Weekend of riding!!

Epic weekend!

Sunday was my first ride on the mountain bike since my accident. As we pedaled down FS 44, Clark asked me if I was nervous. Wonderously, I was not. I was excited. It felt so normal and natural to be on that bike. More so, dare I say, then on my road bike. Back to the mountain bike ride in a minute.... I'll tell you about our road ride first.

Saturday's road ride was a good time. We rode to the Sautee Nacoochee center for their monthly pancake breakfast http://www.snca.org/news/simplybreakfast.html and sat with a fella and his kids that have a cabin over on Miner's Mountain. The kids were funny and wanted to know about our shoes, as did a few of the other people in there, they had never seen such! The shoes clips to the pedal??? WOW!

We left the breakfast and headed out on our scenic loop down Sky Lake Road to hwy 356. The climbs weren't as bad as I remember them being a couple of years ago, even in my outta cycling shape condition ! It started getting pretty hot coming back in, but the descent down 356 by Unicoi was very cool and fun.

Sunday we had a relaxing morning at the house, but still wanted to get a ride in. The later it gets here, the heavier the tourist traffic is, so we opted for a mountain bike ride on forest service road 44. We rode part of this gravel road back in the winter months, but Sunday, we had plans, BIG plans and expanded the route a bit.

Now, we haven't been riding much, due to my accident and Superman's eye problem, so I guess you can say we are outta practice. We rode with 3 waterbottles between the two of us and no food. On a road ride, that is usually ok, eventually you usually come across a store or water hose, but out in the National Forest, different story. Oh and I meant to mention, we left right before noon on this epic journey....

Climbing, climbing, climbing. That's the story out there on the forest service roads. So beautiful though, running alongside the Chattahoochee River, lots of trees providing shade for a large part of the ride. That was a good thing, because the sun was brutal. Its not supposed to get hot up here like that!

Our original plan was to do a loop and not descend on the pavement down Unicoi Gap. However, after running out of water and getting low on fuel reserves, when Superman mentioned the pavement, I was like HELL yes, shortest way back.

7 1/2 miles down Unioci Gap with fat tires is an awesomely, wonderous ride.

Got back to the car and Superman loaded up the bikes on the roof, then stopped by Wendy's in Helen for some refueling. Felt a little self conscious walking in with the cycling clothes on initially, but looking at the masses in there in bathing suits, no shoes and no shirts, I felt run-way ready!

Look for a future blog posting about swimwear in public. I feel this posting has gone long and don't want your eyes to glaze over.