Started out late this morning right before noon wanting to go for a ride but not real clear WHERE I wanted to go. I decided to head out down the rail-trail here in durham and sped off toward it. It was a cool 63F likely to top out around 67F for the day. I was on the romulus and feeling pretty good. I had packed water and some dried figs and a thing of string cheese. Moving at a pretty good pace I crossed off of the paved portion onto the dirt/portion and oddly the romulus felt like it picked up speed. Really moving well through the roots and partial gravel on the jack browns. I crossed over another road intersection and the trail goes back to being paved and it widens out dramatically. A fair number of people out but not crowded at all and all the kids are staying far to the right so no trouble with them. I'm at about mile 16 and I decided to stop and eat some figs and try to figure out how much further I want to go. It's warmed up now and take off the wooly warm sweater vest I bought from Chris when he was having his garage sales (I love this sweater) and tie it up in a cargo netting off the back of my saddle rails. It felt great out there.
I had perused google maps earlier and kinda had the general idea of how to get up to chapel hill from the south end of the trail so I figured I'd try that. I knew the distance ended up being about 35 miles or so which was fine and then I could either ride the extra 20 miles back to durham or I could take the bus. I am now out of food but I'm feeling okay. I head off the trail onto some rural roads and eventually see a pumpkin stand that happens to have late season peaches. I grab one, slice it up and eat it. This, as it turns out, was a VERY good idea. I had made a mental note of road names and one road in particular I had noted to NOT turn on. My mental notes are sometimes a bit scribbly so, of course, I turned on it. This is about mile 30 and I'm beginning to think I should be going more north than the westerly-route I seem to be taking. I look up the road and notice a pretty steady rise in the road and I think 'hmm, maybe it goes up a bit and then levels out'. Almost if I was being mocked I look back down and notice someone has 'kindly' spraypainted 'Col Du Lystra!' on the road in the front of me. That sounded ominous. I head up the hill and half-way there realize that triples are my friend and throw it over to the granny ring. Except it doesn't drop, It TRIES to but it won't go. I pull up into the largest cog in the back (a 25, sadly) and push it out the first part of the hill. After being a little annoyed and the road leveling out a bit I give the front derailler a small kick and then the chain drops onto the granny ring. yay! This ended up being fortunate b/c it was a good bit more climbing before I saw another spraypainted sign which said 'summit'. Kind of someone to mark it that way for me. I keep on up the road, expecting to find some sort of sign or other radical information conveying device that could tell me how far I am from chapel hill. I don't manage to find that but I do find chapel hill rd (15-501 - a 4 lane highway with a small but workable shoulder) I ride up this for a while until I notice that the shoulder is kindly discontinued after this light. So I turn left onto mann's chapel road a name which I recognize but not sure I know where it goes and keep on my merry way. I noticed some old markings from some sort of group ride. I decided that they could only be going to a handful of places so why not follow them. This, in retrospect, may have been a tactical error. I did find some lovely roads and places. However, I also found some terribly original road signs complete with physically impossible distances. (Turning right onto jones ferry road off of lathrop-norwood I note the distance marked as 8 miles to chapel hill, Crossing ferguson rd on jones ferry road I note the road sign says chapel hill is 9 miles away despite my having traveled about 3 miles from the last sign in the DIRECTION of chapel hill.) But I know jones ferry road well enough to know where I'm going. At this point my water is not QUITE all gone but food is becoming more important. My thoughts are turning to what I want to eat in chapel hill and some of them are inappropriate thoughts about falafel and hummus pitas. I make it the rest of the way into chapel hill and find that franklin st is blocked off for some sort of festival. Nice. Easy to walk no traffic. excellent. Finding Sandwhich.biz closed I mosey to the mediterranean deli, lock up and order some food. I sit back down outside after getting a lemonade/ice-tea mix from the deli and waiting for my food. I drink the lemonade and realize I was a bit hungrier than I thought b/c it is THE BEST LEMONADE IN THE WORLD! Okay, maybe not really, but it felt that way. I notice a number of 20-somethings stopping and pointing repeatedly at my bike but they're not laughing and they're not looking malicious and I'm a bit too tired to put forth the pitch for them but they looked happy about something on the rom. Can't blame them, I'm happy about a number of things on it (well, not the front derailler but other things) My food comes, I eat it like I've never seen food before. At this point I decide that it's pushing 4:30 and I have a dog at home who needs a walk so I bike over to the unc->duke bus, strap the rom on the front and light out for durham. Arriving at duke I ride on home to a dog who is happy to see me. She gets her walk. I take out google maps pedometer and figure out where I went wrong and how far I ended up going http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=4082420 + 2ish miles back from duke which I didn't bother to plot. So about 53ish miles in total. All in all a good day and the rom's front derailler and I are going to spend some quality time. Again, the rom rode wonderfully. I wasn't sore much except for the left achilles tendon and an odd pain from my surgery from last year but nothing that wasn't solved through a little rearranging of myself on the seat. I'll post a few pictures to flickr sometime this evening. hope everyone else had a nice weekend. -sv -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bu...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch?hl=en.
