride" day we split groups. I wanted to do one of my favorite routes down there, the Homestead loop. This ride has multiple 20%+ grades and one that I think is probably 30%. It's a ride so hard most people from there won't do it, (or so I'm told). I love it. Anywho, I think this ride is generally considered epic on its own, but we encountered an obstacle giving it more "e" points than I could have imagined.
The bridge through the Smoky Mountains Park was out and the workers would not let us cross it (even though we totally could have). So we had to fjord this river to get where we needed to be. It was extremely difficult and not something I would have chosen to do. The water was above the knee and moving fairly fast. And the rocks underneath were completely moss-covered and very slick; footing was difficult. But we had to do it (there's no way we were going to turn around and go back over those climbs). I guess this was our version of a Bjarne Riis combat style character building team camp. (epic addend 4)
On the final day just Josh and I went out and rode the Cades Cove loop again, but really hard this time. It was a good ride. And a good way to top off some tired/sore legs. We got up to leave at 8am for the ride so we could be on the road by 11 to get home at a good hour (6hr drive). Little did we know what was in store for us on the drive back.
We stopped and ate lunch and shortly after we got going again, traffic was stopped ahead of us. We had been sitting for awhile and I had to pee, so I got out and went over the guard rail into the ditch. Then other people started getting out and next thing we knew we were having a block party on the interstate.
It turns out there was a serious accident about a mile up the road involving 8-9 vehicles and fatalities. We were hanging out, outside of our cars on I75 for 4.5hrs! It was crazy. Again, not something I would choose to do, but a new experience all the same.(epic addend 5)
So with 5 separate addends of epicness, I think this trip is permitted to use the "E" word. Regardless, it was a ton of fun and I feel stronger for having done what I did (riding and otherwise). Betwixt the rides in TN and the riding I did here prior to leaving I put in over 16hours on the bike last week. That's huge for me. My normal is 8-10hrs, maybe 12hrs on a big week (hey, I work 6 days a week you know). I do feel as though I'll see some gains from this.
So I'll probably do a few circuit-type races the 14th/15th and that ~should~ mark the beginning of 2012 racing for me.
Also for the record: I took three days to write this and it shows in its length. Holy crap this is long; if you made it this far: stand up, stretch your back sit back down and stop reading. It's the end...fucking finally....long-winded MF'er...
No comments:
Post a Comment