A Great 8 Days ---Days 5 and 6

June 5-12, 2010


Great Day #5

Today's day would be our longest ride, about 43-45 miles ending near Crabtree Meadows. Hitherto my packing has been unruly. I just hadn’t been able to get the milk crate to ride in a calm, shiftless and balanced fashion. Also, my back tire had been getting just a little soft perhaps because I had no valve stem cap on it. I don’t know. But a few pounds under pressure on a tire can make a big difference on performance. I did finally arrive at a good bungie cord configuration for the crate and a packing system that kept my packed weight riding low with logical, easy access to items.

I pulled out of the campground first, even ahead of Frank for the climb across Grandfather Mt. There was only one mile of it that really seemed difficult. I occasionally stopped to take photos and listen to birds. Near the top of the climb, I bumped into a photographer we had met the day before. He travels hither and yon on foot with a backpack taking pictures and sells them over the Internet through a stock photo house. This trip, he has covered a couple hundred miles along the parkway. Sounds like a good job to me.



I stop to listen to a bird that I have since come to believe is a Veery. I’ve only recently been hearing the bird, a thrush type, typically in big woods above 3500’. It has a pleasant, rolling metallic warble that makes me wonder how much birdsong may be totally inaudible to humans due to the limited range of our ears. Maybe certain other species of birds can’t hear it either. I don’t know.

As I approach our breakfast rendez-vous , I stop and take a short hike down to Camping Creek just before Linville Falls and Famous Louise’s Rockhouse Restaurant. There really wasn’t much to look at. The hundred or so yards of trail had many blow downs across it from winter storms and the creek was nothing spectaular. Before I made it back to the pullover, Frank and Ed have caught up.
We make it to Louise’s at the best of all possible times -lunch and breakfast are both options. After trout, I have them fix for me 3 boiled eggs to go.





This year, the descent from Chestoa Overlook was uneventful in the sense that there was no thunderstorm and my front brakes didn’t fail this time. Still, it was a steep and curvy 3 miles with threatening but hilarious traffic safety signs. My back tire was getting just a bit softer, but I always fail to remember to put air into when I catch up to one of the group with a pump. It’s not seriously low or anything, just one of those small mechanical details that characteristically I tend to neglect in life as a whole. From lunch/breakfast, it’s another big honkin’ climb up to Crabtree Meadows, and the Campground, and more importantly, their Snack Bar.




I straggle in last, yet still forget to borrow a pump when I found the group at the Snack Bar.
This year we made it in dry, but there are some threatening clouds poking and prodding in the breeze. The Snack Bar has prominently and proudly posted its sanitation report card score of 100.0 which I figure is pretty easy in that they no long serve food. They do sell snackish foodish grocery-style items to the campground folks, and they have a public microwave and paper plates. I eschew their frozen 50 cent burritos for some canned pork ‘n beans with crackers.

It rains a bit. It’s hours before the Snack Bar closes and we can safely if not legally camp under their back porch. Going into the actually campground is not a popular plan as there is a large unnecessary hill to traverse. We are early again and there is general consensus to pedal a few more miles and maybe find a spot hidden in the woods along the road. With topo maps, the clouds, and breezes we augured for a possible camp site -flat, secluded, not too far, legal, and even dry would be nice. Outside, dicey clouds tumbled overhead as if they were shooting craps for a decent rainfall. We decided to take our chance and move on.

We won the crap shoot. As it turns out, the last shower of the afternoon was dying just as we rolled out. Within a mile or so, we found a perfect site –flat and on forest service property instead of Parkway property. So, I think we were even legal -sort of.

It was another uneventful night in the woods.


Great Day #6


This day we would ride to the campground on Mt Mitchell.


One of, if not the most beautiful regions in our area. It was a pleasant temperature, but somewhat overcast. Good riding weather really.


Having rolled my bike through the underbrush back to the pavement I noticed my pannier bungies had gotten mangled and tangled in my rear spokes. Not a real problem but then I noticed the support screw on one side of my luggage rack was missing –probably in the woods somewhere. This had to be fixed to move with a load. Luckily, it just so happens that the screws holding my pedal’s toe straps fit perfectly. I rob an almost redundant screw from one side and I was traveling in no time. I’ve never worn clip shoes or wire toe cages to bike, I’m sure they work fine. The straps are simple and seem to help. Even wearing sandals and sockless I had no problem all week.

Today’s only a 20 mile day, but since we are pedaling from 3700’ to 6200’+ you would expect some hills. Again, I had forgotten to pump my back tire. I think that would have helped and before I had reached the finally climb up the final ridge I was lamenting this perpetual oversight. Along the way, I was passed on a steep climb by 2 long distant cyclist wearing farm clothing. I wouldn’t say they were Amish but they just kinda gave that impression. Of course they might have said, "As we were getting close to Mt Mitchell, we passed a guy wearing a black kilt. I wouldn't say he was Scottish, but he just kinda gave that impression".

Everyone has a uniform I guess. Whatever they were, they were haulin’ it -upward and onward at an impressive steady clip.

I pulled off near the top of one of the intervening hills for a break and to survey the mountainscape with my map. Kent pulled in and we chatted a bit. He left and me soon after. I put on a rain top as a shower had just picked up.
About a mile or two further on I realized I’d left my helmet and my map lying on the ground at the overlook. Drat. I was not going back up a mile climb for them. Maybe good fortune would prevail and a ranger would help out or something. With only a few more miles to the campground that's a mile or so below the mountain top, I pulled in for another break. My tire was definitely on the soft side, plus on the downhills a small but noticable hump-thump, hump-thump, hump-thump was also coming from the back tire.
I didn’t know what it was, but it couldn’t be good. Fortunately Dale passed me and left his hand pump. That improved things immensely.

I straggled into the Park restaurant last -just as lunch orders were being taken. The views out the windows were incredible if you like cloud. Not many clouds, just the one we were engulfed in. It wasn’t near as cold as my first trip here, but the 20+mph wind made some layers feel good.

Afterwards, we hiked up to the summit along the pavement.

Still, everything, as Pink Floyd would say, was “Obscured by Clouds”.



I chose to trek back to camp alone by trail and met a fellow runner hiking up. She noticed my Five Finger shoes and said she had started to run in them as well. We are everywhere.

Bwahahahha.






































































At camp again, we chillaxed in the blowing cloud until another meal could be profitably and modestly taken.


Walking back to the restaurant, Ed may have given a few unsuspecting motorists an almost eventful start as he ran up and down the road in his infamous pink –purple polkadot tights.




But by midnight, Ed was restricted to his tent, and the wind was nearly still at the end of what I’d call an almost uneventful day.