Robert’s Ride 2010, Day 4, Tuesday, August 24, 2010, Cosby, TN to Salem, VA

I didn’t occur to Philip and me until we were sitting at the breakfast table this morning that we lost an hour and were now in the Eastern Time Zone, which meant that we were already behind whatever schedule we have been trying (without success so far) to establish for our trip. After an equally delicious breakfast and a walk through the morning dew and cobwebs towards the back of Dianne’s property where there is an abandoned log cabin built about 100 years ago, we packed up the Passat wagon and hit the road, to the Blue Ridge Parkway. Philip told Dianne that he would put me on the bike at the first downhill section on the Parkway, which sounded OK to me, until Dianne told me how incredibly steeply downhill that section is. After yesterday’s scary descent on US Hwy 321, which is probably really tame in comparison to the hill that Philip had in mind for my ride today, I thanked Dianne for her warning, and suggested to Philip that he ride first today, and I’d ride later in the day further up the Blue Ridge Parkway where the elevation changes are less dramatic.

We spent the first 1 ½ hours or so on the Blue Ridge Parkway at the new Visitor Center at mile marker 397, and then at the Folk Art Center at mile marker 380 (the Parkway begins north near Waynesboro, VA, and ends south at mile marker 465 near Cherokee, NC). The Folk Art Center has a fabulous collection of crafts made by artist from the Appalachian region, and is one of Philip’s favorite places. So, we dropped a bit of time there.

Philip finally started his ride at about 1:30 at mile marker 364 at the Craggy Gardens Visitor Center.

Philip studied the profile of the Parkway that he printed from the Internet, which showed a mostly downhill ride for 37 miles from this point, and then a serious climb. So he planned to ride the 37 mile stretch, get back in the car, and finish his ride further up the Parkway where the climbs weren’t so steep. However, like most profiles, the information wasn’t detailed enough. There were good downhill sections, but there was a lot of climbing. Later, after studying an elevation chart that we got at the Visitor Center, Philip calculated that he climbed 3700 feet in 37 miles. It was a cloudy day, and it did rain a little, which dropped the temperature to 64 degrees, so Philip grabbed his rain jacket from the car at one of the scenic overlooks where I had leap-frogged to wait for him to ride past. He got off the bike at 37 miles, which took him 2 hours and 45 minutes. His bike computer showed that his average speed was 13.9 mph and average power was 475 watts.

We drove 391 miles today, and cycled 37 miles.

Our schedule for completing our goal for cycling miles each day (about 2 hours for me and 4 hours for Philip), and the number of miles that we need to drive to our night’s accommodation, hasn’t worked out so far. After Philip got off the bike at about 4:15, he calculated that we had at least 4 hours of driving to do to reach Salem, VA, where we had made reservations for the night. So, Philip didn’t finish his ride, and I didn’t ride at all. Driving the 4 hours to Salem was the pits. There was one section of road that began with the sign “switchbacks next 22 miles”, which was beautiful, but exhausting to drive. The last 142 miles were on Interstate 81 in rain, which was a real vacation buster. Maybe by the time that we reach Halifax we will have worked out this cycling/driving thing.