Driving to Demascus

 

Now we know why the laminate our tags.

27 June 2015

We were in Damascus, VA three times today.  The Bike Virginia route pamphlet wanted everyone to start from the 4-H campground.  From there, one would ride in the rollers of the pink route, then either head towards the summit of Whitetop mountain on the Orange Route (74 miles total).  Or, from pink, one could take the blue route up a long, slow grade into Tennessee, through Cherokee National Forest. Or, one could combine all three and finish with 105 miles.

Not us.  I wanted to be able to say I'd been in Tennessee.  We'd already done some of the Pink route when Tom added miles on Friday.  We wanted to ride as many miles as possible, within reason, before the rain hit.

"We're driving to Demascus," Tom decided.  That's where all three routes came together.  He said "Driving to Damascus" so many times that I had to play the song for him and Ron on our way back from dinner last night.

We all turned in early, but I couldn't fall asleep.  The air conditioner kept cycling on and off, and then somone started snoring.  I gave up and put in a pair of earplugs.  I figured I'd still be able to hear my phone's alarm iat 6:30 in the morning.

I was wrong.

I was wrong for 7 minutes, during which neither Tom nor Ron bothered to turn it off nor wake me up. Instead they just laughed until I drifted out of whatever deep sleep I'd been in and heard the thing.  I figure I'll be hearing about this for a year or two.

Anyway, when I opened my eyes, Tom was peering at the radar.  He figured we'd be able to get at least the orange route in before 11:00 a.m., when the first band of heavy rain would come through.  "We'll drive to Damascus, park there, do the orange route, and wait in Demascus for the rain to stop.  Or we can call it quits there."

Tom had put The Fear into us:  there would be a monster ascent somewhere in the first fifteen miles.  Last night, when Ron had said, "My legs hurt just looking at this."  I had chosen not to look.

We were on our bikes at 8:45 a.m.  The roads were dry.  The sun was out.

We rolled through grazing land:

I stopped to say hello to some cows.

The orange route's far point was at the summit of Whitetop Mountain.  The rest stop was almost, but not quite, at the top of a monster 2-mile, 1100-foot ascent at a steady 10% grade.  This was preceeded by a baby monster that we all pretty much forgot about once we hit the real thing.  I dropped into my granny gear and found a slow cadence.  I decided not to bottom out; I wanted to save a few gears in case things got worse.

The three of us plodded along, getting passed by fastboy after fastboy, and by one fastgirl.  Hill Slugs in da house!  I watched the riders ahead for signs of a change in grade.  I saw one person dismount and other pass him.  Another rider called it quits as I passed him.  

My back hurt.  I wasn't going to stop to stretch it.

I have a triple up front and mountain bike gearing in the back.  I'm not allowed to stop.  

I turtled along at something close to 4.5 miles an hour.  I hoped for the best every time the road curved out of view, but nothing ever looked like the top.  After several forevers, a turnout for an overlook appeared.  The view was astounding, but I wasn't going to stop for it.

"I'm stopping here," Tom called up to me.

"I'm gonna keep going."  I'll steal his picture when he posts it, I figured.  The road turned another corner, and there was the rest stop, on an outcrop with the same view.

Naturally, the first thing I did was pull out my cell phone, take a picture, and send it to Marc with the message that we'd made it to the top of the mountain without being rained on.  Naturally, as soon as I put my phone away, the rain began.

"You just have about a mile more to the top," one of the volunteers said.  "Then it's mostly downhill for fifteen miles."

So, back into turtle-slug mode we went, this time in something more than a drizzle and less than real rain.  A well-meaning Bike Virginia volunteer had stuck a sign by the side of the road.  "5 miles to the top," it said, and was followed by a smiley-face.

5 miles?  I don't know if I can hold this for five more miles. I guess I have to.  But that's not right.  The rest stop is almost at the top.  I looked ahead at the three riders who had passed me.  They were disappearing over a lip.  Not 5 miles; 0.5 miles.  "Is this the top? This looks top-ish," I said to a rider next to me.  She agreed and sped off.  I slowed down to make sure that Tom and Ron could see me raise my fist in the air in victory.

I don't know how long it took us to fly down that mountain, but it felt like five minutes.  At the bottom, where it wasn't raining at all, I turned around to look at the sky at the top.

As promised, it was almost all downhill from there on the road to Damascus.

The rest stop was teeming with fastboys and skinny women.  I felt completely outclassed.  And somewhat fat. I knew, without asking, that these powerhouses were riding the century.  There weren't enough cars parked here to prove otherwise.

We plopped down on the grass.  The guys ate the beans and rice served by the volunteers.  I engulfed my PB&J, plus half the diluted coffee I'd poured into my second water bottle in the morning.  We checked the radar; rain was heading straight for us.  Never mind that, because we were heading for the blue route.  "We're going to get wet," Tom said.  I rolled onto my stomach to stretch my back while another rider gave us the low-down on the slow, low-grade ascent into Tennessee.  "It's beautiful," she said.

And it was.  We were under trees most of the time, so, while we did get wet, the trees kept most of the rain off of us.  The road was newly paved, and a steady 3 percent grade.  I had to call for a rest halfway up because my back was aching again.  My shorts were wet, too.  We had gone nearly 40 miles at this point; i usually get my second wind at 40 miles.  If it was going to happen today, it needed to happen now.  It didn't seem to be happening.  My back still hurt.

After a brief 9% grade, we reached the rest stop:

Ruritan!  Could it be the name of the stream we'd been following all the way up here?  That would be seventeen kinds of awesome.

I sent a text to Sean and Dale with a picture of the sign.  "They talk funy down here," I wrote.

Sadly, no.  Raritan.

I found a tree branch and hung from it for a slow count of 30.  The pain was gone.

We stood under the roof of the picnic area until a downpour stopped.

After a short climb back up the pre-rest stop hump, it was all downill.  Tom supposed we could ride the next ten miles without pedaling, but we didn't try.

This time we stopped for pictures:

That's a Raleigh sign next to the bike:

When we arrived again in Damascus, the sun was shining.

We crashed out on the grass again, chatting with a handful of century riders.  Again I felt like a slacker.  I felt as if this ride were the equivalent of me in a room full of Princeton students.  I rolled onto my back and did my PT stretches.  I was licked.  "I feel as if I should have been doing the century," I said to Tom as we walked back to the car.  "We could have," he said, "And it would have sucked."

Team Synapse:

The sky darkened as we drove the eight miles back to the hotel.  We had barely time enough to get our bikes indoors before the rain came.

We cleaned up, ate anything in the hotel room that wasn't nailed down, and drove to the center of Abingdon in search of chocolate.  We found a bakery and bought some things for later.  We crossed the street and had dinner on the porch of an old house turned restaurant.

Back in the hotel room, Tom opened his mapping software to announce the post mortem gleaned from his GPS:

60 miles (which we knew), with 7000 feet of climbing (which we didn't know), 4500 of which were in the first 33 miles.

Tomorrow we have 45 miles with 4000 feet of climbing, although Tom, in his optimistic manner, is promising it won't be as bad as today.  If nothing else, the high temperature for the day will only be in the 70s, and there won't be any rain.

I'd best get on my back and stretch again.