To gatlinburg

Samford

Samford plus errands

Mtn bike practice with the Jags

369 cars, 1.5/mi, 0.4/min, 41.7mph(avg)
https://www.mybiketraffic.com/rides/view/91376
A little more about this ride...
Normally, we are adventuring in the snow on the fat bike or skiing up in Minnesota this time of year, but this year we needed to stay home, which worked out well given that there isn't any snow up there at all yet!

Looking for a short adventure I could do with Josiah, I remembered to the Cross-Florida ITT organized by Singletrack Samurai (Karl) a couple years ago. That course was so awesome, and I remember thinking several times during that race that I needed to bring the family back down to ride the trails. 

One spot I specifically remembered was the Santos trails and the long greenway connected section before that with all the unexpected drops and climbs along a long narrow ridge line. So I looked it up, and here we are in Ocala, Florida ... going to ride mountain bikes for a couple days and swim with the manatees.

I had several significantly scaled back adventures in December due to weather, which has left my 20,000 mile goal for the year hanging by a thread. The only way to knock it out was to ride 60 miles/day for 8 days or or do a couple big rides, or this third option - one long ride followed by several short rides.

Originally, I wanted to ride to the Florida border at Lake City straight down to Highway 280 for most of the way. At about 333 miles and mountains giving way to rolling hills giving way to long flat stretches, I figured I could easily average 17mph and make it under 20 hours.

But the problem was the timing ... I needed to leave early enough so Josiah and his friend Houston could pick me up early in the afternoon to make it down to Ocala early enough to possibly go for a short ride. It's not great to ride down highway 280 (especially the Birmingham - Sylacauga stretch) any time before midnight. It's doable, but you are going to spend nearly the entire time in hit or miss shoulder ... and with old tires I'm trying to run out to the bitter end, there was too much of a chance of at least one flat tire. Plus, it's not fun to have so many cars and trucks passing by wave after wave.

Even before this Florida trip came together, I had been toying with the idea of a 300 miler up and over Cheaha round trip back to the house. So once we decided to go to Florida, I decided I could take the relatively quiet backroads over to Cheaha and move my rendezvous target farther north into Georgia at Tifton, which would be 332 miles and wayyy more climbing.

I knew this was a stretch goal that I would only make it to if the boys were late leaving the house. So realistically, I was thinking someplace around Albany at about 315 miles. But with the cold weather, I had a ton of clothes as I was bound and determined NOT to be freezing cold on this ride. And with all the climbing (16,627ft total), I was not moving very fast with all the extra weight. Especially with many 5-10 degF swings in temperature throughout the night, I was having to stop many times to take off / put on clothes.

So by morning I moved the rendezvous point north of Albany to Plains, at which point, the distance was dangerously close to not even being enough to count as an Eddington 256. It all worked out in the end as J and H drove past Plains to Americus to grab some food, which gave me enough time to head towards Americus and cruise safely past 256 miles.

Some ride highlights, it got cold very quick. As I packed up to leave, one weather app was showing 41 degF in Hoover and the other dropped from 48 to 47 degF in Vestavia (we live on the border of the two cities). I was hot with relatively minimal clothing on for the start of the ride with my traditional climb up Vestavia Dr, wanting to include that on the ride to compare it against Cheaha on the ride profile.

But I could just tell because of how cold it was in the valley along little shades creek before starting the climb proper that the temp was dropping, so unusually I stopped at the top of the climb and put on another layer. And sure enough it was pretty cold by the bottom of pumphouse. I had put on my arm warmers underneath my long sleeves from my rain vest. But this proved to be too hot after I started to hit all the climbs on Sicard Hollow and then out to the Vandiver climbs on Hwy 25. So I stopped again at the bottom of one of those climbs to readjust clothing.

By this point it was almost 10pm so roads had quieted down a bit. In fact, AL-25 ended up being much quieter than normal AND the temp continued to drop the other way. Not wanting to stop again, I stayed a bit underdressed knowing that the temp would probably be quite a bit higher by the time I hit Lake Logan Martin. And wow, the fog from the temperature differential at the lake was pretty intense. Thankfully I hit a clear spot on the far side of the lake right as the only car that passed me through here approached. 

The temperature did climb by the lake, but it dropped again as I made it through the Sleeping Giants and eventually into Talladega. I was cold enough to contemplate stopping at the Walmart to buy some more clothes, but they were already closed (11pm). This worked out well, though, because after putting everything I had brought on at the gas station, the temperature started going the wrong way (up from 36 degF to 43 degF by the bottom of the climb). 

So after I made it past the dogs at the bottom I stopped to basically take everything off. This was almost a mistake because it was quite cold after the initial climb in the Camp Mac valley. Afterwards, though, as I continued on the climb up to Cheaha the temp climbed the rest of the way up.

It was still cold enough that I was starting to calculate whether I had enough battery on my headlights to make it through the night. With a full moon and low clouds mixed with completely clear areas, it was so bright I was able to do the entire climb with no lights at all. Bucket list item ... climb Cheaha from start to finish from about 1-3 in the morning with no lights on a full moon ... totally worth it. Seeing all the shadows from the moonlight deep into the forest on either side of the road was surreal.

I was hot at the top, but I knew it would be quite cold for the long descent down into what I assumed would be very cold valleys on the back side of Cheaha. So I stopped in the campground bathroom to change clothes again. It was perfect for the descent, but with all the climbing into Lineville and temps that hovered around 40, I had to stop yet again to take some clothes back off. Traffic picked up into West Point, Georgia - especially the truck traffic heading to the border on AL-77 and then eventually car traffic on AL-50. I was already over an hour behind schedule so some of the Georgia traffic may have been OK earlier but with double rumble strips and hit or miss shoulder it was tricky to ride.

Eventually I made it to I-185 where most of the traffic turned either north towards Atlanta or south towards Columbus. Finally I was starting to make it out of the hills and pick up my average speed. But unfortunately the direction I was heading from northwest to southeast wasn’t the direction of most of the paved roads. I knew that I would be hitting some dirt at some point, but I wasn’t counting on peanut butter mud and literal dead-ends. One highlight was stumbling upon a brand new greenway that looks like it will eventually connect all the way to Columbus. But as I rode on it, I eventually saw a “Path Ends” sign and shortly thereafter … the ending of the path. So I had to backtrack onto GA-1, which gave me the idea of riding on all the state highways numbered 1. This year, I’ve ridden a good chunk of AR-1 and GA-1. AL-1 is unsigned in Alabama (it runs concurrent with US-231 and US-431, which I’ve ridden stretches of many times). TN-1 was a fun find a couple years ago on a ride to help finish all the counties in Tennessee.

That’s it, that’s my ride.

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Brian Toone

Cheaha on the way to Florida

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To gatlinburg

Samford

Samford

Samford plus errands

Mtn bike practice with the Jags

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