Allatoona Creek

Yeah! Mountain bike's fixed, more-or-less, and it was supposed to rain hardcore all day today, so I skipped out yesterday evening for some shred up at Allatoona Creek.

I haven't been there in years - my Dad and I rode there just after it had first opened. I remembered glorious bench cut IMBA flow though, and I've been craving that for a while now. Plus, it's probably the closest trail to my house now, it's on The List, I need to put some miles in on the new brakes... Lets go!

I had a little trouble getting there. Traffic was really, really bad, and there are multiple segments of Old Stilesboro Road. Finding the one that the trail was actually on was also a bit difficult. Maybe I should have used a map. But I was like "I know where Old Stilesboro Road is..." It's been a while since I could say this, but I can again! Don't trust me to get you anywhere.

I did get there though, suited up and got right on the trail.

There are all these fields that you ride through at first.

And I remembered part of what I'd liked last time. Diversity. I give a trail more points for diversity of terrain and scenery than for miles of singletrack. I may be alone in that, but I love trails where you ride through fields, under bridges, along creeks, out in the open, through the woods, on tight singletrack, and on open doubletrack... Not that 20 miles of singletrack isn't any good, but it gets pretty anonymous after a while.

Not so at Allatoona Creek! Diversity!

I rolled through the fields and onto the Rusty Bucket, but in my haste, I'd forgotten to fill my water bottle. It had like 2 sips left in it and I realized this about half way around. Ok, back to the bathroom. Filled it up. Let's try again.

Reset.

The fields appeared to have roads cut through them. Having done a little shred already, I felt like doing a little exploring, so I rode around a bit, seeing where things went.

Right away I found some craziness.

"Still water is deep water." as my brother has said. I decided against crossing that particular creek. Maybe next time.

Following the main trail out to the very end, I found a bunch of flooded trails and flooded woods, and eventually the confluence of Allatoona and Little Allatoona Creeks. But it looked like I was getting farther and farther away from anything that would be fun to ride, so I headed back.

Back to the bathrooms again, actually. Or more precisely, to the map near the bathrooms.

There appeared to be multiple new sections of trail out there - Mumbo Jumbo, Voodoo, a new chunk hanging off of Masons Bridge.

Yes! I would ride them.

And I did. And it was spectacular.

Mumbo was basically more of the same twisty singletrack found on Rusty Bucket, but with some amount of climbing involved. The woods was particularly beautiful at the time.

Ahh, yeah. Spring in Georgia. The trees are still leafing. It's just beautiful.

I forgot about Voodoo entirely, and when I hit the turn-off to it, I thought that I'd ridden all of Mumbo. There were two trail runners right there though, pondering what to do.

"How many miles is it back to the parking lot in the direction you just came?"

I was bewildered. The sign right there said that it was a 2 mile loop. If we were at the entrance/exit of Mumbo, it would be 2 miles. Or they could just turn around and go directly back to the parking lot, and it would be zero miles. I wasn't sure how to answer them.

"Aren't you coming from the parking lot now?"

"No, that's Voodoo."

"Ahh, I'm not where I think I am!"

And we laughed. I definitely need to shake more of the rust off of my Adventure skills. That was pretty bad.

"Have you ever ridden Voodoo?."

"No, not yet."

"Well, good luck to you!"

And we laughed again. They didn't spoil it for me though, and tell me what lay ahead.

It started out with a cool little set of puncheons that led around some trees, with a green "Keep Right" sign on either end. Then there was this craziness.

Rocks and logs and benches on either side.

Ohhhh Kaaay...

The rest of the trail was even gnarlier. Basically every few hundred yards there was some kind of obstacle. Rock pile, log ride, skinny bridge... Something. I didn't just ride into the first one though, and that it turned out to have been a good idea. The first obstacle was this series of rocks, but you had to keep speed and drop off of the last one. The speed I had wouldn't have been sufficient.

I didn't ride into the next few either, but they would have been fine to have, so I started riding into them, and the rest of them were fine.

Somewhere in there, there was this gigantic root ball.

And this log ride looked fine but the other end of it was really steep and sketchy.

And I had too much fun on the rest of the trail to stop and take photos. There were some fall-line climbs out there though, or at least some climbs that didn't seem to follow the half-backslope rule. And a set of lazy switchbacks with the same issue. Maybe they did that on purpose though, so they would erode a bit. I don't know. Give how IMBA the rest of the trail is, it was surprising to see.

But man, those obstacles were fun.

Toward the end of the trail, it had that whole "I just built this" kind of feel: fresh dingo tracks, components of future obstacles scattered hither and tither... There might be even more fun in store, in the future. I'll keep an eye out.

The map made it look like there was another loop out past Mason's Bridge, so I headed over there next.

In fact, there was a new (to me at least) section of the connector too. You used to just run down along the creek. Now, on the way out, you hit some singletrack up in the woods, and run along the creek on the way back.

Under the bridge, I stopped to get a photo of the artwork on the far side.

And of the creek itself.

Which I half-wanted to climb down and play in.

But there was an odd, acrylic smell in the air, and turning around I noticed several young men milling about up right up under the roadway. One appeared to be trying to light something. They either didn't notice me, or ignored me. I didn't want to hang around though.

I'd ridden the Mason's Bridge trail before, but I didn't remember it. It was just more of the same fast, semi-twisty bench cut IMBA glory. Not too much climbing, just pure shred.

Somewhere out there, I ran into this Biceratops.

I call it a "Bi"ceratops because the nose horn was missing.

At the half-way point I merged onto Mason's Bluff, though at that intersection it was only marked as "Loop 2". It seemed to have slightly more climbing, but it's possible that I just imagined that. About two thirds of the way around, I saw a sign, thought that I was done, merged left and found myself out in the middle of a field with a guy walking his dog to my left and a lake ahead of me.

Hmm...

Turns out that's Bobe Lake. Also, I was pretty sure I'd made a wrong turn. In either direction, the trail appeared to just lead out to the neighborhood.

I spun back and that's when I saw the sign labeling the trail "Mason's Bluff". So, I guess that's the name of that loop: Mason's Bluff.

It was right about then that I started realizing just how dark it was getting. I was almost as far as I could be from the car, at that particular trail system, and it was starting to get difficult to see.

I put it down a little harder on the way back, but it's been a while and my bike handling skills seemed a little deficient. It's funny how riding a bike comes right back, but riding it well takes a while. I had plenty of energy, but I didn't have the skills to bring it to bear.

I did make it out in time though. The sun was down, but I didn't have too much trouble seeing the trail. The guys under the bridge were still there when I rode back through. One of them was lying down on a bench. I thought they were homeless at first, but they seemed to have a car parked up at the road. Maybe they weren't sleeping down there. Maybe they were just planning on decorating the bridge a little more. I guess I'll find out next time I'm down under there.

When I got back to the lot, there were still 2 more cars. Some guy was lying in the grass stretching too. Maybe he'd been out for a run.

It only took 45 minutes to get home, and I don't think I took the most expeditious route. Not bad though, compared to the hour and a half it took to get there, during rush hour, and after getting lost a few times.

Allatoona Creek! After crunching the data, it looks like there are almost 20 miles of trail out there, and there are two loops south of Old Stilesboro that I haven't even ridden yet. And there appear to be at least 10 miles of proposed trail that haven't yet been built. Woohooo!

I think I might have found my new favorite in-town trail.

Naked Mountain

Adventure!

It's not exactly imminent these days, but it is at least now possible.

Adventure possible!

This past winter was horrible. Rainy days and long nights aren't conducive to improving one's fitness. Heck, even maintaining it. I'm probably not at an all-time low right now, but it sure does feel like it. I remember riding across the states of Georgia and Florida. I remember deathmarching the Canyon. Did I really do those things? Really? I sit here now, questioning whether a person can do things that I have actual memories of doing. I even have pictures.

Maybe I did. Maybe those memories are real. Maybe if I put in a little work they'll even seem real again.

Two problems though...

First, my road bike is busted. The return spring is broken in the right shifter. No new replacement shifter exists. Compatible shifters are 90 bucks on Ebay and they look as old and more busted than mine. My dad has a compatible shifter he's not using on my brother's old road bike though. Should have that in a week or so.

Second, my mountain bike is busted. I put new brakes on it and there's just nothing I can do to keep the front brake from dragging. Glen's got it right now. I ought to be able to pick it up later this week.

Two problems, one solution: hiking. I ought to call it "hiking" though, with the quotes, because I've asked real hikers to join me on my idea of a hike and they have declined to do so a second time. But fortunately there is a solution to that too. His name is Clark Neal. We seem to have the same sense of Adventure. Or, at least compatible senses of Adventure.

That's right, I capitalized that A. Got to pay it proper respect.

It was late Sunday morning when I showed up at Clark's place outside of Helen. I was running late because I had to find my compass and my shoes. They were both buried in this gigantic duffel bag in my closet. When I unzipped it, it smelled unused. I felt like that guy that neglects his dog. Walk your dog, jerk. It was awful.

I pushed through the guilt though, through the shame, got my gear together, and picked up Clark.

We made a quick stop at a gas station in Robertstown for some calories and I also ran to the bathroom. I only mention this because the bathroom door was exceptionally light and didn't have a spring on it. When I opened it to get out, it got away from me and whacked the toilet paper thingie. "Oops!" And the lady behind the counter joked: "Are you breaking stuff?"

Ha! I'd all but forgotten about gas stations small enough that the clerk can joke around with the one customer in the store. Oh man, it's the little things. It was going to be a good day.

From there, we headed off into the Wilderness. Literally, the Wilderness. I think it's the Mark Trail Wilderness. On the way in we passed several Jeeps. There'd been a Jeep festival of some kind in Helen the day before. A turkey flew across the road in front of us too, and a chipmunk ran across. It'd been a while since either of us had seen a chipmunk.

We put in at the day use lot of the Upper Chattahoochee Campground and got right to it. I wasn't exactly sure where the woods becomes the Wilderness but I was sure that in the direction we were heading, it wasn't going to be marked.

We bushwhacked along Henson Creek for a while, diverged a bit, picked up an old roadbed, and eventually crossed over the creek. The last time Clark and Suzy and I'd gone exploring, we'd ended our day right there at that crossing. On that day, it had gotten late and cold and we figured we'd pick it up a few weeks later or something. It's funny how quickly things can change though. That was over a year ago.

But now we were back at it. Lets go!

The trail was easy to follow. It looked like it wasn't too big of a secret either. Somebody had clearly been up that way recently. I had my GPS going, and as I do with all my little Adventures, I'd planned on putting the data on my trails site, but I kept waffling about whether to declare the trail an "adventure" trail or just "reclaimed". Usually if I declare something reclaimed, it's because it's pretty overgrown and you have to push through brush. This trail had very little of that, but a lot of deadfall. A lot. Seriously. A lot.

Sometimes the trail was a nice little bench cut. Other times it dropped down and crossed and re-crossed the creek over and over. Clark was all: "Man, who was it that thought it was a good idea to put a road here!?" No doubt. It was difficult to follow. In retrospect though, the terrain on either side was shot full of little draws and dry prongs. I guess they were taking the path of least resistance.

Some of the prongs weren't so dry though, and here and there remnants of old bridges still remained.

In some places the trail seemed to merge into the creek and disappear.

But, really, it had just diverted the creek, and with a little creative thinking we were able to figure out which of the many braided rivulets had once been the road.

And we kept seeing signs of former passage. Disturbed leaves, partial footprints, fire rings... And then there was this impressive structure:

Ha!

I love finding weird stuff way back up in the woods.

The coals were still fresh. That fire might have been burning yesterday.

I'd failed to top off my camelback at Clark's place, so I filled it from the creek. There was a little pool there, right in front of the campsite. It looked too small to fish but big enough to lay back and relax in. The water was pretty cold though. Maybe later in the year...

We came to what we imagined to be a fork, with the left branch running up a little ridge. We'd been climbing steadily though, and the main trail seemed to keep going to the right, but downhill. Hmmm... The correct direction to go is usually up, but the well defined trail led down. Eventually we decided that we'd head off to the right, and if it peters out, we'd go back up.

It didn't exactly peter out though. About 100 yards up it took a hard right across the creek and up the ridge on the other side. Why? Because, from that point, there was no other way to get over this:

Woohoo! Waterfall!

Clark got a photo of me by the falls too.

Kathryn says that I should have sucked in my cheeseburgers for the photo. Heh.

The old road managed to skirt that cascade, but then it led directly to this one:

And there was just no getting up over it.

My guess is whoever built that road didn't do a lot of planning, they just headed upstream by whatever means necessary and backtracked when they got totally stuck. That's determination for you.

We whacked up over the falls and found the trail again. Apparently that had been it off to the left at that fork. We followed it up and around and up again.

It appeared to be going where it should though. Where should it go? If you look at the old USGS Quads, I think at 1:100K scale, they show this road following Henson Branch, then following Naked Mountain Branch, then curving south and eventually teeing into FS44F. Allegedly. The newer-but-still-pretty-old, higher resolution, 1:20K maps don't show it at all. The 20K maps aren't super reliable, and the 100K maps are even less reliable, but sometimes they tell the truth, and so far, so good.

It didn't look much like spring at the higher altitudes.

With the overcast sky and complete absence of leaves, it looked as bleak as any cold winter day.

The only signs of spring up there were little stalks poking up through the leaves.

Is this a Hosta?

It looked like one. Kind-of. If it is, I'd never seen them in the wild before. Neither had Clark. Actually, I guess, we'd never seen whatever it is in the wild before, independent of whether it's a Hosta or not. They were everywhere. Every 10 feet, covering the entire hillside.

The old road ended abrubptly at a steep creek in a deep draw. This was perplexing. It should connect up with FS44F. We could see Cut Locust Gap above us, and 44F was up there somewhere, but we had a ways to go to get to it.

Across the draw though, there was another trail. But it sat at a funny angle, and it was much steeper than the one we were on. There was no obvious way to connect the two. A bridge between them would have required at least one 90 degree turn and/or would have sat at a steep angle downhill. It didn't make any sense. I've seen that before though - two trails that seem like they ought to have been connected at some point, but without any obvious means of having been. So weird.

Our best theory was that the steep trail was a skid. Trees were skidded down it, piled up in the draw and then taken out on the good road. If that were true though, it would have to have been built down from the top. Maybe we'd find an old skid network up there.

We crossed over and began to climb. Man, it was steep. Super, super steep. It teed into another trail and that teed into another, even steeper trail. We verified our position a few different ways and it looked like we were exactly where we were supposed to be, we just needed to keep climbing. So, we took the even more steep trail uphill until it blended into the backslope close to some unnamed gap west of Cut Locust.

Somewhere up there we found the obligatory mylar balloon.

We'd experienced all manner of Adversity and made various interesting discoveries. The balloon was the last item on the Adventure checklist, and now we could check it off.

FS44F had to be up there, so we pushed uphill towards the gap.

It was a lot steeper than it looks. Like walk 20 feet, recover, walk 20 more feet, recover... That kind of steep.

Lo and behold though, when we got to the gap, FS44F was right there, right where it ought to have been.

There was a breeze blowing from the south, and there were ridges with ridges beyond them and more ridges beyond those.

I think that's sort of to the south-west. If so, that's probably Hickory Nut Ridge in the way back.

We sat down there for a while on a couple of logs, ate a bit, and enjoyed not climbing. 44F was almost dead flat in both directions and in comparison to what we'd been doing, it looked like a lot of fun.

I keep calling it 44F, but I guess it ought to be called "Old 44F" as it has decidedly been demoted to the rank of trail. I'm not exactly sure where the Wilderness boundary is, but I'm pretty sure that the road is now inside of it. At the southern end, it's still marked 44F on a Carsonite post, but the pipe gate is long gone and there are big Kelly humps down there. I think the Mark Trail was actually designated Wilderness in the 90's, so it's been not-a-road for a long time now.

I waited until Clark had recovered a bit before bringing up what to do next. The car was to the west but to the east, 44F allegedly ties into the AT, and since I've never been down to the end of it before, and we were there, it didn't seem responsible to waste the opportunity, it would only add a mile and a half or so...

It was good that I'd waited because I'm not sure Clark would have agreed with making the hike any longer if I'd brought it up right after climbing up out of that ravine.

We got going again before giving our bodies a chance to get used to not going, and with no deadfall to climb over, brush to push through, or anything resembling elevation change, we made very good time to the AT.

We did get a little distracted though. There was a little pit full of old glass bottles off to the left.

There was a nice looking mason jar in it that Suzy might have liked, but closer inspection revealed a jagged wound to the rim and we left it behind.

There was also this weird thing:

Clark thought it might be an old motor. Might be. It did have a bunch of copper wire wound up inside of it. It was a better theory than anything I could come up with.

Just past that was an old pipe gate. Right where the map said it should be.

And there were Trilliums everywhere.

Everywhere! They even outnumbered those Hosta-things we'd seen earlier.

We reached the AT quickly, stood there for a minute, then headed back. There was a campsite right there at the end of the road, and there were a few odd artifacts lying about.

The German keychain wasn't all that odd. The blister pack of Nicoderm gum though, definitely fits in the odd category.

Clark: "Imagine trying to hike the AT and give up smoking at the same time. Seems like one challenge at a time might be enough."

Me: "Maybe you should chew it. Then later you'll be craving a cigarette despite never having smoked one."

Clark: "Wouldn't that be crazy - getting hooked on cigarettes by chewing the gum that's supposed to help you quit?"

He packed it out. Probably didn't chew it.

Near the southern end of 44F, someone had rolled out a glorious green carpet for us on the ridge between the old tire tracks.

The photo doesn't do it justice. It was super, super lush and fluffy in real life. Unnaturally so.

The Disney princesses were out there enjoying the woods too.

My pack was actually starting to get full. I'd accumulated a rain poncho, a bottle, and now two balloons.

We reached FS44 in good time, and trucked it back towards the car.

There was a little black salamander on the road somewhere in there.

I'm not sure I've ever seen one that was totally black before.

The car grew ever nearer, but the map I'd printed out had several little dotted green lines on it. Dotted green lines mean: "I've seen what appears to be a navigable trail leading off in this direction." There was one such dotted line leading north along Wilks Creek.

Yes, I was tired, and my feet were tired and kind-of hurt, and the car was like a mile away, but we were right there, and it would be irresponsible... I'm pretty sure Clark didn't want to add any more distance to the day, but he followed me up that trail anyway. Thanks man.

The trail was well traveled. This made sense, there was an established campsite at the bottom of it. A ways up there was a little sliding falls with no good vantage for a photo.

And further up a spring had apparently popped up above the trail and turned a long section of it into a creekbed.

And above that, there was more trail. I must admit that I was disappointed to find more trail. I honestly didn't feel like following it. Clark didn't either. He was like 100 yards back, making less-than-deliberate progress toward me.

"The trail keeps going up there, but honestly, I don't feel like following it."

"Yeah, my wanderlust has been sated."

Mine had too.

Fortunately it was all downhill from there, and our jibber-jabber made the mile or so back to the car fly by.

I was a little disappointed not to have seen much wildlife except out on the main road. That's bear country up there and dangit there ought to be bears somewhere. It's possible that our persistent clever-banter scared them away. Maybe that's good though. You know, save something for next time.

My Adventure skills were a little rusty all day too, and that kind of sucked. My legs are a little more scraped and shredded than was once typical for the same kind of hike. I poked my hand on something. Got my camelback hung up once... Get it together Dave, get it together.

Back in Helen we grabbed some dinner at La Cabana. Suzy had been hiking with her sister at Arabia Mountain all day, but she'd made it back to town and she met us at the restaurant. We had a great time. Man! It's been a while. Too long, too long!

That was yesterday. Today was decidedly less adventurous but about equally strenuous. My father-in-law and I'd begin some driveway repair on Saturday and I spent the day today pulling off the forms and backfilling behind the patched sections with gravel/dirt/rock/cement and spreading the remainder of the gravel to cover a parking area near the top of the driveway... in the rain, no less. Three days of good, solid labor. My back is tired. My legs are tired. It's supposed to rain all week, and that's fine with me. I'm looking forward to getting some nerd work done. I hope it's sunny in a week though. I ought to be ready to get back at it then.

Charleston

Finally, something interesting...

Seems like it's been quite a while since I did anything but ride around town, in the cold, by myself. I guess it actually had been a while, over a month. But this past weekend Iz had a gym meet in Charleston, we turned it into a nice little family trip, and I managed to get in about 4 hours of road bike tourism Saturday morning while everyone else slept in.

In Atlanta, it'd been raining and sleeting and threatening to freeze hard all week. The schools had even been closed, just in case. It was about ten degrees warmer in Charleston though, and though I'm sure the locals were freezing, it was balmy to me.

We stayed at a fairly inexpensive "Inn" (motel) on Montague, and though I didn't see any water nearby, there certainly were a lot of ducks creeping around the property.

They seemed to share my opinion of the weather.

It seems like ducks usually either avoid people or accost them for whatever food they might have on them, but these acted a little weird. They were completely ambivalent to us. I walked right through the middle of their little gaggle (or whatever a herd of ducks is called) and they just parted and let me through without so much as glancing in my direction.

It was weird.

The map I had in my possession was somewhat crude. I'd torn it out of a "See Charleston"-type booklet that they were giving away in the hotel lobby. It seemed to have just enough detail on it though, and I figured as long as I could keep track of which way was north, I'd be OK.

Rivers Avenue was just to the East, across I-26. Of that, I was fairly certain. The map showed it heading all the way down to the harbor. That's generally where I wanted to go, so I headed in that direction. As luck would have it, I found Rivers Ave., right where it was supposed to be, and in fact, it led right where I expected it to go.

I'd say, if you want to see a good cross section of Charleston, take Rivers Ave. from Montague to the harbor. You'll see just about everything.

It's a little low-income up at the north end. Some of the shops have great names, like "O G Cutz" and "Super Bad Men's Clothing". There's a combined bike-bus lane, and I had to work to keep ahead of the bus. It had to keep stopping, but then it'd almost catch me before the next stop unless I kept an eye on it and put in a little effort.

After a while, it got kind of industrial, I ended up following some train tracks, and I-26 was on the right. Somewhere in there I entered Charleston-proper, as opposed to North Charleston, which is where I guess I was before.

A little south of there, the streets started getting narrower, and lined with little buildings. At the time, this was great because I'd been dealing with a murderous crosswind from the east all the way down Rivers Ave. and I was getting a little tired of it. I'd ridden Open Pro's for like 8 years, but after breaking one of my rims a few weeks back, I borrowed an old set of Ksyriums from my brother. I don't know if it's the taller profile of the rim, the bladed spokes, or both, but there's a world of difference between them and Open Pro's in a crosswind. Man! Little did I know what the rest of the world has been dealing with all these years.

But I digress. Back to Rivers Ave...

Before long, things started looking a little more urban. The houses began to take on a historical look, and they all looked about the same - 2 story, 1-room wide, 2 or 3 rooms long, with porches on both floors. At first, it was still a little low-income-looking though. Very few houses looked to be in great shape, but they all appeared to be holding up.

Then there was this weird strip of what, despite how fancy they looked, also looked like public housing...

Dozens of those old little brick houses. Much sturdier than the private dwellings, for sure, and bigger yards. I guess I'm not totally sure if they're really public housing or not, but they really had that kind of a feel, looking at them.

Bit by bit, the maintenance level of the houses improved, I started seeing shops, then more shops, then only shops.

Palmetto trees lined the streets.

Some folks appeared to be proud of their heritage.

There was a park on the left, Francis Marion Park, I think, and the lavish Francis Marion Hotel on the right.

Somewhere in there, the name of the street changed to King Street and I noticed it was now one-way, fortunately in the direction I was going.

People were out running and walking their dogs. I saw a lot of bike racks, all full of bikes. Traffic was light. The whole downtown area seemed very pedestrian and cyclist-friendly.

Shops gave way to homes, very similar in construction to the ones up north, but restored and beautifully maintained. They all had little courtyards, usually to the south of the main house.

I'm not sure how true this is, but I learned way back that when Charleston was first built out, property taxes were high and based on the width of the property along the street. As such, people built these narrow little houses, basically like a normal house but turned 90 degrees, with he narrowest side facing the street and the "front" facing a landscaped courtyard. Kitchens, stables, etc. were all located at the back of the property. If that's not the reason the houses were built the way they are, it's definitely consistent with what I saw.

King Street ended abruptly at The Battery. I'd seen it on the map earlier. Long ago they kept the cannons there, aimed out into the harbor, protecting the city.

I hooked around to the right of the property and ended up looking out over the harbor.

It was a big colder there, and I was out in the wind again, but it was still much better than Atlanta'd been all week.

I wanted to sit there for a while and take in the view, but there wasn't all that much to see. Way, way off there were 2 huge freighters. One coming in, another heading out. There was one guy in a private boat too. That was about it. I had a long way to go still too, and eventually my family would wake up, so I kept moving.

Well, actually, first, I did stop and take a photo of an old cannon from the median, then I kept moving.

Around the east end of The Battery, heading back north, there were some really lavish estates.

Like 10 or 15 of them were angled a bit too, so if you were driving south, you'd get a better view of the side facing the street, or if you were driving north, you'd get a better view of the "front" of the property. The shops were very colorful too.

Later, I noticed that whole area of town was labeled "Rainbow Row" on the map. I'd say that's a good description.

I tried to head over to the waterfront a few times, but it wasn't easy. There were several of these really old streets, paved with bricks and cobbles and big round rocks and whatever this is:

Not all that much fun on the road bike.

Eventually I got to where I could see stacks of containers and those big awesome cranes they pull them off of ships with. There was also this giant lot with some old facade propped up in the middle, surrounded by nothing. I stopped, found a good spot to take a photo of it, and it was at that point that I noticed that my iPhone's battery had died.

Great. Finally a ride worth taking dozens of photos of and my camera's dead. Seems like this happened about a year ago too.

Ehh. What are you gonna do?

I had a lot more that I wanted to see, and I wasn't going to bail on the ride because I couldn't take photos of it.

At the motel earlier, I'd read that there was a bike/pedestrian lane on the I-26 bridge over the Cooper River - the bridge that you'd take to the islands on the north side of town. Awesome! I'd hoped to be able to ride out to those islands, but I hadn't seen any even remotely convenient way to get over there, other than the interstate, which I'd figured wasn't an option. Turned out that the interstate was an option! Woohoo!

That devastating crosswind turned into a devastating headwind as I made my way up over the bridge though. Oof! It's like a mile up to the top and the grade can't be more than a few degrees but it felt like I was climbing Wolfpen Gap.

The view was spectacular though. Why, why did my phone choose to die 5 minutes earlier!? The bridge itself was a very artistic piece of engineering. The little marshes along the river were interesting from the above - water apparently pools up all over when the tide comes in, and flows back out of the marsh in little rivulets, not evenly. Several ships were docked along the wharf. Way off on the other side, there's this giant aircraft carrier and about 40 little sailboats appeared to be racing around some buoys near it. I watched them start and got to see them round the first one. That ship that I'd seen coming in from the Atlantic earlier was crossing under the bridge. I kept thinking "cool, I'll get to look right down on it", but it turned out that I was a little optimistic about my climbing abilities and it was long gone by the time I got to the top.

The first little island on the other side (or maybe it's a peninsula) was Mt. Pleasant. This struck me as odd, immediately, as I really didn't expect there to be a Mount-anything along the coast of South Carolina, especially not right up along the ocean, but there it was, Mt. Pleasant. And it was quite pleasant, in fact. It could not have been more pleasant, as I had to use the bathroom, badly, and there was a gas station right on the other side of the bridge.

I passed dozens of restaurants and a few neighborhoods. I rode up over Shem Creek. All the roads had bike lanes. It was great.

Somewhere in there the police were trying to route people around some work that the DOT was doing in an intersection, but nobody understood where to go, everybody was trying to follow their GPS, and a lot of people ended up circling to the right, through a gas station parking lot, and then trying to cross the same line of traffic that they'd been in a minute earlier. The gridlock was indescribable. People were pissed. It was nice not to be involved in all of that.

Eventually I made it out of town and into a little strip of salt marsh, driving directly into the wind the whole time. There weren't any birds in the marsh, just endless wavy grass and the cacophony of wind. There was this drawbridge though, and on the other side was Sullivan's Island.

If I remember correctly, The Gold Bug from Edgar Allen Poe is set on Sullivan's Island. Also, one of Kathryn's friends from high school lived on Sullivan's Island when she was a kid. I'd been there once before, visiting a friend of mine when I was in college but I didn't remember much about it. Turns out there's not much to remember; lots of houses, one little shopping center. Actually, Fort Moultrie is at the southwest end of the island, so that's probably interesting, but I didn't have time to check it out.

I'd kind-of hoped to find a stretch of road that ran down the beach, so I could ride along and see the ocean and watch the waves, but no luck there. I guess that makes sense. People want to see the ocean, so they build houses where they can see it all the time.

I passed a truck parked out in front of a store that had a bunch of bumper stickers all over it. One particularly prominent sticker said "Smile if you're not wearing any underwear." Just reading it made me smile, which I guess is the idea, but then I smiled again when I realized: "Hey, I'm actually NOT wearing any underwear." Heh.

Sullivan's Island gave way to Isle of Palms. From the little bridge between them I could finally see the fury of the Atlantic. There were some serious waves pounding the beach there, driven by the same wind that was making me work so hard. I'd been there once before as well, and from that trip I remembered that the currents between the two islands are super dangerous. There was even a sign warning people to stay out of them. Man! Cool stuff. Again, I wished my phone hadn't died.

I rode up and down the island for a while, hoping there was some stretch along the beach, but again, no luck. I had to settle for a look from a little bluff near a half-built beach house. Funny thing there... as I turned off of the road, the drive was solid at first, but then quickly turned to sand and I crashed. Ha! Fortunately it was sand that I crashed into. Unfortunately I got sand in my shifter and kept having to bang on it to get it to work, in either direction, most of the way back to the motel.

The trip back was uneventful. That terrible headwind I'd fought all day became a glorious tailwind. The DOT had finished whatever they were working on in that intersection and the traffic had unwound itself. Climbing the bridge was trivial in the other direction. The sailboats were still racing. I took Meeting Street back north and eventually crossed the tracks over to Rivers Ave. Meeting Street had a bike lane and seemed less exposed to the wind.

I was getting pretty hungry as I pulled up to the room. The girls were up but Kathryn was just waking up. Perfect timing. We grabbed some lunch at Fatz Cafe. If you go there, I recommend the chili and the chicken tenders, but especially the chicken tenders.

The rest of the trip was great too, but it doesn't really count as outdoor adventure, so it gets no telling here.

And, so...

That is all.

For now.

Carroll County

Last Saturday night the frere invited me out to his neck of the woods for a ride with himself and our good friend Howie. It's actually been a while since John and I rode together, and it's been even longer since I've seen Howie, so yeah, it sounded like a great idea.

I'd done about 40 earlier that day and, surprisingly, felt pretty good. It seemed like this terrible weather we've been having hadn't taken too much out of me. I was eager to see if it was all in my head though. You know, when you ride by yourself, you always seem fast.

Sunday morning, I got up, grabbed some breakfast at the Shell station and made my way to Douglasville. As it turned out, we had to wait a minute or two for my brother's dryer to cooperate, but before long we were ready to spin over to Howie's place.

Or so we thought.

It was at that point that I made The Discovery.

The Discovery:

Noooooo! My phone decided to focus on the seat tube, but the rim is where the action is. In particular, the crack in the rim is where the action is. Noooooo!

For the past few rides, my brakes had been pulsing a little, but when I looked at the rim, it looked normal. I didn't look at it after Saturday's ride though. Maybe I should have.

Actually it wasn't a problem though. Howie had a spare wheel and I was able to swap cassettes and use it. I had to swap cassettes because I'm still running some old stone age 9-speed. Yes. That's right. 9-speed. I like to get every last mile out of my equipment. That includes ancient components, and apparently, cracked rims.

After a quick bit of street hooking we were on our way.

Howie had some 50-ish mile route that wound its way all around Carroll County. The roads were super, super quiet. We got passed once on the road that Howie lives on, and then that was it, for hours. In fact, we might have been passed twice all day.

The route was great. I felt good.

There were tons of dirt roads out that way too. I'll have to get back out there and see where they all go. We even managed to ride one of them for a few miles.

I think it was called South Old New York Trail.

Heh. "Old New York" is funny to me.

Somewhere out there it was chicken country. Chicken farms everywhere. This one guy had a giant statue of a rooster out front of his place.

No innuendo intended there, I'm sure. Heh, heh.

I began to struggle at about mile 35 and then cratered completely not long after.

Ehh, maybe not totally crater. I was fine as long as we weren't climbing very hard, but I just didn't have it when we were. I'd recover right away as soon as it leveled out a bit though. I don't know. It was weird. Maybe I was just still a little worn from the day before.

All right, so now I need to fix my road bike. Kind-of hard to do when you're broke but I'm sure something will work out.

I've been wishing for better weather for a while. Seems a little less important now though.

This whole situation reminds of when I first got a job in high school. I wanted a job so I could make the money to pay for the direct costs of skateboarding, like new boards and bearings and such, and so I could pay for gas and insurance, so I could drive to awesome places to skate. But the work I had to do to make enough money to be able to pay for everything consumed most of the time I had available to skate and eventually I lost fitness and skills to the point that there was little value in being able to skate those awesome places.

I seem to be in that boat these days. Can't afford to play without putting in so much work that it obviates the play. Way back, I climbed the ladder, made more money, eventually got a better job with more pay and better hours. It worked out. I'd sure like for it to work out that way again.

Arctic Blast

Man, this was over a week ago... Busy, busy, busy.

"Hey dad, what degrees is it outside?"

Sophie asks that in the morning sometimes. Those words. "What degrees is it?" She and Iz have put it that way since they were really little actually.

"Hmm... (checks weather app on phone) Ten."

It was ten degrees outside. In Atlanta. That's unusual.

It was that Arctic Blast, in full Arctic Blast mode. It had been in the 30's and 20's the day before. Ten seemed like about the coldest it was likely to get though, and sitting around the breakfast table I had an idea.

"I should go ride my bike in this. That way I can have ridden my bike when it's ten degrees."

Sophie thought that was a ridiculous reason. Kathryn was ambivalent. I've skied when it was 1. I've hiked and ridden the mountain bike in the teens, plenty of times. But I've never gone out on the road bike when it was ten. You know how sometimes an idea will wake you up? It was like that. I was wide awake. It had to be done.

I had plenty of gear: fleece running tights, standard bib, thermal base layer, cross jersey, wind shell, thermal gloves, shoe covers, balaclava... I was actually quite comfortable riding through the neighborhood, although it did help that I had to climb three hills to get to the main road.

Yeah, I was feeling pretty good about the ride so far.

The Comet was all but vacant. I passed like 1 jogger at some point, much more bundled up than I.

I was still pretty bundled though, head to toe. The gear was comfortable and familiar, except for the balaclava. I think I've only had one other opportunity to wear it, and it was a little awkward.

Is it supposed to cover your mouth? What about your nose? Or is that the idea, it's versatile?

No idea. It was nice and warm though, all those different ways.

There was a little ice here and there, but nothing like I've seen up in the mountains.

It was a little disappointing actually. I'd hoped for sheets and sheets of icicles. And liquid water was actually running down the little gutters. Further on some puddles were frozen completely though, and little ponds here and there were frozen over. So, I wasn't totally disappointed.

Around Powder Springs I got off and took the roads back home. They were surprisingly vacant as well. It was like 9AM, people ought to be dragging in to work, but I guess the morning rush ends early on a cold day in Powder Springs, or maybe it doesn't happen at all.

The rest of the ride was fairly uneventful.

The cold was bearable. I did sing a little song though, to get my mind off of it:

"It's getting cold in here (so cold)... So put on all your clothes... I am getting so cold, I'm gonna put my clothes on..."

That's right. I sang that, out loud. But seriously, the cold wasn't that bad.

The worst part was that I had to pee, really, really badly and I stopped at almost every gas station between Powder Springs and the house. One of them didn't appear to have a bathroom but a guy at one of the video poker machines clued me in. If I ignored the "Employees Only" and "Out of Order" signs, I'd find what I was looking for. Thank God too, I seriously had to go.

The cold was a little difficult, but not like I expected. My toes were fine (or seemed fine at the time). My hand and fingers struggled. The bars themselves sucked the life out of my hands. Just leaning on them, I could feel the drain. Grabbing the cold, metal brakes was like ten times worse though. I had to ride with one hand under the other arm for a while, then switch when it warmed up a little. But it wasn't terrible. Having to pee was way worse than the cold.

When I got home though, warming up was much worse than I expected. My toes had gotten cold, colder than I thought. Walking around was fine, but when they hit the not-yet-even-warm water in the shower, it felt like I'd slammed them all in a door. Oh my goodness, they hurt. All I could do was sit there on the edge of the tub writhing for a few minutes. Ha! Horrible.

So, all right. Now I've done that: ten degree road ride. Probably about 25 miles was all, but that was enough for me.

These days, it's much warmer. Much more comfortable. If I can ever get all of this work done, maybe I'll be able to get out and enjoy it a bit.