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Blue Ridge Parkway Journal Chapter 1 and 2: The Back-Story, "Hills are Good!"

In the summer of 2011, I will be riding from Front Royal, VA to Asheville, NC along the Skyline Drive and Blue Ridge Parkway. Periodically, I will be posting new chapters of a journal detailing the trip. I have no goals beyond keeping a detailed, personal account of my first, long, self-contained bike tour. This is the first installment.

Chapter 1: The Back-Story

It was one year and a few months ago that I bought a bike for the first time in about a decade. I had barely ridden one since getting a drivers license, but I had put on weight, something new and unusual for me. All my life, my metabolism tore through even the most ridiculous of diets. I could have lived off of dipped bacon in mayonaise for days without putting on a pound. But alas, the mix of a weakening metabolism and a less-active life (partly due to changes in work) had left me more out of shape than ever before. I was 25 and for the first time in my life, had to consider what I eat and how much exercise I get.

I started working out and jogging. I hated jogging. I had always hated it, but over a decade of smoking had done a number on my lungs. I could jog, and I could keep it up enough to get a good workout, but I hated it. I am not sure what it was, but something reminded me of young days riding bikes all over the city, on trails in the mountains, and along the C&O Canal. I decided I would get a bike again.

The store had one bike that was right for me. A Rocky Ridge, Marin mountain bike. This was the type of bike I could easily ride around town but was rugged enough for even the toughest of trails.

I rode the Canal as much as I could that fall. I would not even ride the streets out of fear that I was not in good enough shape to handle the hills in DC. The canal, however, is flat, gorgeous, and full of memories. On my first trip I relocated the former rope-swing, the tree having been cut down years ago when a girl hurt herself there. I almost rode past it, not noticing the SUV sized trunk jutting out towards the water, overgrown with smaller plants.

Once I felt my lungs and legs gradually getting back in shape, managing the ride better and better, I decided to try riding from my house rather than driving to the drop point on the canal. It is only one mile and very easy going there, but coming back is basically all uphill. I remembered that being one of the more difficult hills of my childhood, and one I walked up plenty of times. I had to take two breaks on my frist attempt to ride up the hill (my first attempt since getting the Marin that is). The next time, one break. From then on, I have yet to need a break on that hill. Looking back, that moment is where I would say I turned a stone and actually began to get back into shape.

By the time fall was coming to an end, I felt comfortable riding the four or five miles to the office up some long hills. When spring came around, now 2010, I was eager to put some miles beneath me. April presented me with a great opportunity to do just that as I was planning a drive across the country to meet my best friend at his place in LA, then off to Vegas for his bachelor party! VEGAS BABY!

This was my first cross-country drive. I have long been well-traveled, but at this point in my life, the furthest west I had driven was Missouri. I planned a route that took me along the southern part of the country while heading out west, and up along the north while coming back home. The majority of the trip was spent on roads I had never driven and states I had yet to visit. I think I hit 19 states total, 11 or so for the first time.

Like anyone would, who spends as much time online as I do, I started googling. "Cross-country driving tips", "guides for driving across the US", and so on. Planning the trip was exhilarating, dreaming out routes and adventures along the way! I decided my "themes" of the trip (a tip from one of the many search results) would be twofold: 1) New. As in new states, new sights, new people. 2) Biking. My bike would come along for the ride, hanging proudly off the back of my explorer, and I would try to ride it as often as possible. In my googling, ironically not for the biking sections of the trip, I would first learn the term "Bike Touring", which I will talk about later on.

When I arrived in Little Rock, the first stop of the trip, I tried to stay at a hotel near the places I wanted to see so that I could just ride all over. A mix-up with the address left me a little too far outside of town for that, so I drove into town in the morning, parked, and took out the bike. I rode to the Clinton Library, the Heifer International Headquarters which is one of the greenest buildings in the world, and took a ride along a bike path by the river. I immediately approved of my biking theme. Biking around a city provides the tourist with a more comprehensive memory of the streets, the buildings, and the natural environment surrounding him or her than one would find driving around. One gets a better picture of the distance of blocks, the hills, the wind, and the people.

From there it was a mad dash to the Grand Canyon, after stopping to pay respects at the Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial the day before the anniversary and one night to sleep in Albuquerque. It was an amazing drive that took my breath away. I will never forget the feeling while sitting on my cooler, eating a chicken salad burrito in the parking lot of a gas station in what seemed like the middle of nowhere, Texas, surrounded by nothing but wind, desert, and an occasional passing car.

Roughly half an hour after leaving Albuquerque, I realized that I had forgotten to fill up on gas. I had about 70 miles until empty, enough to make it back if needed. But backtracking when you are trying to make it to the Grand Canyon before sunset sucks. I whipped out my new Droid, pulled up the Where app and searched for gas stations. It brought up two, one behind me in Albuquerque, and one in a town called Canoncito that I had never heard of before. I decided to risk it, taking an exit 10 miles ahead with no sign to indicate a gas station and nothing but desert and hills in sight. Five, six, seven miles off the highway, steadily getting close to the point where I need to turn around if I want to make it back to Albuquerque.

There it is! "Yes!" I shout aloud to myself. Canoncito's Gas. I go in to pay, no credit card slots on the old gas pumps. I told the owner of my close call with an almost empty tank. As it would turn out, he had been driving east some twenty years ago, when he and his wife ran out of gas not far from where I would have had I kept going. Only they lost gas at about 3:00am, not 10:00am. It was dark all around. When you drive through the desert, all you can see is the road ahead of you. A black abbiss surrounds the stretch of highway, only rarely broken by the lights of a gas station or small town.

A man with a pickup truck had helped them out that night and long-story-short, him and his wife ended up staying there permanently. Now the family, including a couple children, owns that gas station.

After exchanging business cards, chatting a bit, and taking a few pictures, I got back on the road, happy to have met Francisco.

I arrived at the Grand Canyon with a few hours before sunset. As luck would have it, it was National Parks Week meaning that entrance and parking fees were waived! A good omen, no doubt. Just as soon as my bags were in my hotel room, the bike came off the car and got a quick cleaning. I rode to the visitor center, hoping to get some help picking out a good bike trip. They were a little help, but not much. I probably should have checked BikeForums.net or crazyguyonabike.com, but I was not completely aware of the wealth of information available at those sites at the time.

Anywho, I rode out to see the canyon for the first time. The size of it is continually described, but you just cannot be prepared for the sight of it. After gazing out, I decided to tool around on the bike. I noticed that, unlike in the DC area, the trees were so far apart you could just ride through them without any trail. I hopped off the road, keeping a keen eye on my Droid's google maps to steer myself back to the hotel. I fell once, the first fall I had taken since getting back on a bike. A small scratch on my knee only brought a smile to my face. Here I was, charting my own path through the trees ducking and dodging the branches and limbs as they whizzed past my face. This part of my life had been absent for some time.

After an early dinner snack, soup heated up on my camping stove, I leisurely rode back to the canyon to watch the sunset. I chose to spend two nights, giving myself a full day to enjoy the area. I found a fun looking bike trail nearby, the Arizona trail.

The next morning, I got up and began driving towards the trail. As I approached the "parking lot", or dirt space, at the entrance, it was clear that it would be all mine.

"Perfect." I muttered to myself as the car came to a stop in the empty lot. The ride was, and still is, some of the best mountain biking I have done since getting this bike. All alone on a beautiful trail that looks out away from the Canyon. Again, I fell once, this time a little harder than the day before. And again, I smiled. A couple more scrapes for me and some dirt for my camera, but no real damage for either. I also got the chance to test out another app for my Droid called My Tracks.

My Tracks uses google maps and your phone's GPS to track you when turned on. Once you stop recording the track, it spits out all kinds of useful information such as average speed, average moving speed, elevation changes... etc. After stopping to have lunch before heading back to the car, I started recording. I didn't want to risk killing the battery on the ride out so I decided only to track my ride back. Here is the map it gave me:

View Arizona Trail in a larger map

Thoroughly pooped, I went to sleep early that night and woke up slowly the next morning. I was in no rush to leave early since I was not due to show up in LA until the next day. I decided I would drive to about an hour outside of LA and find a motel 6 to crash at.

Aside from a ride or two around LA to get food and whatnot, I got one more chance at some real riding. While in Utah, I hit up the famous Moab. There is an area there of rolling slickrock, affectionately called a bikers playground. No marked trail, just miles of smooth rolling stone with plenty of dips and natural quarter-pipes. A ferocious wind made climbing the mountain of stone difficult, but riding down with the wind at my back exhilarating.

Everything I have told you so far was an effort to set the stage and give you a sense of where I was coming from when I decided I wanted to try out this "bike touring" thing I had read about.

You will recall that I mentioned, earlier on, that it was during my prep for this cross-country drive when I first heard of bike touring? In my googling for touring tips, the search "solo touring" produced one very unexpected the result. The first search result too. It was a journal at crazyguyonabike.com. Welcoming distractions as I do, a sometimes healthy, sometimes unhealthy mix of curiosity and ADHD, I perused.Almost instantly I was attracted to the notion of self-contained bike touring, where you carry everything you need, only rarely stopping to refill food supplies or fix a bike. One adventure at a time, I told myself. But it was clear to me that night that bike touring was in my future.

There are countless reasons I can list for why my heart leapt up that spring and why the thought of bike touring has continued to nag me over the last eight or nine months. It seemed like a brilliant challenge to motivate me in my efforts to get back in shape, not to mention the good exercise of touring itself. It combined biking with another childhood love of mine; camping. It was a chance to disconnect myself from the the city, from technology, and most importantly, from politics. It would fill me with stories, move me with the views of nature, and teach me more about myself. It just sounded, and still sounds, fun.

Over the summer, I read more about bike touring and started researching routes. By mid fall, I had chosen the path, from near DC all the way to Asheville, NC where my oldest friend is living. I plan to ride along the Skyline Drive and the Blue Ridge Parkway (BuRP). It was clear that I would not be ready before the weather turned cold in the mountains, and spring rarely affords me enough time off for the trip. So I settled on the summer of 2011.

As I write this, months after first choosing the trip, my interest is as high as ever. As the new year rolled in, and thoughts of new years resolutions danced in mind, only seemed appropriate: ride the BuRP. Let the real planning begin, quick open a new google doc!

Chapter 2: "Hills are good!"

That was the mantra of the journal that most peaked my interest in riding the BuRP by Victor Weinreber, "Hills are good!" The BuRP is known for its hills. Hundreds of miles of them, and only about 3 miles of flat road. In total, you climb about 50,000 feet riding along the 500 mile stretch. Dan Casey put it this way:

There is nowhere else in the U.S. where you can roll along almost 500 uninterrupted miles of breathtaking mountain scenery, with nary a stoplight, stop sign, fast food joint, strip mall, convenience store or any of the other signs of "progress" in our society. The Blue Ridge Parkway is the only place.

Right up my alley! I can picture a couple friends and myself resting our bikes against the trees as we arrive at a campsite for the night. Hungry and tired from the road, a symphony of grunts and groans as we unpack our tents, nighttime clothes, and food for dinner. Nothing but our feet pushing on pedals to carry us from one site to the next. Climbing hill after hill and racing each other down as fast as our bikes will take us, the reward for several grueling hours of fighting gravity.

Up until this break, the hills they scared me! By the end of my cross-country drive, my lungs and legs were vastly more prepared for this trip than when I first dared to ride back up the hill from the Canal to my house. However, the hills in DC are no match for what we will face on the BuRP and I needed to get a better sense of what I was setting myself up for. Chance would provide me with an almost perfect opportunity when my family decided to spend the 2010 Christmas in Kauai, Hawaii.

In researching where the best spots to ride in Kauai are, I came across one ride I could not turn down. There were essentially two good options. One was a relatively easy ride along a path right by the beach, the other was an intimidating climb up the Waimea Canyon, by way of Kokee Rd. How could I pass up an opportunity to spend hours riding from the beach up thousands of feet above sea level? After four hours of riding, I managed to climb nearly 2,600 feet, the greatest elevation change I have experienced since getting my Marin in the summer of 2009.

I ate lunch in a cloud, literally, before heading back down to the sea. It was misty and refreshing! What took me fours hours to climb, took twenty-two minutes to ride down, hitting a top speed of just over 35mph. Once again, I tracked myself using My Tracks on the way back:

View Waimea Canyon in a larger map

Here is a picture slideshow from the ride:

For the first time in years, I understand how well I can ride uphill for hours and hours at a time. I still have plenty of training to do before I am ready for the BuRP, but now I know how much further I have to go. And more importantly, I know what it feels like to repeatedly mutter to yourself the words, "Hills are good! Hills are good!" Those three little words seem to pump a little extra energy into one's tired legs at just the needed moment.

This is where I sit as I begin planning out the tour and inviting friends to join me. It's January 6th, 2011.