Pages: 1  -  2  -  3  -  4  -  5  -  6

4/23/2007 - ASHEVILLE: Eastern Continental Divide Ride

Yesterday we made a stop at a grocery store to buy maple syrup, I think that was the only item we forgot to bring on the trip. We cooked up some man-sized pancakes with bacon for breakfast and prepped today's ride.

Today we would drive south to Fletcher to get to the start of a ride I found on the Blue Ridge Bicycle Club web page. The Bat Cave Edneyville ride starts on Cane Creek Road in the parking lot of Cane Creek Cycling Components. It was a 15 or 20 minute drive to get there from our campground.

The parking lot at Cane Creek did not have more than about twenty vehicles in it. We entered the unattended front lobby and picked up the phone. I introduced us as "cycling tourists from Ohio that heard about your facility from a former Cane Creek employee at Liberty Bicycles." I guess that worked because we ended up on a tour of the facility.

At this facility Cane Creek receives components from its vendors in bulk. Here they assemble and package completed product. There is also R&D and testing of components taking place here. We saw the infamous Cane Creek headsets being packaged and assembled. For several minutes we watched an employee hand buildling Cane Creek wheels. We walked by assembly areas for mountain bike shocks, Thudbuster seat posts, and brake sets.

One thing was obvious, the employees were cyclists. Everyone was introduced as a recent winner of some road race or mountain bike race. Ryan and I were jealous to see their rack of employee bikes kept off to the side "for lunch time or after work rides."

In the side parking lot we unpacked our bikes and looked over the map again. While talking to the Cane Creek engineer that had taken us on the tour, we mentioned our proposed route for the day. He told us that the climb on Rt 74 up to the Eastern Continental Divide was part of the Tour Du Pont, a professional race that no longer exists. He said it was a good ride and he had traveled similar roads yesterday.

The route took us north from Cane Creek through some residential areas and rolling roads before heading east. The climb was not real steep but required seven or eight switchbacks to place us atop the Eastern Continental Divide at 2880' above sea level. We stopped for a picture atop the divide. Spit to the left and it would flow to the Atlantic, spit to the right and it would flow to the Gulf of Mexico... neat.

For the next 10 miles or so we were on the downhill to Bat Cave and yes I had the Batman song from the old TV show in my head the whole way down. It was a fast descent with much fewer tight corners than yesterday's ride and we pedaled more often to keep the speed up.

We passed through Bat Cave without seeing any caped crusaders and turned southwest. Rolling terrain and another climb over the divide delivered us to Edneyville. We rolled along in a bit of a traffic jam due to road construction before turning northwest to head back to Cane Creek.

It had been another perfect day of weather and another enjoyable ride. We returned the bikes to their perch in the back of the van and hit a Dairy Queen on the way back to the campground.

Technically we were supposed to be out of the campground by 2pm. We pulled up to the ranger shack around 2:45 and asked if we could take a shower before driving back to Ohio. The campground was not very busy and the ranger must have thought we looked like we needed a shower so he let us.

An hour later we were on the road, heading north. Fortunately for both Ryan and I, it was not back to work tomorrow and we still had another day before that reality would happen. We talked about our rides over the past week and the adventure of living in a van, as well as what awaited us at work and the possibilities for trips in the future.

Around 8pm we made a pit stop at a West Virginia welcome center. There was a service plaza less than an hour north, so we made that our target for the day. We scrounged through our food buckets for dinner and ended up sufficiently full.

One last time we hung the blanket behind the front seats and blocked the back windows with cardboard secured via magnets. Just like on the way down, ear plugs blocked out the traffic and I fell fast asleep.

Throughout the night I could faintly hear rain hitting the van's roof. In preparation for getting back on schedule for work tomorrow, we woke up early at 7am and were greated by a steady rain. Our plan of heading over to the New River Gorge in Fayetteville to climb the roads beneath the bridge was postponed and we headed straight home instead.

With the van unpacked, disassembled and returned to the rental office our trip was officially over. It had been quite the adventure. I felt like we had been gone for longer than a week, which is always a bonus when on vacation. I thoroughly enjoyed Ryan's company on the trip and I am very glad we were able to make it happen.

There was still an unanswered question in my head... how soon can we do this again? Is it okay to end a trip report with a question?