Afternoon Ride

HBC delivery and Hoover

Great practice with the Jags!

Dog park with K

Delivering cookies

This ride ended up being a weird case study of "sleep" and "time". I got up on Friday at 3am so that I get a lot of work done and then be tired enough to go to bed by 6pm Friday. Then I woke up at 8:30pm and drove to Georgia thinking that I could start my ride by about midnight. Well, I forgot that Georgia is an hour ahead. So it was 1:15am by the time I finished the drive there and 1:33am by the time I left to ride 450 miles on a loop down to the farthest south tip of the panhandle.

That wouldn't be too big a deal, except I was also going to lose an hour because of daylight savings time switch happening overnight at 2am. So a grand total of two hours just magically disappearing (in terms of when I would finish). 

But it gets even stranger ... The Apalachicola River divides Florida itself into two timeszones. I would start out in Georgia in eastern time, but then I would cross back over into central time about sunset. I didn't realize this, and I missed the sign telling me that I had crossed over into Central timezone. So when the sun was setting about an hour earlier than I had thought it would set, I was very confused.

Fast forward a couple hours and I had routed myself across the Apalachicola River again much farther north to hit a hard-to-reach Florida county (Liberty County). Well, as it turns out, this would take me back into Eastern timezone. This time I noticed the sign and realized what was happening. Well, ironically, on the far side of the bridge all I was doing was turning around since I'd have crossed over into the "missing" county from my southeastern county map. 

Fast forward another hour past midnight and I was about to hit 24 hours on my ride (since I didn't start until 1:30am, I should have thought that was weird but didn't think about it at the tim). The reason, of course, is that I started at 1:30am in EASTERN time, but hit 24 hours back in CENTRAL STANDARD time very close to the Georgia border (which would take me back into EASTERN STANDARD time, but only for about 15 minutes before it would jump an hour b/c of daylight savings time.

I didn't realize any of this at the time 350 miles into my ride and quite tired. Instead, the sequence of events I observed were: it's 12:45am, ride about 44 minutes and check the time again ... and lo and behold it was 3:30AM!!!!! I had crossed back over into eastern time and within a few minutes I had also lost the hour due to daylights savings time.

At the time, all I could think was "seriously, what the what???" and a few minutes later as the realization of what had happened hit me was: "that's just not fair". In any case, I was also already 2 hours behind the schedule I had planned to have me finished well before the church I had parked at started ... well tack on an additional 2 hours b/c of the time shenanigans and you end up 4 hours behind schedule right smack in the middle of most church services.

I had worried for nothing as there was nobody there when I made it back to my car at 10:45am.

I started this 32 hour ride on just 2 hours of sleep. No problem making it through the first night (Saturday morning). But I knew Saturday night into Sunday morning would be challenging. Sure enough, I was riding so slowly b/c of how sleepy I was. So when I came to a town at 4am on a Sunday morning and everything closed, I did a google search for post office and was less than a 10th of a mile away. I biked straight there, propped my bike outside the building, and was asleep in less than 5minutes. Sound asleep, too, as I have no memory of any passage of time at all as it felt I woke up instantly with a jolt (you can see that in my heartrate data).

Rested, I started to take off, but part of the reason I had wanted to stop and sleep was so that maybe I could rest enough to start riding fast again, and also because I was freezing. So I when I took off, I was freezing again but thankfully the gas station across the street had opened. In this town, it must have doubled as a many store as they had a limited selection of generic clothing items ... including a 4XL (XXXXL) long sleeve white t-shirt for $6. I also bought cotton full finger work gloves for $2 and they had a selection of University of Maryland beanies (no other team, just Maryland). Did I mention I was in the southwest corner of Georgia? Why was there about 10 beanies from the University of Maryland mounted on the wall for sale and no other teams at all. Just Maryland, lol. In any case, I bought one for $4 and since I already had a beanie, used it stuff at the top of my jersey to act like a gaiter.

There is so much more to tell about the ride, itself, but will have to save it for the blog!

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Brian Toone

2021/03/14 - Cuthbert, GA part 1 - gran fondo 24 hour cutoff - somewhat spontaneous epic in search of gators

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Afternoon Ride

HBC delivery and Hoover

Great practice with the Jags!

Dog park with K

Delivering cookies

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