Up the Creek without a Pedal

The name of this century ride grabs your attention. Riding these roads will bring you back.

I had ridden a portion of this route (Pocket Road) during the 2006 BRAG, and was happy to be revisiting these roads.

Pat, Jack, Charles, Larry, David and I stayed together most of the route. We were joined at various times by others who kept -- and often raised -- our pace. Even though we were riding alongside low mountain ridges the whole day, we only had one climb that really got us breathing hard. The flatness and the number of strong riders gave us a fast pace: we averaged 20.0 MPH over the 100 miles, and were getting faster as the day wore on.

When we finished and were checking our bike computers, Pat had guesstimated that we had finished the ride in a little over 5 hours. My computer recorded 5:00:02 -- two seconds over 5 hours.

Got to play with the Nuvi 200 GPS some. It is able to record tracks if you use version 3.40 of the firmware. There were two drawbacks to the device: 1) it only has a 4 hour battery life and 2) the touchscreen is easy to accidentally turn off your recording. The first limitation is more serious than the second if you're careful where the unit is placed.

I've mapped the century route in bikely.com.

Unintentional Metric Century

Sat, Mar 15, 2008 - 62.70 mi [Cycling]
62.70 mi in 03:44:27 hours at 16.76 mi/h on Trek 1200. [Cycling] We had planned a 47-mile ride, but when we reached mile 32 and were just pointed back home, we realized we made a mistake. The route we were following didn't start/stop at the same place we were starting/stopping.


So, we ended up with a metric century.

We got a nice break from the storms that have been coming through. There was a nice one last night and then another this morning. Another crop of tornadoes are supposed to come through NW of here. We rode SE.

Two flats required four tubes. I brought a dud and Dave's had a hole. Fortunately, Barry brought two tubes.

The route took us through Arabia Mountain and Panola Mountain parks. The PATH trail runs for about 10 miles through what feels like remote countryside. And then Alexander's Lake Road was a nice way to ease back into traffic. Will enter this route into Bikely.com.
Posted from My Cycling Log

Sun, Nov 4, 2007 - 47.20 mi [Cycling]

Sun, Nov 4, 2007 - 47.20 mi [Cycling]
47.20 mi in 02:46:29 hours at 17.01 mi/h on Trek 1200. [Cycling] Stiff wind out of the west. Made good time overall, but whacked my legs pretty good on the Stone Mountain outer loop. We were climbing the last stretch at 25 MPH. Head wind back home didn't let us slack off.
Posted from My Cycling Log

This is my first check of posting from My Cycling Log to this blog. I do think it's good ;-).

Stone Mountain - South Approach

Share your bike routes @ Bikely.com

Aurora Cycling's July 1 ride - Krog Street Tunnel

Around Atlanta, the Krog Street Tunnel is well-known to cyclists and graffiti artists. For graffiti artists, there are strict rules about whether your work can stay or not. If it's good, it can stay. If it isn't better than what there before, you get painted over.

For cyclists, it's one of the best routes south from Inman Park and Virginia-Highland. The Aurora Cycling group took this route today on the way back home. The above video shows the group approaching, entering and then riding through the tunnel. Somebody goes "whoop" every time we ride through this tunnel.

Earlier that day we were down by the airport along Grant Road. In the video below, you can hear a plane coming in for a landing. We're on an uphill and still smiling big.


At a rest stop, we found a couple of stray cats. Although they won a lot of sympathy votes with their cuteness, neither of them rode home with any of us. This is the more skittish of the two peeking out from under a car.

Attempts at Filming while Riding

Here are a few movies I captured while riding with the Aurora Cycling group this morning. My photo-serving software doesn't understand movies, so I'm putting together this index. Links bring up AVI files.

• At first, I sat at the back of the line along Mt. Paran road and tried to get a feel for how many riders we had today. I think there are 18 ahead of me and I'm at the end.
  
• Speed bumps and wind noise mar this clip, but once I trim it down and dub some better sound, this will be a nice little clip with Tom and Mark.
  
• This clip starts with a runner and ends with a turn onto Stella Dr from Dudley Lane.
  
• One street where we see lots of people outdoors is Woodward Way west of Northside along Peachtree Creek.
  

In the one still I captured, we're chatting at Aurora Coffee before the start of the ride.



Route: We did a combination of the Six Flags/Log Cabin route and the Hollywood/Buckhead route. We followed the Six Flags route up to West Paces Ferry and Ridgewood and then followed Mt. Paran from the Buckhead route.

It was nice to get some hill work after a flat BRAG.

Taking Your Place

On Sunday's during the summer, our family would drive over to the family house in Bluffton, SC. Sometimes, instead of going straight to the house, we would drive past the turn-off and go down to the boat ramp just to check the tide and see what was there. It was interesting to see what had changed, and reassuring to see what was still the same. The house on the corner would maybe get a new porch swing, but the oyster shell wall would still have the secret hole you could hide stuff in.

After spending some time in a place, the familiarity would lead to a sense of belonging. I had found my place at the boat ramp and its secret hiding place.

Often, after making those connections, I would wonder, would I ever be here again? For each place, each visit could have been the last visit, and I sometimes lingered in that place, wondering if it would be the last visit.

On my daily ride into the office, I sometimes vary my route just so I can visit some of those places, see what has changed, and see what is still the same. And then, I'll get off the bike, and linger.

Crossing the Cascades

Dave and I were about to begin our third day of a month-long trek across the mountains from Seattle over to Wisconsin. The night before, we didn't get as much supper as we would have liked and at breakfast we tried to make up for the calorie deficit.

A gentleman noticed how much we were eating, assumed the bikes out front belonged to us, and asked how far we were going. We told him Wisconsin and his eyes grew as big as our stomachs. After some chatting about the route we wanted to take, he suggested a road that wasn't on our map. It would save us about 20 miles that day so we agreed to take his advice.

After about an hour of climbing, we started to realize this gentleman had never thought about elevation when he drove that shortcut. It was a nice road, recently paved and devoid of traffic, but we just kept going up and up and up. We had left camp at 1200 feet and didn't think we had any hills above 2000 feet, but it felt like we'd already done well over 800 feet of climbing.

The road was remote enough that we could hear the occasional logging truck for several minutes before it would pass us and then for several minutes after it passed. We would listen to the pitch of the engine to see if they would shift gears to signal they had reached the top of the hill. We never heard them shift.

After a few hours and most of the water, we came across a rest stop where we could refill water bottles and eat some snacks. Our mood was getting rather sour because it had been uphill, often steep, all the way.

Fortunately, shortly after we started back up the slope, we found a sign that told us we were passing through Wolf Gap. We were above 4700 feet.

It was downhill into the next town. As we joined up with the main highway, a retirement age gentleman calls to us from his Winnebago, "You guys biking?"

"No! We're sitting on lounge chairs in Florida."

We had been tent camping, but that night we treated ourselves to a hotel room.

Windy Ride

You know it is windy when you have to pedal down the hill. You also know it's windy when you don't have to pedal up the hill.

Sunday we did our Buckhead loop and only averaged 13.5 MPH going into the wind over the first part of the loop. Once we got the wind behind us though, we made up for lost time and finished with a respectable 15MPH average. Coming up Howell Mill with the wind at my back, I posted my best speed. Unfortunately, I also posted some of my worse times when we were headed into the wind.

Sometimes the wind shifted without me noticing. I would be feeling rather good about myself until I noticed leaves on the road passing me.

Cartersville Ride

Today a group of us drove up from Atlanta to ride out of the Anheuser-Busch Brewery in Cartersville. The North Atlanta Riding Club (NARC) maintains marked routes starting at the brewery parking lot and running 12, 27, 45, 65, and 105 miles.

I had heard this area is blessed with some of the best biking roads in Georgia and after riding today, I'll have to agree. The weather -- 55-60 degrees and sunny in December -- was part of the great experience, but so were the rolling hills, numerous farms, ponds, mountain views, and wooded glades. The exuberance of riding pulled us along at one of the fastest paces I've ridden. I'm going to feel good for days.