Ascension Parish

This past Tuesday I drove down to South Louisiana to visit the family.

It had just been way too long. Skype is great and all, but it's a far cry from being face-to-face.

The drive down is long, 8 or 9 hours, but I spent that time with the windows down, radio cranked, singing at the top of my lungs, so I rather enjoyed it. It's fun watching the world change as you head south too. The hills flatten out. After a while you don't see any more rocks. The woods get denser. The rivers get wider. The lakes get bigger and bigger.

I rolled into New Orleans just before sunset.

...right before Randazzo's closed...

..just in time to score some chicken parm. They even let me stay a little past closing to finish eating. The guy that ran the place was great and chatty and the whole experience just made me happy.

I rolled into Gonzales just after dark and spent the next few days having all imaginable fun with the family.

Among the highlights:

Kicking the ball around the backyard for hours and hours.

Throwing the softball around the backyard for hours and hours.

Connect Four!

Taking the tiny, angry dog for a walk, hoping she will realize that I actually like her and attack me less. (It sort-of worked)

And, riding bikes in the neighborhood.

Sophie looks totally pro in those glasses. Iz has unfortunately, completely outgrown her bike and couldn't ride with us. Kathryn has gotten strong and fast enough that it's just fun to ride with her now. Woohoo!

I did go for a couple of solo road rides too.

The roads in Ascension Parish are either dead quiet or jam-packed. There is no in-between. Some of the busiest roads have only an inch or two of pavement to the right of the white line too. I imagine a breakdown would back traffic up for hours.

So on my first ride, I basically balance-beamed for miles on that aforementioned inch or two of blacktop, before eventually making it out to Geismar (Gize-mur) where everything was a lot quieter. The route just happened to take me right by the plant my Dad worked at when I was a kid and I recognized the entrance. Ha! I couldn't have planned it better if I'd known.

From there, I hung a left on the River Road and headed south.

Long stretches of the River Road are dotted with industry.

And long stretches are rural and desolate.

I didn't get to see the Mississippi at all, but I was within a few hundred yards of it for a long time. There's a gravel road on top of the levee that I might have seen the river from, but it was cordoned off with fences and no-trespassing signs.

No luck.

After heading south for an interminably long time, I started to wonder if I'd missed my turn. It was getting late and I didn't want to miss dinner so I turned back and nav'ed my way back by dubious recollection of the relative orientation of a few main roads and the sun. It was late in a summer day, so the sun was west-southwest of me, and I was generally southwest of home. No problem right?

My route home took me right by Ashland Plantation.

...and a good many more chemical plants.

It always seems weird to me to pass over or under an interstate on the bike.

Soon enough, I was home. No problem at all, as it turned out.

Looking at the map again later, I'd apparently failed to pay good attention to the scale. The route I'd planned out would have been like 120 miles if I'd ridden the whole thing. The roads out there are sparse and there are enormous tracts of private land between them. In Georgia, you could fit entire cities into tracts that size.

The next day I went out for another, less ambitious ride, basically just wandering around town.

Just down the street, there's a calf-roping farm. They buy cattle, keep them there while they're a good size for roping, then sell them to larger farms. They've got plenty of horses on the property too, and a small rodeo arena.

The cows are often lying down near the road, watching the cars go by. Sometimes they stick their head through the fence to eat the weeds on the other side too. I knew that the grass was greener on the other side of the fence. I guess it tastes better too.

I saw plenty of dem crawdad, or at least the mounds them dem crawdad make.

I mean, they were everywhere. I'd forgotten how prolific they can be. Later that day, Me and Kathryn and Iz ate some at Sammy's too.

Kathryn had pointed out this awesome fence earlier in the week and I rode by it too. It's made out of the fronts of old washers and dryers and dishwashers.

Ha!

There were also a bunch of awesome farms along some bayou that I failed to take photos of. For each one, you had to cross an old wooden bridge to get on to the property, and there were no fences along the front, except at the bridge. The animals were just hemmed in by the water itself. Giant live oaks shaded the road there too. I really should have taken some photos, but I guess I just found myself enjoying the moment too much.

That was it for the outdoor adventure.

Worth mentioning, but not really the point of the trip.

The drive back was less exciting than the drive down. I drove through New Orleans again...

..and had lunch at Semolinas which I thought had long gone out of business until I saw the sign from the highway.

Somewhere in Mississippi I stopped at this gas station.

It seems that if you travel certain routes often enough, you'll end up at the same gas stations over and over. I've been to this one before, long ago. I remembered the giant, not-especially-threatening-looking cheetah. It definitely looks excited, but that's not exactly a predator stare. Ha! Anyway that stood out on the trip back.

When I got home, I had a voicemail from Billy, asking about doing some easy miles on the Silver Comet. Yeah, I could go for that. I'll have to give him a call.

Dirty Sheets

My poor, neglected mountain bike...

I'm relegated to the roads these days, and though I've put an ungodly number miles on my road bike, my mountain bike has been lying in a dismembered heap in the corner of the garage. It cries when I walk by. Or maybe it's me crying.

Either way, something had to be done.

Down south of Douglasville, in general vicinity of Chattahoochee Hills, there's this set of roads called the Silk Sheets. I've ridden there a lot. Now and again, I've noticed dirt roads leading off to the left or right, but being on the road bike, and especially being on roads so smooth and luxurious that they're called The Silk Sheets, I had no interest in said dirt until recently.

A few weeks back I drove out there, applied my superior mapping skills and found more than 35 miles of dirt roads. It probably cost me $60 in gas, but I had a route, and I named it the Dirty Sheets.

John and I rode part of it on the road bikes a few weeks ago, but yesterday he and I and Mark B. rode the whole route. John's mountain bike is completely disassembled, waiting for a fork rebuild and a new spoke in the rear wheel, so he just put 28's on his road bike. Me and Baldwin were rocking the full-on fat tires.

The beginning of the route is road-heavy.

There are little scraps of dirt, but it's mostly pavement.

Then, when you turn off on Garretts Ferry, it gets good and rough, and stays that way.

It reminded me a lot of the Madison Dirt Ride we did a few months back, and it was a bit like the Huracans and CFiTTs I've done in years past. It would be good training for those kinds of rides, at least.

The roads seemed rougher and looser than when John and I last rode out there. It's funny what you forget. Not having been in the mountain bike in a while, I forgot how much gravel and little holes shake you around and work your core. It didn't wear me out, but I definitely feel it today.

The hills out there are mostly short and steep or really long and really shallow. A few start off steep though, wind around a corner, get shallower, but still keep climbing. Not knowing which were which, I kept punching through the steep sections, assuming the road would level off. Ha! Nope. It reminded me of climbing Buchannan Hwy a few weeks ago. Ugh.

John wasn't in love with the 28's either. They were boat anchors and the rear tire kept rubbing his cadence meter too. Before we got riding, he was talking about how strange his road bike felt with the tires and the little bit of extra gear he was carrying. Before I started doing any bikepacking, I'd really optimized the gear that I carried during an average ride. It was really light, consistent and predictable. I'd gotten really comfortable with that. When I started doing longer rides that required varying amounts of gear, or ride-specific gear, it really threw me. Around that time, I was watching Ice Road Truckers on TV too and I learned about how completely different each load that a trucker hauls can be, and about what they do to stay consistent and manage each load. It inspired me to start working on being able to do the same kind of thing, though to a substantially lesser degree, on the bike. He'd done that same kind of thing on the mountain bike, but hadn't really translated it to the road bike yet. It's definitely strange.

Some of the roads out on the route feel remote and others feel quite residential.

Or at least residential by rural standards.

There was an equestrian event going on off of one of the side roads. Plenty of signs, but we didn't get to see it.

I think we only passed one two other guys on bikes. One was an older guy on a hybrid, and the other guy appeared to be riding a bike because maybe he couldn't afford a car. It's just as well though. We might have gotten some confused looks from real roadies.

We stopped twice for water. Once off of Sardis Road and again near Hwy 92. Mark was down to half a bottle each time. I had only consumed half a bottle each time. Hmm... I've always seemed to need less water than most, but perhaps I would perform a little better if I drank a little more.

At the second stop, a guy driving around asked us if we knew how to get to Serenbe. John gave him directions. It's funny. I know where it is, but even with all the driving around and mapping, I still don't have a super-good mental picture of the area.

A lot of the roads on the second half of the route are dirt in the sense that they were once blacktop, but nobody has bothered to repave them in 20 years. When I drove them in the car, I didn't notice, but it's apparent on the bike. You can see little bits of the yellow center-line here and there, still hanging on.

All-in-all the ride was kind of uneventful. It was fun, but nothing crazy happened. There were no knocked out bridges, deep ruts, fords, large animals... I did see a rabbit and a turkey, but that was all. I miss the crazy sometimes. I guess that's the difference between road and trail, or maybe between roads in more vs. less civilized areas.

Hey, what are you gonna do though? We still had a good time. The route was fun, especially for a semi-local route. I suspect it would be equally fun on a road, cross or mountain bike - different challenges on each. So, go ride it. You go ride it now!

Backyard

Man, the other day I saw this mockingbird going all crazy in the backyard, flying back and forth, making noise. At first I thought it was just showing off for the ladies, but then it just flew away and appeared to have pulled a big long rope out of the ground, which now hung down over the edge of one of the landscape timbers.

What the heck...? Ohhh. Not a rope...

It was harassing this snake. Really giving it the business. Big time.

Black rat snake? I've seen a lot of black rat snakes. Kind-of looks like one. This one looked a little grayer than most and hasn't even the faintest markings, but I'm not sure what it is if it's not a rat snake.

Definitely a friendly snake though. It might be the same one I saw at the end of last summer too. Maybe he's just getting old and grey. Heh, heh.

Carry on buddy, go eat mice or chipmunks or whatever you eat. I wish it would eat the voles that are tearing up the backyard.

Hiram, Rockmart, Cartersville, Dallas...

I met my brother in Hiram today for a big road loop out that way.

Last weekend I'd had an easy time of a loop of similar terrain and distance, and I'd originally come up with an even bigger loop than the one we ended up doing, but he had a little bit of time pressure, so I trimmed it down a bit.

We started in Hiram and immediately had to wait like 10 minutes just to pull out onto Hwy 92, which we were only going to ride for like 2 blocks. No idea why the traffic was so bad. Last weekend I'd had no trouble at all. It was weird. We eventually did find a hole in traffic but seriously, it took like 10 minutes.

On Hiram-Sudie road it was the Oppossum Apocalypse. I guess with the weather being pretty nice these days, they're out and about, running the roads, and unfortunately getting run down on the roads as well.

Hiram-Sudie is pretty nice. Lots of rollers, fun to keep speed on. We eventually turned on to Buchannan Highway though, and expected more of the same. In fact, there was a nice little roller right ahead of us, so we kept the pace up.

Ha!

Turned out it was a never ending series of step-ups. I'll bet we climbed 8 or 9 hundred feet over the next few miles. It just never ended. I'll have to remember that road and ride into it a bit more conservatively next time.

Probably at the top of all of that climbing, we hung a right and wound our way up and over Vinson Mountain. I expected more climbing, but we'd apparently done all of that earlier. Vinson Mountain was mostly flat, followed by a screaming downhill. We both hit 50 just tucked and coasting. I've never hit 50 before except coming down off of Hogpen.

Woohoo!

After a while we rolled into Rockmart, missed our turn, went back and found it and proceeded north towards Cartersville.

Plant Bowen loomed in the background for part of the ride. I assumed it was nuclear because of the huge cooling towers, but apparently it's a coal plant, a huge one though, the highest producing in North America.

I could have used some of that power right about then.

I was struggling and we were both running out of water. There was a gas station on the left, but John spotted a Dollar General ahead on the right and deemed it a superior choice. Apparently there's a Dollar General near his place that he stops at regularly for water, snacks, Gatorade, etc. and they are reliably less expensive than gas stations. He may have been right. I think my 20oz Gatorade was $1.50. I'll have to do a little comparison shopping next time I'm at a QuickTrip.

I hoped the quick stop and refuel would help me out a bit, but I just continued to struggle, worse and worse over the next few hours. We turned east and eventually south, toward Dallas, on Hwy 61, which was 2-lane and busy.

The ride back in consisted of me sitting on, falling back over and over, and John waiting. I haven't been more uncomfortable on the bike in as long as I can remember.

I blame ham. Or I guess I should say, I blame my own misapplication of ham. I'd gotten up late, eaten nothing all morning, put a route together, called John, put a second route together and grabbed a ham sandwich, 2 extra slices of bread, and an apple on the way out the door. I remember thinking as I ate the sandwich that the ham might sit in my stomach for a while. I should have listened to my own brain I guess. I felt full the whole ride. I kept re-tasting the ham. The whole ride. I'd pound water, but it felt like I was just forcing it into my already full stomach. I couldn't eat anything but I doubt I got many calories out of that lunch. Ugh. Terrible. Terrible! I should know better. I do know better! Terrible.

At any rate, we finished in good enough time, and I guess it's good to struggle sometimes, for perspective, if nothing else.

All in all... Hwy 113 towards Cartersville is scenic, but not all that much fun. I could do without 61 back into Dallas. The southern parts of the route were great though. I'll have to come up with something that goes south from Rockmart.

Paulding County

Oh, the road. It never ends.

I was back out on the road earlier today. I don't love exploring on the road as much as exploring in the woods, especially in the Metro ATL, but one thing I really do like is riding back roads from little town to little town, getting a good look at their old main streets and moving on.

I've hit most of the towns close by already, but today I figured I'd head west into Paulding County. It's been a while since I've been out that way, don't really remember what it looks like, and hey, it's right next door.

My brother had planned on joining me but he got buried in family obligations and had to bail. It was probably just as well. I've been putting in long days all week and my pace was decidedly slow.

I headed out through old Mableton and Powder Springs like I often do, forgetting to take pictures, as they seemed so familiar. But instead of turning north, I followed the tracks out of town, off into the unknown, or at least unknown to me. It was a little more woodsy out that way than I expected, and I passed a surprisingly scenic little lake next to a raging creek.

It reminded me of the lakes I'd passed in Florida during CFiTT's and Huracans, back when I was doing CFiTT's and Huracans, and I felt compelled to take a photo.

Somewhere out that way I hung a left on Angam road. It got a little hillier than it had been and before long I'd crossed the borders of the Shire and stepped into the wilderness beyond.

After a few miles of comfortable rollers I made it to the little town of Hiram where I had to stop for a train.

A five-locomotive train, no less. Fortunately there was a bridge over the tracks to the right, and I got a good look at their restored little main street.

Italian restaurant, eh? I'll have to keep that in mind.

A few more twists and turns took me up over Cochrans Ridge, which featured a better downhill than I'd felt like I'd paid for, up over the Silver Comet and into Dallas.

Georgia that is. Dallas Georgia.

I tanked up at the local Racetrack but I wasn't hungry yet. I'd actually porked up a bit all week and started feeling like working some of it off, so even if I'd been hungry, I might have abstained.

On my way out of town to the north, a quick side loop took me past a bunch of facilities in odd proximity to one another. First there was the Pauding County Senior Center. Then I passed the Juvenile Detention Center, which was directly across the street from a ball field. Imagine being on a local youth baseball team and seeing Juvi looming there across the street every day at practice. Maybe that's the idea though. "Baseball good. Crime bad." Just down the road was some kind of massive gravel and concrete distribution facility. Next door to that, the infamous Paulding Probation Detention Center.

Sir, by your leave, sir?

Carry on.

I took Memorial Drive north and Due West Road almost due east. The community of Due West wasn't especially photogenic, and after that I forgot I even had a camera on me. Somewhere in there I started feeling the hunger. Actually not the hunger. The weakness. The antecedent of hunger. The hunger before you know you're hungry.

I didn't stop though. I had plenty of porkulence to replenish my dwindling power supply. I did slow down a bit. I think I need to adjust my seat too. It's not as comfortable as it once was when I roll my hips forward. It might just be wearing out and I might just be sinking into it more these days, but maybe if I tip the front down ever so slightly...

At length I reached Kennesaw and passed the Thai place.

Mmmm. Pad Kee Mao.

No, no. There's Pad Kee Mao down the street from my place. Move along, move along...

And I did, up over the shoulder of Kennesaw Mountain, down into Marietta, through the nearly deserted square. None of the shops were open. Thus no one to shop at them. That's right, it's Easter. It took a second to put that together.

Phase 1 - The weakness.

Phase 2 - The feeble mind.

Phase 3 - The Hunger.

It was nearly upon me.

I kept moving south. The last leg of my journey. Along Atlanta Road, through Smyrna, down King Springs, up over that one punishing hill, and at East-West Connector, not a mile from home, I felt like I couldn't possibly climb that last climb without addressing The Hunger, with which I was now wracked.

To the left lay several delicious options - Pizza, Thai, more Thai, and more Pizza. I opted for More Thai, at my favorite local Thai place - Curry Curry.

Their Pad Kee Mao hits the spot. Reliably.

It is apparently shiny and out of focus too. Hmmm. I wonder why.

Ever ridden home with a to-go box of Pad Kee Mao on your road bike? I have. Now.

And so it was. I plugged the route into Google Maps when I got home and it was a disappointing 60-odd miles. It seemed like it had been more in the 75 mile range, but I guess that's another side effect of The Hunger.

There are a bunch more little towns out that way too. Now that I have a sense of how far out it is, I'll have to come up with a loop that takes me through more of them.

Until then...

Silk Sheets

They say... It's better to burn out than fade away. It's safe to say I've been doing a bit of the latter lately. It might even be safe to say that for the forseeable future, I'll be doing even more.

It's sad what passes for adventure these days. So sad that I dare not even capitalize the A. Not that I haven't been having a decent time, but you can hardly call it adventure. I've been on the road a lot lately and it looks like I'll be on the road a lot more.

Today me and John rode about 65 on the Silk Sheets.

Not too much to talk about really. It was a great ride. Endless country roads with very little traffic. I had bad sleep all week but I still felt pretty strong and so did my bro. I struggled a little here and there and so did he. Not much though.

We had one mechanical.

John really put it down about 3 or 4 miles from the end. I wasn't sure how much we had left so I was reticent to do much but sit on. Maybe I'll challenge him a bit next time though, now that I have some idea of the route.

I did get an unexpected sunburn. Ha! I guess it's that time of year again. Time to break out the Coppertone, bake to a golden brown, and imagine Phil Liggett making unintentionally homoerotic comments about my powerful bronze legs.

Definitely time for the first two at least.

Serenbe

Baldwin called me up mid-last-week to coordinate borrowing my tracker for the impending Huracan and, while he was at it, invited me on a road ride with him and Eddie and whoever else was interested in attending. He called the ride "Serenbe", but that word had no meaning to me. It was a road ride though, heading south out of Atlanta, so I had a good idea what to expect. How long? 70 miles. I'm in!

I met him at his place at 9:30 Sunday morning. His girlfriend was coming back from a jog and really burning it down to get back in time for us to leave and we were worried we'd miss the start but everything worked out and we made it over on time, no problem.

The start was apparently in the haircut district. There were barber shops and salons all down either side. Somebody was set to film a movie over the next few days too.

There were orange cones set up everywhere and trucks full of equipment were coming and going. The security guard told us they'd start filming on Monday. Now, watch, for the next year or two, every movie I see, I'm going to be scrutinizing to see if it looks familiar.

Eddie sent Mark a text... "Give me 10 minutes..." I could see Mark's mind groan as he read the text. Heh, heh. Mark is punctual and values punctuality. I like to BE punctual but I think I value it less than Mark does.

TWENTY minutes later Eddie appeared with two Faster Mustache riders in tow and we headed south.

This was the one opportunity I had to take a photo before the paced ramped up prohibitively.

We followed the Airport ride route for a while, then turned right off of it into who-knows-where. I know it was somewhere in South Fulton County because there was a sign proclaiming South Fulton to be the home of Cam Newton. I had no idea he was from around here. I guess you learn something new every day. I remember passing a dirt road named Newton Drive right after the sign too, which seemed appropriate.

Dirt ended up being the theme of the day. We wound around down by some river, probably the Chattahoochee, given how wide it was and followed dirt roads along it for miles and miles. I struggled more than I expected to and fell back a few times. Ugh. When we got off the dirt we passed a gas station with a church on the right and hung the next right after that. It all looked very familiar.

Me: "This reminds me a lot of the Silk Sheets."

Eddie: "It should, that's where we are!"

The gas station we passed was Charlies and the church was where we usually parked when we'd ride out there. Ha! Small world.

The sheets weren't so silky though. The road was cracked and rough and gravelly. Or maybe it was just me. I was not in the best of shape. Bad sleep for the past two weeks, the last time I rode was 4 days earlier, but the worst of all... cherry pollen. This time of year always kills me. The cherry trees bloom and they're so beautiful, and then the pear trees follow them and they're even more beautiful, but my lungs hate them and would burn them all down if they could. It's not so bad that I really notice unless I'm trying to do something that requires a little heavier breathing, and then I wheeze and hack and it's like those trees are reaching out and strangling me.

Excuses, excuses...

We eventually rolled into the community of Serenbe, which is kind of a walking community like Vickery Village up in Cumming. It's a little more spread out though, and a bit more scenic. Someday they plan on building about 30 miles of hike, bike and horse trails out there. Man, that would be nice. I meant to take a photo of the Serenbe sign but I was barely recovered enough from the last little hill to pull out the camera. This photo of the street will have to do.

On the way in there was a guy in a Prius who kept slowing down suddenly and then would creep along so slowly that it was difficult to stay up riding behind him. One of the guys suggested that we pass him and the other was like "No, he's driving a Prius, can't pass a Prius." I was too tired to say much at the time, but what came to mind is "Of course you can pass him. The only thing more pretentious than driving a Prius is riding a bicycle." Duh :)

We stopped at the Blue Eyed Daisy for coffee and a snack.

It was packed and half of the people there looked like they'd been out riding. Most of the cars parked on the street had bikes hanging off of them.

While parking my bike, I noticed that I'd lost one of my water bottles earlier on the dirt. Dangit. I didn't really need anything to eat. I'd brought two packs of little chocolate donuts along with me, but they had Zapps potato chips and I figured maybe I could use the salt, so I did order a plate of those. I forgot though, Zapps plain potato chips have notably little salt on them. They were still good but I was a little disappointed.

There was literally nowhere to sit inside, so we sat outside at a picnic table. It was in the 40's and windy and while it's comfortable while you're moving, sitting around in it isn't all that great and we all started shivering pretty quickly. I have this great little wind shell though, and I was glad that I'd brought it because it made all the difference in the world.

Funny side story there... That morning I'd woken up several times before my alarm went off, only to go back to sleep and have a quick dream about getting up and scrambling frantically to get ready for the ride, always having misplaced something or forgotten some important thing that I had to go back for. I guess my subconscious mind knew something though because when I finally did get up and get dressed for real, I was missing one knee warmer. I had everything else, but I was missing just that one. In the end, after tearing the house apart in vain, I reluctantly ended up wearing my fleece-lined running tights instead. I was worried they'd be too warm, and they were pretty warm on the road, but sitting there at that picnic table, I was glad I had them.

So, after a few chocolate donuts, some good chips, and just the right amount of bone-chilling weather, we hit the road again, back toward Atlanta. The ride out was circuitous but it was pretty much a straight run back into town along highway 29.

Eddie is like 2 or 3 levels of rider stronger than me, maybe 4. I could sit on his wheel, but even that took some doing. Mark saw that he was pushing it a little, and bridged up right away. The other two guys fell off and only caught back up when we hit some stop lights. Eventually we started taking turns and I took my turn when it came up, but it was really tough. Eventually I found myself staving off cramps and it was all over. Mark had to drop back and pull me back up a few times.

I'm not sure what was going on, really. I was drinking plenty but I was also super full feeling, like nothing was making its way through my stomach. That happens when I eat bacon or some other fatty meat in the morning before the ride, or even the night before, but I hadn't. Weird. Anyway, it was a struggle and a half. One would think from all of this complaining that in retrospect I wouldn't think of it too fondly, but for some reason, no, I remember it fondly already.

When I got home I napped for hours. It was that wonderful, body feels heavier than it is kind of nap. Oh man, so good. Sooo goooood.

Today I feel good too. I might even go spin the legs out for an hour or two later on.