Todays plan was to wake up at 6:30 leave the house at 7, be in Sperryville at 7:30 climb skyline and meet, Ja White, Michele, and Neal at Panorama, at 8 than ride 82 miles with them and ride back down the mountain to my car. however like most of my plans of waking up early it didn't happen. I woke up 10 mins after the time i should had left, through something in the toaster got dressed and hit the ground running, scratched out the idea of climbing in the beginning (good idea, more on this later) and made it in time to meet with them at 8.
The ride started out a little chilly I wore arm warmers as we descended down from Panorama into Lurray, and soon pealed them off as we started to climb over massanutten mountain, by now the temperature had started to rise and the sweat started to pour.
We made our way down into Fort Valley thanks to Michele for putting in a super long pull along some of the rolling roads.
After winding through more rolling valley roads, a few close calls with local rednecks, and 711 stop to fuel up on a burrito for me, we finally hit the longest climbs of the day. Starting in front royal along skyline drive we made our way along the final stretch of road to the cars. This section tho never steep, is long! With climbs that continue well into 7 miles long with only a mile decent than right back into another grinding 6 miles up, this seems to go on for ever. The longest 21 miles I have ridden yet. As we climbed the sky gradually got darker, the clouds got lower, and the air a little thicker. With 3 miles to go from the magic mile post 21 ( the mark of the descending back to the cars) we finally hit the fog, light at first and gradually getting thicker as we reached closer to the 3475ft elevation of hogsback over
A welcomed sight.
by this point the fog was still light
Not long after cresting hogsback was when the real fun started. Up until 5 miles ago the day had been sunny, and warm, now we where in a fog so thick you could cut it. Visibility quickly got reduced to about 15 yards, with the combination of heavy rain at times. made this normally very fun decent a hair raising experience.
After about 4 miles of fog we popped out below the cloud and found shelter for a bit at the Elk Wallow wayside, witch included some great hot chocolate! The last few miles were rather bland, a mixture of the light rain, slight fog, and dropping temperatures made for a quick and quite ride back to the cars with exception to Ja Whites RV buzz and sprint that soon followed. I was happy by the end of the ride that i hadn't made the earlier plan to climb to panorama, by this time I wasn't feeling another 7 mile hairpin filled decent down a busy mountain road to my car.
All in all it was great day. we logged in just shy of 83 miles 7000ft of climbing, a filling burrito, hot chocolate and a damn good day to be on the bike!
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