Today Was for You Angela

Today was one of the hardest days of the whole trip as far as climbing goes, this we all new prior and I think woke up in a state of depression/ intimidation because of.  We started the day with a short 10 miles from our house to the Chiles Peach Orchard which was SO good see, especially with my wonderful friends Courtlyn and Lizzy inside! We sat inside, at icecream and do-nuts psyching ourselves out for the climb in our very very near future.  Once leaving the peach orchard we headed for the enemy, Afton Mountain.  We headed for the hills, stopping one last time for a quick bite of bagel, then headed up the mountain. Now, I have climbed Afton before and it KILLED me, it was nemesis, so today I set out to destroy it and prove what I could do, and I crushed it.  Along the way, about ¾ of the way up the mountain we stopped at June Curry’s house. June Curry is the Cookie Lady, she lives along theTrans-America route and has been giving water and home-made cookies to riders since 1976. She is one of the sweetest and kindest people I have ever met and providing a much much much needed rest and refueling station for cyclists along the climb is appreciated by all who have had the pleasure of meeting her.

                After we finished the bit of the climb we met up with the Blue Ridge Parkway, thinking the climbing for the day was over, I was wrong. The Blue Ridge Parkway is full of very long climbs followed by fun descents, it was one of the hardest days of riding I’ve ever had but all along the way I thought of how much Angela (the MS patient we met yesterday) would give to be able to pant and grind her way up one of the hardest climbs on the trip. So today, was for Angela. At the end of the day we had traveled 60 miles, climbed over 5,500 feet of elevation, and burned about 6,000 calories… I slept better last night than the previous 4 days combined.

                We finished the day with an epic descent down Vesuvius mountain in to the town of Vesuvius where we got to Gertie’s.  I downed a double cheeseburger + an egg with fries without hardly taking a breath.  That night we camped in the field behind the restaurant and woke up for what we thought would be an easy day of riding.