Dog park with K

Delivering cookies

Post Christmas quiet-ish roads

Family Christmas plus Ross Bridge plus Hwy 31

Short commute route lots of traffic on Christmas Eve

55 cars - https://www.mybiketraffic.com/rides/view/211 - This was the toughest skyway yet, here's quick recap - nice overnight temps to stay in the lower 50s (but of course it dropped into the 40s). Dry weather expected until Saturday afternoon when stray thunderstorms possible. It turned into a beautiful, warm day eventually but stayed cool for most of the day because of overcast skies. This was important to help manage water, if we ever get a blistering hot skyway, then you will be filtering water at nearly every water source you come to. No rain at all until later in the evening when a massive thunderstorm complex moved through right as all of us were on various points of the Alabama skyway ridge (100 miles long depending on what you count as part of "the ridge"). It went from being a nice warm mid 60s degree evening to hypothermic cold instantly when that downpour hit accompanied by very strong winds. It was like you were swimming in 50ish degreeF water and then getting out of the water and standing in the strong wind all at once. It was still perfect weather when I left the Cheaha store after resting there in a rocking chair for about 15 minutes. I got a text from my wife about halfway down the descent just before you lose cellphone connection - storms moving in here (in Birmingham), keep an eye on the weather. I know that storm systems move at various rates and a lot of times there is a heavy southwest - northeast tilt to the storms meaning that it could be several hours yet before it made it all the way east to Cheaha and south towards Sylacauga. Just after i saw the text pop up on the phone, I saw lightning off in the distance towards Birmingham. I kept hoping as I rode southwest that I would get below the line of storms. One thing to consider is that in rural national forest areas, there is not a lot of shelter. I guess I sorta realized this because my plan was to try to make it to Chandler Springs church and assess the weather closely there. Well, I had just passed Adams Gap and made it up near the high point on Skyway-3 when I felt the first rain drops, which very quickly turned into a downpour. My change of plans was to try to make it to the Gunterstown / Cemetery Mountain road and hopefully there would be a trailhead kiosk for the Pinhotti. No such luck, a whole lot of nothing at that intersection. I continued across and up the other side but hadn't gone more than 100m when the lightning got a bit unbearable. I knew I was climbing up to a high point on a high ridge line, so I decided given how cold I was it was time to break out the emergency bivy right there in the pouring rain under a not-too-tall tree. This was my first time using it, so I just unrolled it and climbed in ... immediate warmth ... my feeling of "sweet, I'm saved" very, very quickly switched to "oh crap, I may need to think about using the sos button" as the lightning was just one right after the other and I started shaking uncontrollably as it had gone from being warm to freezing so fast as the cold water was pooling on top of me. I could feel the cold through the mylar. Then my next thought was, that's crazy, I can self rescue myself in 15 minutes by riding down the mountain either side and knock on someone's door in either valley. But then my next thought was, that's would mean quitting the race. So I decided to give riding one more shot, and that's where I got lucky. I didn't know where to put the now completely soaked emergency bivy. I didn't want to open my backpack which was dry from a waterproof shell. So I noticed the mylar and thought I would try stuffing it inside my jersey. It was still "warm" (i.e., 85 degrees instead of 50 degrees) from me having been inside it and plus it ended up reflecting my body heat as I started riding. The warmth was just enough to keep me pushing through the storm to make it to the first shelter I can find which I knew would be the Chandler Springs church. I made it there after what felt like hours, but was actually only about 45 minutes, and decided to try to rest and wait out the rest of the storm. The front stoop of the church was a sheltered concrete slab so I laid down on the welcome mat and crawled back into the emergency bivy. I didn't change out of my wet stuff, though, because I wanted to save my dry clothes for when it stopped raining and I started riding again. Being out of the rain in the bivy helped, but it wasn't as warm as I hoping it would be because by this point I was soaking wet ... I was going to take off my clothes and crawl back in when I noticed that it had stopped raining and the lightning seemed farther away. I decided I should go ahead and change into dry clothes and head out again during a break in the storm or hopefully before the next storm hit. No cellphone coverage there so no way to check the weather. I sent kristine several messages using the satellite tracker (Garmin Inreach) when I was out of cell coverage and needed to let her know why I wasn't moving on the tracker. Worth its weight in gold. I put on my dry bibs and wrapped the emergency bivy around me pulling the bib straps up and over to hold it in place. Put my dry wind vest on next, and then put my wet jersey on last feeling that there was enough "dry-ish" layers between me and the wet jersey. Not sure if that was good decision, but once I started moving and doing the long climb up Skyway-1 towards Horn Mountain I was plenty warm. The problem now wasn't being cold and wet, but rather dodging the lightning in the next storm that came close enough to soak me again (thankfully my "heating plan was working) but not so close that I was for sure going to get struck by lightning. Some of the views from the top of nearby storms whenever there was a break in the clouds/fog/rain were incredible. At one point it looked like I was eye level with one of the distant storms that was being lit up revealing a circular ring around the lightning, but I know that was just optical illusion because of distance. Also, the lightning from any one of several storms was so constant that I didn't need my light for one stretch of the climb. Especially since the cloud cover and fog would carry the light from a lightning bolt in any of the storms all the way above me on the ridge line even though technically the bolts weren't in the storm above me. At least that's what I kept telling myself. Skway-1 is a long section of a high ridge with several "higher" points and mini-valleys high on the ridge line. I was dreading each time I had to go up into one of the higher sections and relieved going back down into one of the mini-valleys (only 200-300 feet lower). It was somewhat tortuous to have this fear of being struck by lightning for almost two hours, which is how long it took me to cross the ridge from AL-77 to AL-148. It didn't help that I was playing the soundtrack from Bohemian Rhapsody over and over again to keep myself awake ... so having it play "Who wants to live forever?" with lightning all around me wasn't great other than thinking of the irony of getting struck while listening to that song. To be fair, though, it was the first storm a few hours earlier where there was one cloud-to-ground lightning strike nearby. Most of the lightning in these storms seemed to be cloud-to-cloud, but there were definitely cloud-to-ground strikes I could see and hear in the distance whenever there was a break in the fog around me. So it was still disconcerting to be riding up in the clouds (fog) with the lightning. From there until the end took forever and the climbs on the return portion of our outbound route was so hard, especially since my knee was killing me by this point. Nearly everyone had knee problems on the course, and I think that's a testimony to the steepness of the climbs and trying to get so much weight up those hills. In retrospect, I wish I had ridden a lot of the middle section before Heflin much easier, but I was having fun and flying through there. I will write more in my blog, but here's a keyword list I can use to remember things to write about - bonfire, house fire, deer, rabbits, coyote, controlled burns, dogwood trees, sleep zone, Alabama mudding family, Cheaha store luck both directions, Piggly wiggly. Also, before I forget Brent's new addition to the course that takes us across the state line also takes us onto the same course for TNGA. Amazing to now have these two races connected together physically via courses.

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Brian Toone

2019/04/05 Sycamore, AL skyway 300 unbelievably epic 10 people started, only two finishers, I won!

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Dog park with K

Delivering cookies

Post Christmas quiet-ish roads

Family Christmas plus Ross Bridge plus Hwy 31

Short commute route lots of traffic on Christmas Eve

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