Fast & furious. Staying out & Todd & Heather’s place out of internet connection. hanging in town @ Ingles grocery store parking lot.
Yesterday rode Todd’s loop in DuPont, some trails I had ridden b4. Fun and chalenging to be back on these trails. Last year the trees were bare and all leaves were on the ground. Now the trees are leafed out creating darkness of a broad leaf forest and the leaves went trhu 1 winter of break down allowing the tread to be read. We rode out bikes up bridal veil falls, carefully walked on dry patches of rock clinging to tree branches to avoid slipping on slippery rock and going on a wet bouncing ride to smash into rock @ bottom. Crawled under the falls where a scene from Last of the Mohicans was filmed. Rode down the dry stuff, big slab of granite.
Spent night again in parking lot below Todd’s place. Tadd is a race promotor for Assault on MT Mitchell and Pisgah mtn bike stage race. he is o owner w/ Bill Victor in Long Cane trail builders. Heather fed me again.
Today plan was to drive into Brevard, Todd get his rear wheel fixed, pile into his car and drive up to Parkway for big ride. Forecast was for T-storms, but that is a forecast. Hot and muggy up on Parkway. A few large drops of rain spattered on pavement. Rationalization: it is warm, rain will cool us off. Besides, this is NC and weather is finicky. Finicky it was as we headed for sunshine. T-storm settled in on MT Pisgah that we were underneath. It poured, then hailed mixed in w/ thunderclaps right after the lightning flash. We were right in middle of storm. We were sort of climbing & slipping on roots and getting soaked. My miracle wicking fabric clothing gave up once saturated. i had water puddles in my shorts. Our route was to Pisgah Inn on parkway but amount and proximitity of lightning caused our decision to retrace our route. As we did, we rode out of strorm. Temp dropped and we started loosing body heat until we stopped and pulled on our rain coats. Hail covered the trail and ground. Water flooded off trail. Crossed a raging small stream torent running brown w/ woods dirt. Lots of last winter’s ice storm damagae. Forest canopy was stripped allowing sunlight in to normally dark woods. Rhodendron tunnels common to NC.
We rode back to car to consider riding the 2nd loop. We were sopping wet but warm. We drove down parkway to next TH but the spector of black clouds turned us back to Brevard. Got up to 5000′, Brevard is ike 2300′.
More T-storms are forecast. Have a special shuttle ride tomorrow.
Going back to Todd’s for the night. Need to do dishes then drive out up into mtns where temps are lower and in woods.
Let this fly.