The day after my ride up to Mt. Mitchell, I wanted to do another Parkway ride, but I didn’t want to go near as far. By this time I had suspected that the General Store up at Pisgah Inn might be open, so I thought it would be a good ride up as far as 276… a 40 mile out and back. The weather was similar to the previous day, but gray and cloudy. I didn’t take the camera with me.
So… no photos for you!
After two previous attempts to ride up to Mt. Mitchell, with admittedly little hope of success, I headed out April 11 one more time, this time assured that there would be no snow blocking my way. The construction and road closure, on the other hand, was still a bit of an unknown. On the one hand, I heard from some cyclist friends of cyclist friends that they had been able to ride through the construction area the previous weekend. The question wasn’t whether it was possible.
The question was whether I could get away with it.
Let’s see… where I last left off the stories, I had ridden all over Asheville looking at houses, both little ones for myself and Julienne and big ones like the Biltmore Estate. After a couple days off I headed into Bent Creek for the usual Wednesday ride with whoever showed up. It’s May 5th and I’m writing about April 11th. My memory for these things keeps getting shorter and the time it takes me to write about it keeps getting longer. Honestly can’t remember who showed up, or if I rode alone.
But I DO remember who showed up the next day.
… you get a ride in a car both before and after the commute? I guess since I make up all my own rules, I can make up this rule… yes, it does. I covered 30 miles by bike on a Sunday; that’s a commute. It just a commute that didn’t start or end at home. Then again, the riding I was doing wasn’t really “commuting’, no matter where I started from.
I just did it on my “commuter” bike.
Sometime over the winter, registration to 6 Hours of Warrior Creek opened up, at midnight on whatever day it was. The race sells out quickly… in matter of minutes. I had bought a late transfer entry to the race the previous year. I raced it. I made it through four laps just in time before the cutoff to finish a fifth lap, and although I had a bike mechanical less than two miles from the finish, I did fairly well. This year I had a lighter bike and a much lighter me, so I decided to give it a go again, and see if I couldn’t do even better the second time around.
So I let myself get caught up in the frenzy of the registration.. and got in.
After back to back Parkway metrics on Easter and the Monday after, I took it easy the rest of the week. Did a short 4 mile run on Tuesday, rode with friends on Wednesday, took Thursday off, and did an even easier 10 mile ride on Friday evening.
Then took off for 6 Hours of Warrior Creek… which was anything but easy.
I didn’t mention it in the previous post, but my rainy, fog-obscured, snow-blocked ride up to Craggy Gardens as a second attempt to ride up to Mt. Mitchell was on Easter Sunday. Easter being a week earlier than the previous year, and with winter hanging on longer than usual, made for a very different ride than the one I had done the year before. The weather also kept me from doing a much bigger ride, something I cooked up in my head quite some time ago but haven’t had the guts to do yet:
The Devil’s Gardens Double Metric, aka “The Saints & Sinners Parkway Tour”
Sometimes one makes a ride decision based on a favorable forecast of weather conditions, and the weather changes beyond predictions… for the worse. If one lives and rides in the mountains, one learns very quickly (and very uncomfortably) to prepare for those weather changes, even if one doesn’t anticipate them. Sometimes, the forecast is unfavorable to begin with, and one rides up into the mountains anyway.
I am such a one.
As we all know, while the first day of spring may have been on March 20th, the first week of spring felt more like mid-winter. Here at my place in Bent Creek, the first and only measurable snow in two years happened during the week, although it still wasn’t much of a snow… in fact I’m not even sure if it was measurable.
Regardless, Old Man Winter refused to let us go.
Wow… three weeks behind again. So much stuff going on here, so little time to write. Little time to write thoroughly I guess is what I really mean. I could post a paragraph or two every day, but what fun is that? Answer: not much fun.
(for me anyway)
Week of March 18th, I did three rides in Bent Creek, some solo, some with friends. They were all pretty typical, except for the temperatures. After the super warm weekend we had previous, the temps dove right back down into the 40s by Tuesday. I ended up taking both Monday and Wednesday off, can’t remember why exactly, other than it’s good to take days off.
Even though I hate it. LOL
On St. Patty’s Day I rode into town on the commuter to do a crawling, parade-like community group ride through the streets of Asheville, sponsored by Asheville on Bikes. They put on a number of annual ride events throughout the year, this one called Bike of the Irish, which as you might guess, has a St. Patrick’s Day theme. Despite having lived here for nearly four years, this is the first time I’ve ever done an AoB event.
It really ain’t my kind of thing.
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