The night before was crazy. While riding with Piper a rainstorm was brewing and we were right on the edge of it. We finished the days miles but could not get the campsite up in time. It poured! We stayed in a small motel. I like showers and being dry.
This morning led me back to the quiet road I had been on. Finley was excited to ride so we let him loose.
As I said in the first video, the day was going to be a bit shorter with about 75 miles remaining. My legs were doing pretty well. The longest ride that I had been a part of was 5 days so adding about 160 miles in 2 days was all new territory for me.
This part of the road reminded me of Minnesota!
As a cyclist the small dump trucks (seen in the background) are terrible. They always drive so fast and seem to get way to close and they always have gravel flying off them.
Made it to Wilmington!
The last 18 miles was pretty incredible. Wilmington is incredible. Lots and lots of cars though.
Obviously not the greatest video but I was trying to drive responsibly, get up a hill and basically survive all at the same time. I survived!
Then it happened!
What a way to end a bike trip! The beach and the Atlantic Ocean was absolutely beautiful! The bike part of the trip was complete. At this point we had raised about $3500 towards our $12,000 goal and the mulla would keep rolling in over the next couple of weeks. This last several posts have been so much about scenery and biking but all this is done for a purpose. Riding for the Center in Santiago, Dominican Republic.
Day 6, this is the longest ride I had ever been on!. Things had been going so well. The state of North Carolina started out so mountainous and had flattened out so much since then. If you watch all these videos you will hear me say "day 5" over and over again. After riding so long you forget days and times...
Zoom in on that last picture. That is a HUGE spider which greeted us as I was being dropped off.
It is never ideal to be on a highway this huge. With my map leading me for .3 miles on this ride, 1.8 miles on that rode and .63 miles on the other road I would never really know what I was getting myself into! Fortunately this wasn't the case very often and this larger rode was not one I was on very long either.
Much to my surprise you can race your horse at many places in North Carolina. I learned something.
Kind of a blurry picture but that is what encouragement looked like for me over the ride. A black mini-van full of cheering people. It is amazing how far encouraging words can push someone.
Trying to balance the right food and drink is very difficult on a tour and I have much to learn. Once you are out in the heat it is so difficult to drink water and eat. NUUN energy is amazing and when it has a bit of caffeine in it it is all the better.
Toward the end of the day with the end in sight we were able to get the boys out on their bikes. They had been wanting to ride for the Dominican the whole time but none of the roads were conducive to making this happen.
It was a great experience seeing and hearing their excitement throughout the trip. I hope they are able to join us on the rides in the coming years.
Below is one of my favorite videos.
You can see in the last map that my GPS glitched out but I believe that the stats are accurate.
102.3 miles... a very good day.
2 Days down with a total of 160+ miles ridden. The mountains were a wrap and now we were heading toward the flatter lands of North Carolina. I can't put into words how beautiful the scenery was. While the pictures seem pretty good.... they still don't encapsulate the whole view! Oh well!
So a little back story. We were going to camp with Sharon's parents on Thursday night but didn't make it to the originally planned campsite north of Murphy. Sharon connected with them the first day after I started and we camped together with her whole family the next two nights near Brevard, North Carolina. After riding the distance on the first day, Sharon picked me up and brought me to Brevard and then the next day, Sharon's youngest sister's husband, Sumner brought me back out to Franklin. He hung out with me for a couple of hours then headed back to the campsite. Sharon met up with me on the Blue Ridge Parkway and followed me the last few hours then brought me to the campsite again. After the second day the campsite was only 20ish miles away. That made for some great evenings although I was pretty much a zombie. Basically there were two things I wanted to accomplish when we got back to the campsite. 1. FOOD. 2. SHOWER. Food tastes so much better after a hard ride and a shower is absolutely glorious!
Coffee shops are awesome. If I had a million bucks, I'd stop at more of them. There is something about a caramel role after riding for awhile. Frankly, I thought this one could have had more caramel on it! Oh well, it was delicious. It was all I could do to not buy at least 3 more. This was at the Flat Rock Village Bakery in Flat Rock, North Carolina. There was a group of cyclists that pulled in as well. They were cordial and encouraging. The leader was worried that I didn't have a red light on the back of my bike. There is a red light on back...
This is the town of Saluda. It was beautiful.
OK, this hill was the best hill I have ever ridden my bike down. I would have gotten more pictures or video but I was going upwards of 35 mph. The curves were sharp but they were banked very steeply so I didn't feel like I was going to die half the time! I highly recommend this drop!
After the hill... the final big drop for the ride, I got into horse country. Like, these people spent a lot of money on horses. Multiple houses (mansions) each had their own horse/jumping arena (???)
It was pretty neat to bump into a third state on the way. Here's to South Carolina!
If I got a dollar for every Baptist Church that I passed this gig would have been done! OK, maybe not, but I did pass a lot of Baptist Churches. I was going to go in one and see if they would accept me in bicycle shorts on Sunday but I didn't. Maybe next time?
Basically, I can't complain about trouble on the ride. The biggest issues were my own fault. The map I used for the bike ride came from the North Carolina DOT. You can find it at THIS LINK. Every state I have been interested in riding has suggested bicycle routes. I haven't checked all 50 states but that is a great help provided by the DOT. Another thing I usually check is the traffic volume maps provided by the DOT. Those little boxes with the tubes (or whatever they are) across the rode provide a pretty good picture of how much traffic I'm going to encounter along the way.
This trip was no exception. I put the map the DOT provided into Strava and printed it all out. That was my mistake, I did the map from Tennessee to Wilmington. It would have been smarter to print a map for each day. Rather than each day starting at 0 miles, day two started at about 80 and day three was about 160 etc. On top of that, I was on well over 200 different roads. The longest road I was on probably wasn't much longer than 15 miles! Turn left on .... road at 200.3 miles then go right at 201.7 miles. Merge onto ... road in 203.9 miles. Even with all that time to sit and think on the bike it was really frustrating!
Thankfully I really didn't have any physical issues with the bike. The most difficult issue was the chain dropping off the small cog and getting caught between the chain ring and the frame. This of course was after having to do a detour and throwing off my schedule for pick up. I was able to jerk the chain back into place without wrecking anything so I was thankful for that! I took this picture not to share with you but to text to my friend Ben Harkness for advice on how to get it out without breaking anything. I never sent the text.
While planning the ride, I had actually anticipated doing the first 160 miles over a four day period.
Day one had been an 80 mile day. I had walked almost (maybe) two miles because the initial mountains were so steep. I had to jump off the bike almost 4 times a mile because my legs were so exhausted. When I got off the bike at some points, my legs were shaking so badly that standing was questionable.
That is what I knew coming into day 2. How on earth was this ever going to happen. Day one had been 6,400 feet of climb day two was looking at over 9,000 feet of climb.The ride started in Franklin, and headed east toward the Blue Ridge Parkway.
Up one side and up some more on the other side!
(Oh, I also thought I had forgotten my phone at the campsite. That would have been bad!)
That was my first video of the day. A couple miles later I took this next video.
The climbs were crazy!. I felt like I was pulling on my bars just to get up the hill!
Down hill is definitely so much easier!
Sometimes you just need coffee... it keeps the heart tickin'. Silva came at just the right time!
Here's a Facebook live post that I did before heading to the big hill.
The Blue Ridge Parkway was calling my name. The best way to deal with something you dread is to just go and do it. Just keep spinning.... just keep spinning!
I don't remember exactly, but I think this was the last drop before the climb.
And so it begins...
Tunnels on a bike are kinda scary... but usually there is a light at the end of the tunnel and I look forward to that.
Blue Ridge Parkway has many overlook points throughout the drive. I met a man name Jay at one of them. My water had run low so it came down to walking up to people and asking for water. He was from Naples, Florida, and was waiting word on whether or not his house made it after Hurricane Irma. He was optimistic but hadn't received any word about the area. I hope it worked out for him and thanks for the water Jay! It was encouraging to meet a guy like that.
The frequent overlook sites were great. They seemed to be located about every half mile and in many parts of the climb, I stopped at EVERY ONE! My legs were on fire and it was so hot! In all actuality, it was going better than I had anticipated and for that I was grateful!
From the lofty abode you water the mountains; the earth is satisfied with the fruit of your work. Psalm 104:13
What an exhilarating feeling! The scenery was astonishing. If you are ever in the area, take a drive through here. You won't regret it. One thing about cycling through an area like this is that you don't really get to enjoy it. I felt like I was in survival mode. We took lots of pictures to enjoy later on!
As I was driving through water was sparse... except for all the water coming down the mountain. Sharon grabbed me some so I could press on.
It turned out to be good water!
Thankful to God for the ability to ride in His incredibly creation!
It was another 15 or so miles but mainly down hill. The scenery was breath taking. I ended up making it a full 80 miles which was CRAZY! Thanks for your prayers!
