Day 4: Mountains Only

Wow. What a day. WHAT. A. DAY.

I hardly slept at all with the anticipation of today's mountain climbing ahead. I felt sick with anxiety, but successfully choked down 3 packets of oatmeal,  coffee, and half a bagel at 630am. We headed west out of Charlottesville and zoomed down some great country roads only to find out the map no longer followed bike route 76. We're so used to following signs for 76 that no one even realized the mistake until we were at the bottom of a big hill that was a few miles long. Some of the group had already stayed on 76, but I was in a group that decided we should follow the map. We saw some beautiful horse and wine country with rolling hills for the first 25 miles of the 60ish mile day. Below is a group picture that was somewhere we found to be a great place to stop.

Our first stop of the day was at Chiles Peach Orchard near Crozet.  I had cherry pie, a chocolate milkshake,  and a strawberry cider before starting the worst mountain climbing part of the day. It was only 9 am or so and it was already very hot and humid. The roads were skinny country roads and the switchbacks were the most steep slopes I've ever been on. Coming up to Afton Mountain was just breathtaking... literally, I couldn't breathe. I stopped at a Post Office just before the Cookie Lady's house (she would give out cookies to bikers before passing away 2 years ago). Finally, we came out to where the Blue Ridge Parkway and Skyline Drive meet and headed south on the Parkway. The hills became more rolling, but also long, from this point forward. Don't get me wrong; it was still pretty darn hard! 

On the slow inclines in my granny gear, I noticed my crank arms were really creaking loudly. After riding 15 miles at the next stop,  Yusef,  one of the route leaders and bike mechanic,  took apart my bottom bracket and fixed me right up in about 15 min. So impressive! 

The next leg of the day was only 10 miles,  but most of it was climbing and still on the Parkway. The last 15 miles of the day started with 12 miles of climbing and ended with 3 miles of dangerously steep descent. It was epic and everyone's brakes need to be replaced now!! 

At the bottom, we had dinner at Gurtie's Country Store in Vesuvius - huge burgers and amazing bbq. The brakes on the van happened to be smoking on the epic descent. So, the yard they pulled into kindly offered to let us stay at the local church for the night since there were storms coming. After a cold house shower, one of women of the church made delicious chocolate chip cookies! Yum! I don't feel guilty because my GPS watch told me I burned 4,000 calories today. I ate basically all day and don't feel full. It's crazy how much we are burning!

I've been enjoying taking with the husband of one of the MS patients who received the modified van as he is riding today thru Friday with us.  It's great he was able to make the trip! 

Now it's time for bed because I am exhausted from this awesome day.