The Silver Comet

Today the girls and I embarked on what we hoped would be the final instalment of The Great Silver Comet Adventure. We've been making our way from east to west, 20 or 30 miles at a time (round trip) since this past July and it's been taking longer and longer to get to the trailhead. Man, I think it took almost 2 hours today.

The previous chunk was riddled with hills that were difficult even for me, but we've been climbing the hills in our neighborhood after school now for weeks and both girls are really good with their gears now. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, depending on how you think about it, today's section turned out to be as flat as we'd wished the previous section was. We did have a mean headwind, but no hills to speak of.

Iz always wants to ride in a paceline and today's paceline was the best we'd ever done. We were tight and smooth and fast, and I think for the first time, we actually took advantage of each others' draft.

Sophie took her hand off to scratch her face or something though, missed the bars putting it back on and turned her front wheel out from under her.

It looked horrible but she got up and walked it off and it turned out to be no worse than a couple of skinned knees. Still though, poor little girl. A couple just happened to be behind us with a first aid kit. At first I declined because I always carry one myself, but after looking in my Camelback, it turned out that I'd left it in my Grand Canyon pile and we availed ourselves of their hospitality.

Sophie wanted to rest a minute, but I don't think it even occurred to her to turn back. We'd come so far and we were so close.

A few miles later we were there - the Alabama Border.

Woohoo!

A lady and her friend were there too and the lady was lying down in the middle of the trail, stretching as we rode up. At first I couldn't tell what it was. "Is that someone in the trail?" "I don't know. What is that?" Yep, it was. We ended up talking to them for a while. They'd ridden all the way in from Smyrna. What had taken us 6 or 7 trips, they would finish in one, assuming they made it back in one piece.

Maybe we'll do that someday too.

Our celebratory feast of Twix, Sweetarts, Skittles and Beef Jerky, glorious in and of itself, was made even more glorious by the achievement.

Technically we weren't done though, we still had to get back to the car, and that gave Isabel an opportunity to crash too.

Hers was substantially less significant than Sophie's, but she stoved her left hip and had to hobble around for a few minutes before she could ride again. She did scrape her elbow, but it wasn't too bad.

Onward!

Homeward. The miles flew by. We even had a tailwind to help us out.

On the way out we saw a couple sitting at a bench, playing with a cat with no tail. It wasn't their cat though, it just lived nearby, hung around that bench and begged for food and attention from anyone who stopped. On the way back, we just happened to need to stop there so Iz could adjust some article of clothing she was wearing and the cat came running over for scratches.

We gave it all the scratches in the world, but we didn't have any food and I think it was kind of pissed when we left.

The rest of the ride was uneventful, and with our arrival at the Martin Trailhead, with far less circumstance than one might expect, the Great Silver Comet Adventure met its inevitable, silent conclusion.