bike bike bike

Friday, June 17, 2011

A change of direction, a change of shirt

The astute reader will have noticed that I've worn the same orange shirt every day so far. I have done what I could to keep it as clean as I can, but I see no point in dragging around multiple disgusting shirts when I can limit myself to just one disgusting shirt.

Now having done a full load of laundry, I will be appearing from Asheville to Chicago in a blue shirt. Get excited! I will be taking bets on which shirt I will wear from Chicago to Denver:

Orange
Blue
Green
Red
Black

Guest Blogger!

Now that I've been joined by my brother, I'm proud to bring you a guest blog entry!

Adam in Asheville

Dave is here! I got to Asheville a couple days before Dave and have spent the time wandering around town and reading. I found a book about the history of bicycle touring - a narrative of people who biked around the world in the 1890s on primitive bikes. They would sometimes wait for months in rural parts of Asia while replacement parts were sent from London. The book got me excited for the trip, and also put it nicely into perspective in terms of the NC-Chicago ride not being so long.

Asheville ended up being a great place to hang out for a couple of days. Good food, lots of art galleries, book stores, coffee shops, and live music. It has a bit of a 'hippy-yuppy-artsy' feel to it. It reminds me a bit of Boulder, CO.

The hostel I've been staying in, Sweet Peas, is right down town and amazingly clean and friendly. They have a kitchen we can use, and Dave and I just finished a homemade breakfast of eggs, french bread, and blueberries (grocery shopping at whole foods down the street).

I think we'll be heading out of Asheville later this afternoon. Hopefully a short 30 mile ride to a camp site at the base of the Smoky Mountains. It will give Dave a little time to rest, and time for me to get used to biking again. Then, it will be up and over (or through a gap) in the mountains and on to Tennessee the next day. I'm excited to start biking!

Mount Mitchell

An epic climb! First took rt 80 out of Marion. I knew it was steep because the average opinion was "I don't even like going up there in my car". But I was able to make it up - this took me from 1600 feet up to 3300.

Next was a 12 mile stretch along the BRP, from 3300 to 5100 feet. I met an older lady who was climbing with an unloaded bike...turns out my extra 50 pounds evens me out with 60 year old women. Anyway, eventually got up to the Mt. Mitchell summit road at 5100 feet.

The summit road was tough but only a bit worse than what I had done. In 5 miles I went up to 6684 feet, and I was there!

Funny story. Since there is an auto road, of course there is a parking lot on top. The lot was 100 yards short of the summit, and there was a walking path up. NOT ONLY was I surrounded by people who had driven to the top, but there was even a golf cart shuttle that many people had taken up the short walking path. I felt I deserved the view more than them.

After coming down, it turned out I had 10 miles of more up and down before I finally got to enjoy a 15 mile (!!!) descent into Asheville. Found my brother, enjoyed the city for the night (very very nice city!) and tomorrow we'll we on our way!

These are some pictures of the way up.

Thursday, June 16, 2011

Target is in sight

Up to the parkway

Finished my climb up rt 80 from Marion to the BRP. I'm pretty sure it's the steepest grade I have to do today, and it wasn't terrible. Hooray for touring gears! (note - I did not use my lowest fear yet today. This is a good sign)

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=35.75645487,-82.17662039

Get pumped

Somewhere up there my enemy awaits.

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

A rainy ending

Don't worry, I'm not still sitting at the gas station.

I called some hotels in the area, and rooms were limited. I also found a campground that was up the hill a ways, about 16 miles from me. Since it was already 7:30, I figured it was time to hit the road. And hard!

So I headed out into the rain. It wasn't pleasant, but I made it into Marion. I have been fairly conservative with sunset times, so a 8:45-9:00 arrival worried me. Passing through town I saw a church with people inside. Long story short, I am camping in their back yard.

Tomorrow I climb just about a vertical mile to the top of Mt Mitchell. I am not afraid of this climb. But I also shouldn't mock it or it may get angry at me.

Well this sucks

I've made it about 8 miles in the past 2 hours due to rain delays. I'm currently I'm sandals and the bags are as waterproof as they're getting, so I could push on. Right now I'm destroying some peanut butter sandwiches while I wait for some legitimate lightning and thunder to pass. Once it settles down a bit ill head out again.

Rain coming

Might be pouring on me in about 20 minutes. What to do? I'm so close!

Getting close!

I'm officially within my daily average of Asheville! That doesn't include my detour up the mountain, but nice to know I'm getting close. For a while in Virginia I would look at the map every day and I never seemed any closer to Asheville. Good to know that all that biking did eventually get me in the right direction.