Fast as aw hail

The house we stayed at the night before was ridiculously generous. They offered showers and bathrooms, but we'd been pampered by civilization the nights before so we decided to stay out of their hair. We accepted the wine.

Camp last night, behind a cool little convenience store in the tiny little town of Vesuvius. During the next 12 hours, we had about 6 or 7 cars pull up and say hey and ask us if we needed anything. We were absolutely amazed by the small-town generosity and friendliness. We used the faucet on a neighboring house, and stuck our food in their empty dog kennel after learning that bears come around all the time.
These guys were all over the road, alive and . This guy was till alive, but just sat there and moved his wings when I touched his antennae. No wonder so many of them get whacked.
Purty flower. Got mauled by the wind by the end of the day. Poor flower.

Rockfish gap a few miles back- 1900 feet. Here: around 3600(I think?) We stopped and helped some guy walking down the mountain with bike in hand. Turns out he had a flat but no pump. Don't trust CO2 on a mountain, I guess.

Hey peoples!!!! Colleen got sun poisoning or some crazy mess, so she's taking the next few days off. We miss you Colleen!! (Yes Lee, yes.)

Sean you silly son of a b. Pushed her in. Oh yeah, Walker ed open a beer right before a lady came out of a neighboring house and said "No diving, no beer" while she brandished a huge .44 revolver. Walker then proceeded to "not-quite-dive" in while we all watched in horror and astonishment. She gave us a mean look and let us proceed. The water was amazing. Walker is stoopit.

Wet bikes. My hood is whack. My mirror is really coming in handy.

So we were riding along yesterday and we started going up. And up. And up. And 30 minutes later or something we were like, this sucks. We soon found out that not only do the Blue Ridge Mountains suck, they rock.

After a few miles of riding some awesomely rural mountain roads with winding descents, we climbed up a beast of a hill to meet the Blue Ridge Parkway, and realized we woudn't have food for a long time. So the group hopped on the Parkway and started chugging towards the campground 16 miles down the road where Walker and I were to meet them with groceries. Meanwhile, Walker and I ed down a 2 mile hill, rolled into a Kroger, came out with enough food to feed all of Uzbekistan (including 40 cookies for 2 dollars, SERIOUSLY) strapped it all to our bikes, and pedalled (melting all the way) in hot pursuit of the other peoples.

A while down the road, Walker and I turned onto the road with the campground, and realized that it just went down, fast. We ended up topping 40 miles and hour (I was too scared to look at the computer after that), and never dipped below 30 for more than 2 miles. It was nuts. When we got to the campground, we were told it'd be $1 each if we just wanted to go in and look for our buds, and that they hadn't seen any damn cyclists that day. Poop. No cell signal either. Garbage. We didn't have a clue where the group had gone, and no way to contact them. So we sat down and stuffed our faces while contemplating the horrendous climb that faced us, and if the descent had been worth it.

Then we just got up and rode up that dagum hill, granny ring, first couple chainrings (never hit 1-1!!) and a lot of sweat and pain. The descent had been worth it, no question. A guy at the store up the road said he saw some bikers, but he didn't know what they looked like or how many or anything. Thanks, guy. So we decided to ride the rest of the stretch on the Parkway and hope we found the rest of the crew.

It was a hard, grinding 12 miles or so. After the last 15 climbs or so, Walker was like "Dude, I'm pretty certain this is the last climb, then it's mostly downhill from here." I trusted him because he had ridden 250 miles to DC on the Parkway and Skyline Dr. After the first 10 lies, I was ready to push him off the mountain.

We were unbelievably relieved to see our turnoff to get off the Parkway. The hills were fun, but after 40-ish miles that day, we were ready to get off. And looky there, who's waiting at the bottom of the hill? Those dagum sons-a-guns that never showed up at the campground. Eating dry oatmeal since they didn't wait for us to bring the goodies. Turns out it was just a miscommunication.

Down the road was an INSANE DOWNHILL. The best descent I've ever ridden on the road. Probably the best I'll ever hit. It was ridiculously steep, smooth asphalt with sharp, blind turns. The signs told us to take them at 20, but somebody maxed their speedometer at 40 (despite the fact that we had to brake hard aroudn the corners). The g's were exhilerating, and tires squealed around the corners while we did our best to keep ourselves from crossing the yellow line. No roller coaster will ever compare.

We met a guy at the bottom of the hill that said he'd been there 15 years and seen some big races on the mountain. Apparently people would down the hill, heat up their tires with all the braking, and blow their tires on the railroad tracks.

He pointed us to a bike-friendly convenience store to camp in, and the woman behind the counter told us about some top-secret river down the way with a deep section that we could swim in. The water was 65 degrees, perfect for a bunch of sweaty riders.

Walker and I did about 61 miles that day. My speedometer said we maxed out at 99.9 mph. Something tells me something was screwy for a few seconds there. We slept well.

Sorry for all that writing, but you didn't have to read it and I wanted to remember it.

Lexington,VA, 05-09-08