Labor Day loop fun

West Alabama 300k

Samford on a Saturday

Samford

Title is wordplay on Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird". With Easter Monday off at Samford, I decided to get a long ride in. Wilcox and Monroe counties are the least I've ridden in, plus with some careful routing around the areas I have ridden, this ride had 251.5 new miles of roads in Alabama I had never ridden before, getting me closer to 15% of all roads in Alabama ridden.

I don't think anyone truly appreciates how difficult a ride like this is. The ride itself wasn't too bad since I have trained up for it, but let me paint you picture of the origin of this ride and how it came to be and all that goes into something like this. If you follow any of my adventures, I make this look easy (I guess?) but it's always an adventure and never easy.

I had a student I was showing some rides I had done near his hometown and we zoomed out to look at my rides in Alabama and he noticed a big giant hole in my Alabama map where I hadn't ridden very much. I've been trying to ride new roads in Alabama, so I figured I would plot out an Eddington (256 miles) routes on as many new roads as possible in that area. 

I wanted to start within about 100 miles from the house so I wouldn't have to charge my wife's car at the expensive roadside chargers and would be able to make it there and back with no charging. So Montgomery was a good starting spot with the goal of making into south alabama near monroeville. Furthermore, I hadn't ridden any of the westbound side of US-80 between Montgomery and Selma. Then I noticed that I also hadn't ridden any of AL-22 southwest out of Selma. And then we get to the Alabama counties I have ridden the least in (Wilcox and Monroe), so it was pretty much fair game for any of the roads down there. But the Alabama River winds it ways through those two counties, and it is a large river with few bridges and one of two Alabama ferries in the entire state. So my routing options weren't limitless b/c you have to find your way to the bridges or ferry. I didn't even realize there was a ferry, and it wasn't until I saw a blue highway sign that said Ferry (toll) that I realized there was likely a working ferry still there!

I had routed myself to a bridge (AL-28) instead, so I didn't even stop to take a pic because I immediately knew that a future adventure would take me across that ferry (probably next week or the week after). 

Back to the routing (I haven't even made it to the ride yet!), as I routed myself down to Monroeville and was looking for gas stations to stop at, I noticed a google maps marker that said Harper Lee gravesite with a pin on the exact location. So I immediately added a spur on my route into the cemetery so I could pay my respects as I remember she had died not too long ago (turns out it was 2016). 

Beyond that, I had to pay a lot more attention to wandrer while routing through Butler, Lowndes, and Montgomery counties as I have ridden in those counties a fair amount which limited my options for taking new roads I've never ridden before. I figured something out that seemed reasonable, but as 251 of the 257 miles of this ride were on roads I had never ridden before, you never know until you get out there and ride.

Finally, I had a route with gas stations added as cues in the course file uploaded to my Garmin, and it was time to ride ... well no, not really, because I had to first get through Easter Sunday. My wife was playing bells at church, and we had family dinner plans, and I needed to ride exactly 43 miles so that my total day could count as an Eddington 300.

So I rode to church at 9am, rode home from church to fix something with my lateral passing app I had been tinkering with that morning. Then I rode to my parents house for Easter dinner with the family. Then instead of riding straight home, I needed to ride about 20 more miles to hit the 43 mile number that would lead to an Eddington 300. It was a nice but hot day and drivers were generally nice (thankful for Easter Sunday messages).

So now, finally, to get to the ride. J was home for Easter lunch and we settled into watching some TV re-runs in the afternoon after I got back from riding. I didn't want to cut that time short so I ended up not getting to "bed" until about 730pm, needing to wake up by 930pm to get out the door by about 10pm to make it down to the Winn Dixie I had picked out on satellite to park at and start riding ideally as close to 11pm as possible to be finished before it got too hot in the afternoon with potential storms coming in.

Alarm went off at 930pm and I was out the door by about 10pm. This means I was heading out to drive about 90 miles one way to then ride 257 miles on less than two hours of sleep. Then I'd drive 90 miles back home and do a bunch of stuff for work I ended up needing to get done on my Easter Monday off from work.

Drive down was kinda busy for 10pm on a Sunday night, but I made it down and pulled into a Regions bank near the Winn Dixie so I could change clothes in the outer parking lot and get everything ready so I could then drive over to Winn Dixie, literally pull out the bike, and start riding in under a minute or two to make it less obvious that I was leaving my wife's car there for an extended time.

Everything went great, except I had grabbed my charging cable and set it on my backpack instead of in my backpack. I was about 1/2 mile into the ride and just climbed up the on-ramp to Hwy 80 (divided highway) when I realized I didn't have the cable so I crossed the grass in the median and took the off-ramp on the other side back towards the car where I saw my cable laying in the ground in the parking lot.

Picked up the cable, turned around and rode the exact same half mile back onto Highway 80. I was a bit nervous about my "early" start before midnight as there would be more traffic on the road. There were several industrial businesses and one of them was definitely a third shift one as about an hour in halfway to Selma, I got passed by dramatically more cars than I had been passed by for the first hour. Some third shift had gotten out and those people were apparently living in Selma or somewhere between Montgomery and Selma and heading back down.

It must have been a pretty small shift because after about 30 minutes the traffic went back down (keep in mind, it's about 2 in the morning by this time). Lots of trucks but nothing compared to the logging trucks I would spend most of the day communing with after sunrise. 

I had found two 24 hour gas stations total in the first 135 miles of this quite rural route. One of them was 50 miles into the ride in Selma, but I stumbled upon a different one I hadn't seen about 48 miles. Still, I knew I had about 90 miles to the next 24 hour gas station and wasn't sure about the morning opening times for the few others I had seen, so I was definitely going to stop. 

Rejuvenated with some gatorade and coke, I took off again to finish riding new roads into Selma, it was about 3 in the morning by the time I made by the church where the Civil Rights march from Selma to Montgomery started from. I didn't ride across the famous bridge b/c I've already ridden across that bridge many times and wanted to go across the bypass bridge I had never ridden.

That bypass bridge put me onto the east side of town where the pavement was either non-existent or so pot-holed that I ended up slowing to nearly a crawl for several stretches. I also got forced into a dumping grounds by an oncoming car and the fact that I was running my light on the "walking" setting to get it to last the entire night, I didn't see the pile of tires and trash people have been dumping on this deserted street immediately outside of town across the railroad tracks. 

Thankfully, I made it through all the glass and debris with no flat tire, and I made it across the tracks to the downtown area. I criss-crossed my way through previous routes through Selma and made it to AL-22 leaving the southwest side of town. 

AL-22 is an awful highway to ride between Selma and Clanton on the northeast side of town with no shoulder and lots and lots of trucks. I figured it would be the same or worst on this side of town, but leaving Selma at about 3am, thankfully there was only the sporadic car or truck every few miles instead of many trucks every mile. Still with 35 miles to ride, I didn't leave AL-22 until about 5am and the truck traffic had picked up considerably as by this point I was only about 100 miles from Mobile, and there are lots and lots and lots of 24 hour industries on the cities north of Mobile with those being maybe only 50 or so miles away from where I was.  

But I left and lost all the trucks ... yay ... but only for a little while. It had gotten a bit chilly by this point down into the upper 50s. That's not really that cold, but I was wearing only my summer shorts and summer jersey, which is a bit chillier after riding for several hours and being sleepy and the blood flow / heartrate starting to drop.

There were pockets of warm humid air, too, though leading to periodic fog throughout the night. I kept hoping when I would make it through a thicker patch that it would easy up again, which it always did. I didn't want to be riding on these 55 and 65mph speed limit highways with a rumble strip filled shoulder without good visibility.

It's hard to stress how rural this area was. I was heading into the county seat (i.e., biggest town in the county) from 6am all the way up until making it into downtown Monroeville at 8am on a Monday morning. And while traffic did pick up, it was probably still only a single car every mile or two. Compare that to my Monday morning commutes into work here in Birminhgam where I get passed by nearly a constant stream of cars, sometimes over 100 cars in my 7 mile commute to work. 

This was a pleasant surprise as I was expecting a lot of traffic. But the even better surprise was not one but TWO legitimate Category 4 climbs on my route into town. I knew from the topo map I was going through a hilly area, but I didn't realize there would be climbs with switchbacks, landslides, and deep ravines. That was an unexpected and fun find.

I had planned to stop at a gas station here (which would have been my second stop) 138 miles into the ride, but I still had about half a bottle, a tailwind, and relatively cool temps to make it about 13 miles farther to Beatrice where I knew there was another gas station. So I opted after stopping at Harper Lee's gravesite and snapping a few pics, to skip the gas station and make my way north. This was on AL-21, an even larger one-lane each way highway that stretches the entire state. This was where the logging trucks began in earnest. They were all great, but both directions had many trucks. And I had 22 miles on AL-21 before my next turn. Beatrice was only 13 miles into it though so I was glad to have a break.

I ran out of gatorade a few miles before making it to Beatrice, and I also ran out of food (unusual). So I was a mess by the time I made it to the gas station over 150 miles into my ride (only my second stop). I got a lot of stuff and took off again doing a tango with oncoming and passing trucks and cars for about 9 more miles which I counted down so thankful to turn off the state highway onto a county highway. But hilariously, ALL the trucks turned too. This small county highway went through the main logging area. There were even more trucks than before. If I were to make a rough guess, I'd say there were maybe 75 trucks total that passed me with about the same number going the other way. I only had one truck on truck situation where I waved the truck behind me on to pass me b/c there was a nice wide gap between the rumble strip and the shoulder in this one section right where I was at the time. He passed with no hesitation and a small little honk of appreciation after he made it past.

This county road was easily my favorite road of the adventure despite the trucks. The road rolled constantly with fun hills, and it was nearly entirely in the shade. I lost my tailwind but the crosswind wasn't as bad back in the woods. The pavement was descent, too, a nice smoothed in chip/seal if I remember correctly. Although it could have been an older tarmac that had held up well to all the truck traffic. I cannot remember now, but I do remember being surprised at the smoothness of the road.

Good things never last, and by the time I needed to turn left to head north, I had transitioned through counties and onto some terrible pavement. Traffic stayed light pretty much all the way to the end, and I had lost all the trucks for the last 50+ miles north with an incredible tailwind, variety of roads, and a great Dollar General stop where I was so hot from being in the sun and thankfully this dollar general was positioned correctly for that time of day where the entire cement sidewalk in front of the store was in the shade so that I could eat my chips, drink my coke, fill up my bottles with gatorade and contemplate the adventures of the day before wrapping up with only a little bit of after school traffic through the outskirts of Haynesville (I think) and then the last rush of a ton of traffic on the mile of US Hwy 80 East I needed to ride to get back to my car.

Quick change in the car and 90 mile drive back home through rush hour traffic went smoothly making it back home a little less than 24 hours after going to sleep to start this adventure.

This is what an adventure like this looks like from start to finish.

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Brian Toone

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Labor Day loop fun

West Alabama 300k

Samford on a Saturday

Samford

Samford

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