The world, and how it should work, according to John C. Straffin

Leaving Lowes Motor Speedway also meant, thankfully, leaving some of the busiest traffic areas we’ve seen during the ride so far. This is a good thing. According to the Cycle NC Rider’s Handbook, tomorrow’s ride will be on much less travelled roads which should make for a much more enjoyable ride. Most drivers don’t know what to do with a bunch of cyclists. I’d rather have a car pass me a little too closely than have a car hover behind me for 10 minutes, unsure of whether they can pass me or not. In these situations, I can take my mountain bike off the road and let the unsure driver pass; the road bikes do not have that option available (more delicate tires and wheels). I like my mountain bike.

The steep mountain climbs have turned into rolling hills… don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. The rolling hills are far less steep, but they are much longer and don’t have nearly the speed-boost (or fun) on the other side. I’ll also no longer have the opportunity to power past the road bikes on the steeper inclines.

The 60 miles for today seemed short… not because they were easy (though I did consider blowing by one of the rest stops), but because it made for a fourth day of sub-average length rides. The whole trip is ~440 miles over 7 days, making each day about 65 miles on average. Methinks the next three days will be a bit longer than average… don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, either…

Today was one of the shorter days, but it had some hills that rivaled day one, with one of the hills possibly surpassing it in length. I quite readily dispatched them with all due haste. (Forsooth!) I don’t know whether it was the mountain-bike-style gearing of my bike or the legs powering it (probably a measure of both), but I’ve been passing folks like crazy on the hills.

Now, on the downhills and (mainly) on the flatter areas, a road bike is gonna kick my tail. I was, in fact, playing “leap frog” with a few groups of road bikes today: I’d pass them on a hill, they’d pass me on the following downhill/flat area, I’d pass them on the next hill, and so on. I actually tried to hop on the end of a “pace line” of road bikes for a bit, but it was all I could do to keep up with them and fell away as soon as I decided to stop killing myself.

Turns out that, after supposedly fixing it before the ride started, my cyclometer was still overestimating my milage and (therefore) my speed. I checked my calibration with the numbers the REI mechanics had and my tire size was too big by about 5.75%. We’ll see what my numbers look like tomorrow, but here are the slightly inflated numbers for the last two days (I forgot to reset my cyclometer this morning):

(I would have corrected for the error in calibration, but the route I travelled the first day was actually longer than the official route for a number of reasons…)

(Insert witty segue here.)

I found out what true evil looks like today: it looks like a stop sign. A stop sign right before an uphill climb. A stop sign right before an uphill climb at a blind cross street (so you had to stop) that was also at the bottom of a glorious 3/4-mile downhill run. Forcing someone to turn all that kinetic energy into heat energy (by braking) is absolutely diabolical.

I also found out what true evil tastes like: it tastes like Amp Energy Drink (orange). Disgusting. Also disgusting is the number of small bugs that have flown into my mouth… I’ve really got to learn to ride with my mouth closed.

There’s more I wanted to say, but I’ve forgotten much of it and I’m nearly falling asleep while writing this so… g’night.