Asheville NC, It’s Bike Time

Yesterday and today was all about the bike.  Chris had never biked up a mountain and I’d never been on one bigger than the ones found in Cape Breton.  After visiting a local bike shop, we got a map and a local favorite route.  All I can say is wow.  Mountains everywhere!

The ride yesterday was a shock to the legs.  Both of us had done little work in the saddle this new year.  After getting lost for the first 20 minutes we found an amazing route that linked to the Blue Ridge Parkway.  The hill or mountain I should say had grades of 12%.  One thing I couldn’t believe is that people had driveways of 30%+!  I took a run at one and couldn’t make it up half way!

Most people would say we are sadistic as we wanted to find a more punishing route which we found today.  Close to two hours of solid climb with only 1 decent which was for 50 meters.  It was relentless!  The grade was much less than yesterday, at a resonable 6% average. 

We started at roughly 660 meters.  We climbed to over 1600 in just 20kms of cycling.  The goal was to make it to Mt. Mitchell which had an elevation of 5200 feet.  All was going well till we hit construction which blocked out passage to the top. 

The decsion was made to go back down as it was really our only option.  Just under the half way point I wanted to keep riding so we both took another route that climbed up to about 1200 meters. 

The descent  from this peak was awesome!  Switchbacks, with little traffic!  I jumped ahead and just drove every apex powering down the hill!  So much fun!

Best part I have to say about today is that for 70% of the trip there were no cars.  They were blocked off from entering the parkway.  We had both lanes of road all to ourselves which was a nice change!

I realized that my pictures are way too big as it probably crashed most of your computers!  Sorry about this!  I’ll make them smaller so we can al lenjoy them together!

Lots more pics to go!  Big run coming up tomorrow!  Happy Trainin!

Cliff