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!
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.
The Stats for the Day-
Average Speed- 14.2
Maximum Speed- 37.6
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