Dobovedo's Journal of Journeys

The Savannah Century ride was scheduled to start at 8AM. It was a mass start because there’s a police escort out of the city and over the Big Bridge which is normally restricted to bicycles. I set an alarm, two actually, for 6:30AM. Plenty of time to get some breakfast, pack up my things, check out and get downtown. Too bad I didn’t fall asleep until almost 2AM and then woke up at 5:45 and couldn’t fall back to sleep. And even if I could, it wouldn’t be worth it.

Fortunately I am used to this. I can never sleep before these events.

Read more on Savannah: Century Ride…

As I mentioned in my previous entry, I made a last minute decision to throw my bike in the car and take a road trip down to Savannah, GA for a weekend of cycling events. The main event, the Savannah Century was on Sunday, but first were two smaller rides on Saturday morning and evening. In the AM was a “century warm-up” – a 31 mile ride, which I upsized to 71 by riding the 20 miles to and from my hotel. In the PM was the Midnight Garden Ride, which wasn’t at midnight, but at 8pm. The ride was to promote cycling safety and advocacy in downtown Savannah and was to consist of a 12 mile easy cruise through the streets with lights (required) and costumes if people chose to participate. There was a 6 mile option, as well, but I didn’t even make it that far. I bailed at 3 miles.

I can now honestly say that I DNF’d the shortest, slowest and easiest organized ride I have ever participated in!

Read more on Savannah: Hendrix 31(+) & Midnight Garden Ride…

Psssst…. hey you. Wanna know a secret? Don’t tell anybody, m’kay? Riding bikes is a helluva lot more fun when you just ride bikes, and don’t add in other sports…

like running.

Read more on Pile On The Miles Week #3…

Two weekends ago I bailed on the Rt. 80/Parkway/Mt. Mitchell ride with my friends from Ohio, having already ridden the four previous days and not getting much sleep at the time either. Have I ever mentioned how much I hate morning rides? I believe I have. Anyway… since I missed out on that “classic” Asheville Trip route, I thought maybe I’d go do it this past weekend – except later in the day.

Much later.

Read more on Why I’ll Never Do The AOMM…

Saturday: Change of Plans

Saturday was scheduled to be a traditional Asheville Day 2 ride which uses part of the Assault on Mt. Mitchell. Rather than do the full event route in one direction from Spartanburg, the group does only the upper elevations, starting on Rt. 80, heading along the Parkway and on up to the finish at Mt. Mitchell. This year Craig came up with the idea to do the Rt. 80 part as a time trial. Unfortunately, despite my best efforts I was completely unable to get any sleep Friday night – a mix of muscles that wouldn’t calm down, a resting heart rate that stayed 25-30 beats above normal and a brain that just won’t quiet itself. Same things I’ve struggled with all my life – nothing new. I really get annoyed at people who say things like “I’m going to sleep great tonight” after long hard rides or other athletic events.

(Yes, Goose.. that includes YOU! – grrrrrrrrr!) LOL

Read more on Tour of WNC 2010: Saturday…

Friday: Hot Doggett / Devil’s Fork Metric

A couple years ago one of the guys read about a ride called the Hot Doggett 100, which was running concurrently with the annual Asheville trip. I didn’t make that trip but the other guys all did the 100 mile ride and really enjoyed it. The following year they opted to do the 62 mile Devil’s Fork Metric which is most of the same climbing but leaves off some extra mileage – and they also did it on their own with Carla as the support driver, instead of registering for the official event. This year the plan was the same – do the 62 (actually 65) mile / metric the day before the actual event. We met out at Mars Hill College and by now the group was six, as Craig, Goose and I were joined by Vince, Todd and Chuck, three veterans of the Asheville trips who had come down Thursday for the more traditional two days of riding.

Read more on Tour of WNC 2010: Friday…

Thursday: Ring of Fire

The plan for Thursday was up in the air during the planning stages before the trip. A lot of roads around here are under construction or even closed due last year’s above average rainfall and record winter snowfalls. The entire length of the Parkway is open for the first time in over a year thanks to a single lane being available up to Mount Pisgah. That would normally have been the route of choice, or possibly the traditional ride up to Mt. Mitchell via Craggy, but after describing the local Ring of Fire route to Craig, he thought that sounded like an ideal ride. And I was more than happy to lead he and Goose once more over my local roads. I promised them that unlike the previous day, this route would be very low traffic and no construction messes would get in our way.

I kept my promise on that score, but as it turned out, I had another little lie for them.

Read more on Tour of WNC 2010: Thursday…

Wednesday: “Watercrock” Knob

The first ride with Ohio friends was for me a repeat of the previous day’s ride up to Balsam, followed by continuing up the Parkway to Waterrock Knob. I was joined by my friends Craig aka “Egg” and Jeff aka “Goose” and also escorted by Goose’s wife Carla, aka “Noose” (yes.. Goose & Noose) who drives a support vehicle for us and takes a lot of photos on these mountain ride trips. They arrived at my place in the early afternoon and the first thing they wanted to know was “are we going to ride on that highway?!?”.

Yes!

Read more on Tour of WNC 2010: Wednesday…

Five years ago I joined some friends on my first trip to Asheville for their annual Mt. Mitchell/Parkway riding excursion. Although it was somebody else who said the words, the phrase “hardest thing I ever did” pretty much sums up that trip. My memory of that first time climbing up Town Mountain Rd. – before we even got onto the Blue Ridge Parkway – seemed ridiculously slow and difficult (because it was). I remember wondering, and sometimes I still wonder – how (and why) I ever managed to do another climb after that.

Not to mention wondering why I not only continued to climb mountain roads, but actually moved here four years later, pretty much for the sole purpose of doing it on a daily basis.

Read more on Tour of WNC 2010: Tuesday…

What? It’s only been one week since Fletcher Flyer and I’m writing my blog about it? Crazy, I know! The Fletcher Flyer is called a flyer because the routes are flat and fast. And by that I mean they are flat by Western NC mountain standards. And in my opinion, now that I have seen and ridden it, the route is fairly flat even by western Ohio standards.

At least the way we do rides… find every little hill in a given geographical area and cram all of them into one route, no matter how convoluted the map gets.

Read more on Fletcher Flyer = Flat(ish), Fast &… Fun…

In an ongoing trend I am once again writing blogs for events that happened weeks ago. This one is about The Ruby Ride on May 21, which was from Franklin, NC. This is the town just south of me where I swim (increasingly rarely) and run on the Little Tennessee River Greenway (also increasingly rarely). The route map and profile showed that the century was only 94 miles long, and given my preference for not driving a bike to any location I can just as easily ride to, I opted to supersize the ride by about 28 miles, going for just a bit shy of a double metric. This also added in two climbs of Cowee Mountain, the latter – and harder – one coming about 115 miles into the day.

It seemed like a good idea when I started out.

Read more on Roo-Bee Roo-Bay…

On Saturday I drove to the little mountain town of Cashiers, NC, about 30 miles SE of Sylva, to do a local century. This is a smaller ride, not one that is well known regionally or nationwide like some of the more prominent “challenge rides”. Nevertheless, it is billed as a tough ride and features more than 10,000 feet of climbing including three significant mountains. Not long after I crested the top of the third big climb and still had 15 miles of rolling terrain I composed a short, but to-the-point blog entry to describe the route.

“Fuck this fucking ride”.

Read more on Tour de Cashiers…