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Wet commute bike pickup via bike! TNGA rig thank you Bike Link!

Night Walk

First long road ride of the year - Steve Donaldson was a colleague and friend. He loved hiking in Colorado and climbing the 14ers there. So I figured I would definitely ride to the highest point I could get to in Alabama as part of the ride. I also decided I'd route myself northeast first to include portions of the routes from some of my adventure rides and races here in the south. "The heart of the south" was a 500 mile road race leaving from Birmingham and heading northeast up onto Lookout Mountain before turning east and climbing up and over Fort Mountain and then looping back through Mount Cheaha and Talladega to get back to Birmingham. TNGA (trans north georgia) is a mountain bike race across Georgia from the South Carolina border to the Alabama border. It ends on the silver comet trail at Esom Hill. I raced this a  couple weeks ago. The Cheaha Challenge is an awesome gran fondo out of Jacksonville, Alabama that climbs up and over the highest point in the state. Lastly, some of the county roads northeast of Heflin I had ridden in the opposite direction towards Georgia ... once on a 375 mile ride from home to Clemson and then again at the start of a 1000 mile ride from my house to Tybee Island, Georgia via the highest points of four states.

I wanted to leave at midnight, but I was too sleepy so I rolled back over and went to sleep for another hour. It turns out this was the perfect time to leave on a labor day holiday as there was nobody out on the roads. I got passed by one car until I got to Leeds where I was passed by one more car. Then no cars until Hwy 174 where I got passed by another car and two trucks. Once I crossed the dam, traffic started to pick up on the normally very busy road to Hwy 431 - I was passed by another 5 cars. Then I hit the Chief Ladiga trail, so essentially I made it from my home in Hoover to the Georgia state line being passed by less than 10 cars. I turned off the Silver Comet at the first road crossing heading to Culp Lake road, which turned out to be amazing. It started out as good narrow pavement, but switched to dirt pretty quick. There were two big dogs that must have defined a large territory because they chased me for about half a mile on the dirt. I was killing it rouge roubaix style to stay away from them on what luckily for me was a gentle downhill. After the dogs finally stopped, I stopped to take some pics and pee. Near the "Highland Resort" (probably some sort of ATV place) the road turned back into beautiful fast pavement. When I made it to Fire Tower road, though, I turned right hoping I could climb the fire tower. The dirt road started out fast and smooth until it eventually turned into a steep ATV trail. It was all rideable though and I was super happy to clear everything without stopping. I noticed a cement driveway high up on the mountain continuing up higher and figured it may take me to the actual fire tower, but it turned out to be a small commune with 3 or 4 houses built at the peak of the mountain where the fire tower probably stood at one point. I dropped back down to the dirt and continued across the top where it intersected with Treat Mountain road, a very non-road bike friendly gravel road with large gravel. I rode it real slow not wanting to pinch flat, but thankfully it was gently rolling up all the way to GA 100, where I knew given how much I had been climbing I would have some nice road descending. In addition, my route pretty much made a 180 there so the annoying headwind I had been riding into turned into an awesome tailwind. This combined with rolling downhill for about 30 miles to Heflin made this part fly by. 

I stopped at Jack's in Heflin to get some food and water. I had skipped the gas station early in town hoping I would catch one on the far side of town ... I should have know better - there wasn't one. So I had to make do with water for the long climb up to Cheaha. It was the right amount, too, as I didn't run out until the top. Refueled at the Cheaha store, flew down the tailwind descent and across to Adam's Gap. Here I had been debating earlier in the ride about which way to go, but by this point I knew without a doubt I wanted to include all of Skyway-3 (600-3). It would save me a couple miles of riding and one of the worst pavement descents in Alabama, but replace it with a rocky (but rideable) trail. The climbs were all great on Skyway-3 but some of the descents have been "re-graveled" recently and they were really rocky. I had to ride them slow to keep from flatting. The last long descent down to Gunterstown Rd was in great condition given that it was "re-graveled" a long enough time ago that all the gravel has been pushed to the sides in enough places to ride at pretty good clip without as much fear of pinch flatting.

From this point to the end through Talladega it got very hot, but I stopped at the Heart of the South Talladega McDonald's which has been an oasis for me in so many adventures over the years in both hot weather and cold ice-beard weather helped me out with a couple of stawberry banana smoothies. One was gone before I made it to the prison, and the other was already "warm" by that point but I finished it anyway by the dam.

The dam to home was tough with the heat, but it was surprisingly dry with little humidity so the views were just incredible from the eagle's nest on Vandiver where I had stopped with Steve to look out at the skyway ridge line on a ride we did together back in 2006 from Samford all the way to Roy's lake house for a department planning meeting. This was before I knew anything about the skyway ridge line and how many epic adventures I would have there. Thanks Steve for everything. You are missed by so many people, singing hymns and climbing mountains. 