The plan for the weekend was simple...Mattchew, Brandon, and myself were going to ride to Shenendoah 100 course on Saturday, camp out in our cars, then do it again on Sunday. Easier said then done.
Our two day adventure starting to turn sour after Matt decided that he wouldn't be able to make the trip down to Virginia because of the massive amount of snow they had gotten back home. Apparently Penndot is really gay and didnt think that they needed to plow 8 inches of snow off major interstate highways across the state, worthless... so nontheless, it turned out that it would only be me and Brandon headed to Harrisonburg for the rediculous ride.
All went well on the drive up and I met Brandon at Cici's, a local Ayce pizza joint. The only thing I can compare this place to is Chucky Cheese's without the huge plastic tube mazes. It was crazy. After we had our fill of greasy, calorie stuffed pizza we drove into the forest and set up camp. Luckily the weather held out as we were able to enjoy a brisk 10 degrees for the first night of sleeping. The secret to staying warm was idling the cars for hours at a time and blasting super-heated air in our faces. We woke up at 6am for our first day of riding. We started at the begining of the loop hoping that we would be finishing all 100 miles before we ran out of daylight. The first climb treated us pretty well despite there being 3 inches of snow with about an inch of ice on top of that. We headed into the first section of singletrack once we rolled over the top of the mountain and started to make our way through the ice covered rock gardens. With Brandon just up the trail from me we made our way slowly down the mountain. Brandon had the first sweet crash of the day when he almost face-planted into a tree. All I could do was laugh. After a lengthy road section we hit the second climb of the day, this one was unridable. We spent more than one hour hiking straight up a mountian, stopping several times to eat, go to the bathroom, or just straight-up delay the miserable death-march. Once we reached the top and started down the sweet downhill we realized how worthwhile the hike had been. The ice and snow combo actually provided alot of grip as we carved our way back down to the fireroad and to the cars.
Up until this point we, or at least I, felt that we were making pretty good time and thought that we would get most of the loop done. Then we found out that it took us over 4 hours to do the first 20 miles. That pretty much set the tone for the rest of the weekend, we aint gonna be ridin no 200 miles.
We fueled up and headed out on a second loop that we expected would take us until nightfall. It was pretty uneventful except for "crunch". If your not familiar, crunch is when your rear tire breaks through the icy layer on top of the snow. It almost always brings you to a complete stop and after about 5 minutes of it you feel like slitting your wrist on your chainring.
Day 2 was just as epic as the first. It started just like the first, climbing. To our suprise we were able to ride for more than an hour straight! Who would have thought? Don't get too excited yet, all the fun came to a stop once we hit solid ice. Then we walked for another hour. It was fun. We heat-butted bushes covered in ice, had two lunch breaks, and ate icycles, all the while wondering why we had even left the cars that morning. The only thing that kept of moving up the climb was the thought of an awesome desent back down to the fireroad. Unfortunatly, the climb was more fun than the downhill. We slid on our ass down the icy trail like a 3rd grader on a sliding board. Then something crazy happened, towards the bottom of the trail we ran into this foreign brown stuff of the trail. It turned out it was just dirt but it had been so long since we had seen it we were suprised by it. By the time we got to the paved road at the bottom both of us were totally demoralized and cold so we hightailed it back on the fireroad, packed up, and went to Taco Bell.
The stats for the weekend:
Total miles logged: 65
Total Hours logged: 13
Average Speed:5.4
#of Little Debbie Creme Pies I consumed: 12
# of dominated toilets: 2 + one urinal
Lets see how it goes next weekend...
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