Day 52: Bell II to Tattoga Lake

Well not only do we get up later and later by waiting for the day to warm up, but with a resort to spend time at we were really dragging in the morning. I’m usually one of the first people out and ready to go, but even I was just sitting in the tent. With the bad bugs back and a warm sleeping bag I just didn’t want to get moving. But the promise of chocolate chip pancakes is pretty enticing so finally I rolled out.

I ate the great breakfast food, (Stephen and Nick Weaver’s work) and then walked back and forth between camp and the cleaning/bathroom hut about five times (I was always forgetting something) before I was ready to go. Back in camp we were swatting flies like crazy and the whole team looked like we were in some sort of convulsions or some fidgety dance. With the bugs encouraging us to get moving, we hopped on our bikes and promptly chose to get off and go to the cafe instead. Heh.

I ate some more ice cream and munched on a candy ba, way before 11 AM, but I swear I can stop at any time. I knew Brian and Brenna had gone on ahead and with all the “carbohydrates” in my bloodstream I decided to go on ahead. I decided to try something a little new and left my bike in the lowest front gear, going about 100 RPM, but only 15 mph or so. I raced along on the road, which quickly turned into dirt and that was no fun. Bumps, bumps and more bumps pretty much describes the ride. Every once in a while, a RV would pass by and throw up a thick could of dirt at which point I would breath shallow and squint my eyes.

I was feeling really good in my new setup and felt like I was hardly using as much energy as I usually did at about 60 RPM’s. I raced along by myself and (I felt) really attacked the hills with almost no effort. I came up to some construction where they made me stop which really kills your legs. I sat around for ten minutes a little bitter since I could clearly have gone around with no problems and while I was standing around I was being attacked by the mosquitoes and flies and getting cold. Finally they let me go, but as a gesture of safety towards me they told the cars behind me that they couldn’t pass me until we were out of the construction, which was about two miles or so long.

Knowing this I really went as fast as I could at the time. I was really stiff from standing around, but I had picked up the pace to nearly 25 miles when I hit another construction stop sign about 3/4 a mile into it. D'oh. Sat around for another five minutes and finally was able to make it through the final portion. Again, I was able to get through at around 25 mph and I was breathing hard the whole time. Fortunately, the whole construction process was to put on a fresh layer of asphalt and it was so smooth that if I had not been getting cold I feel like I could have gone up to the upper 20’s.

A short time later, I pulled into the rest stop where I saw Brian and Brenna. I ate some sandwiches, but I didn’t want to sit around too long since I had already done plenty of that and I took off. The paved road ended all too soon and for a large chunk of the next stretch I was on some terrible dirt roads. One section had a pretty steep downhill and all I could do was keep my hands pretty much where I wanted the handle bars to be and hope that they would vibrate accordingly. I couldn’t sit down since it would rattle all of my organs and hurt my back and I couldn’t see straight since my eyes were rattling all around my head. In retrospect it was pretty funny, but at the time it was really uncomfortable to be going so fast on a road bike on rutted, potholed roads with no shocks.

The other side of the downhill always has an uphill and sure enough there was a monster of a climb in front of me with a 9% grade for a good stretch. This would be hard on a good paved road, but the dirt made it much worse. I had to weave around the biggest ruts and holes. I was still feeling great overall, though, so I just kicked it down into the lower gears and whipped up the hill.

A few miles down the road, I came up on the second rest stop and found that BJ and Mario were there already. I hadn’t even known they were in front of me so I was pleasantly surprised to find some company. A short time later, the two took off and it wasn’t much longer before I had filled up on food and took off as well. I don’t know if it was all the sugar I had eaten earlier or what, but I was just feeling great and a short time later I passed them up and zipped up the next hill. I raced along and noticed a great tailwind, which probably explained my sudden improvement, but I’ll take it when I have it!

It seemed like a brief moment before the next rest stop, but really it was pretty rough with the constant dirt road and the terrible ruts. The scenery was gorgeous, though, with all sorts of snow-capped peaks off to the left. Mario showed up and was clearly pretty upset about the constant bad roads, but when he found it was less than 30 miles to the end his mood picked right up.

Once again I chose to take off pretty quickly and, thinking that with my current pace and the way Stephen described people taking their time, I filled up the water bottles with the belief that I wouldn’t get another rest stop before the end.

Back out on the road, it was another stretch of bad. At one point, I crossed a stream where there was a paved bridge. Making the transition from rutted dirt to a paved road made it feel like I was riding on glass and it felt so, so, so good that I almost considered riding in circles to prolong the period. But I didn’t and it was once again the ruts.

But then, gloriously, I saw a sign that said the gravel was ending and then, wonderfully, it did! Woohoo! Paved roads as far as I could see and I shouted out for joy. With the improvement in roads my speed almost instantly jumped up an extra five mph. And suddenly I was cruising along the road with the foliage close and the wind pushing me along.

The rain started coming down, but it was light and even though it was cold, the constant motion of my legs kept me warm. After passing by a very large lake I was wondering how on earth there could be another lake, but then the road swerved right and into the canyons. Sure enough just ten miles up the road was another big lake and I pulled into the little resort at the campsite. I popped off the bike and walked around the gift shop before buying some more ice cream. I ate the ice cream and talked with a man who was in the area with his wife waiting for a spare tire for their touring motorcycles.

I waited for a good thirty minutes and then BJ and Mario showed up. We ordered some hamburgers and soup and sat around eating in the warmth of the room and laughing and talking. We were there an hour before the van showed up, which had us a little worried. I talked to them for a few moments to find that people had really been going slow for the day. Then I jumped into the back of the van for a nap. I was only there for ten minutes before Stephen hopped in to the front seat, excited since we had just had three cabins donated to us!

I jumped out of the van to take my bike down to the lake and immediately got chilled. It was so cold and rainy outside that I didn’t even want to move. Mario and I coasted down the hill screaming out how cold it was in the wind of the moving bikes. We pulled up to the cabins, I walked around all three and then chose the middle one. I only spent enough time to get my stuff in the cabin before going down for a warm nap.

I was asleep for a good two hours before I sauntered out again to find the team was still coming in. I felt quite bad for them since I felt so cold and I had already been in for over three and a half hours. But it wasn’t too much longer before the rest came in and we were all sitting in our small cabins, roasting ourselves by the fires.

Dinner was served and everyone pretty much ran out of the cabins, grabbed the food, and ran back into the now almost too toasty cabins too eat. The bugs were also, as always, quite bad so people would run in and out of the doors just long enough to get what they needed. Dessert worked the same way and I don’t think the team was outside for more than two minutes altogether, which is amazing since it almost always takes 30 minutes to get the team to all focus on something long enough to get it done.

Back in the cabin, we sat around with out cabin mates talking and having a good time. Some mosquitoes had managed to get in the door despite our efforts and we all laughed as Mario danced around swatting and yelping. He is one of the most ardent bug haters on the team and he gets pretty animated about it when they’re around.

We spent a good amount of time unwinding and finally we all unrolled the sleeping bags and passed out, some of us on the beds and some others, such as myself, on the floor. But all of us were warm and dry in our cabins and we were so happy to have them as we were planning to camp in our tents that night. What a great difference they made!