Today was a day of epic climbing. 85+ miles, 6172 calories burned (according to my watch), ‘nuf said.
According to Gabe (the 3-time trip leader and former CUS leader), it was probably one of the hardest days we’ll do all summer. While it was incredibly beautiful up on the Blue Ridge Parkway, we had Afton Mountain to climb first. It felt great to get up to the top, but that was quickly trumped by the continuous climbs up to higher and higher outlooks.
A bunch of alums came out to join whom we had met the night before at the barbeque or during our time in Charlottesville. It was great to bike with them, and incredible that they were able to ride along with us after largely being off their bikes. Marie and Whitney turned around first, but the guys and Sarah Canelli (sp?) soldiered on. Today I busted out the cowbell to cheer people on over the rollers up and out of Charlottesville and occasionally later in the day when they were around. All of the climbing definitely broke the group up so it didn’t come out that much later in the day. Climbing just has to be done at your own pace, be it slow or fast, and you can always regroup at the top.
June Curry, aka the Cookie Lady was so awesome. She has her home where she sits on the porch and people can walk up and talk to her as we did, and there’s another house which is filled with biker stuff and acts as a donation-only rest stop for bikes on the Trans-Am route. There were postcards from all over the world and memorabilia and everything. Talking with her was just magical because she still asked everyone’s name and told us stories about how the biking community had reached out to her when she had a stroke and this woman she’d never met but only corresponded with became a close friend after recovering from a traumatic bike accident.
The parkway was beautiful, with lots of stops for entertaining photos and Aileen’s clutch stops. We had a first group rock cheers/wish/toss. At the end of the day, once we were almost into town we rode over this bridge and saw people playing in the river below. We turned around and went back across and down to the bank, stripped down and hopped in! It felt so great, and even though the water was only waist deep, that was all we needed. We got back on our bikes and trudged up a few last hills to get into Lexington. The skies were getting ominous and just as we crested the hill into town we saw big bolts of lightning touch down. Just as soon as we rolled in and got inside the skies just opened up the way they do on muggy days in Philly where it seems like all the rain wants to fall in 10 minutes. Lots of people got caught, but about half didn’t.
We managed to get our acts together and get up to the YMCA shortly before 7 when it closed for showers and even got some pizza donated. The rain set back dinner shopping and laundry, so both came in quite late. Everyone was exhausted (myself included!), but I was glad to get internet at the end of the night. Given my fatigue I was only able to catch up on one entry, but I needed all the sleep I could get for the next day.
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