31.08 miles 6:13:53 5200 feet climbing

so drew and i hop in the car and drive out 221 and park on the side. we descend/hike a bike for a while and start heading down yancey's ridge. after the third downhill (on the long loop) we turn onto the 'goatpath.' we take that down some killer switchbacks and take our shoes/socks off and walk across the wilson's creek. we looked around for a while for tr 257 but couldn't find it so we climbed the "rocky road bed." it wasn't very fun and i walked probably 20% of it. oh blah. so we sit on the ground and enjoy some wonderful clif bar products. mmm.

head over to 21 jumps/schoolhouse to crocker exit. my lefty starts making a clankity clank clank. guess i shouldn't have ridden the creek crossing that was two feet deep... my little toes were cold too and white by the end of the ride. so my submerged fork still seemed to work okay, but i had to ride part of the ride with it locked out. oh well. so climbing back up edgemont rd was okay except drew was being strong and sprinted and was waiting when we got back to the 21 jumps start area. we bomb down walnut bottom (watching for the tree that has taken me and matt shanly off our bikes) and popped out on anthony's creek rd. this is basically the end of the fun part of our ride...


we're about 22 miles in and about 1300 feet elevation. our car is somewhere around 4000 feet. so the next 11 miles held something like 2500 feet of climbing. i ran out of water before finishing my last clif bar. that made eating the last half of it quite difficult and i think led to the nauseu that i felt near the end of our ride. edgemont rd was in great shape and we switched from sitting to standing a few times and i put it in the big ring and some cog with probably 19 teeth or so and stood up and gave it all i had. we could see my car and well, drew was still strong and dropped me. its fine. i'm used to being off the back.


enjoy the pictures. so afterwards, i headed to mountain jewelers in newland to check out some wedding rings for darcy and me. no pictures of those yet... thanks for reading this.