As we began yesterday’s brevet, I found myself riding next to Chris.  “My name’s, Chuck,” I said.

    “I’m Chris,” he replied.

    Yesterday was Chris’s first attempt at riding 400 kilometers at one time.  I asked if he’d finished a 300K and found that he had.  He said that he felt really cooked during the last 50 kilometers of that 300, but he thought that if he took it a little easier, he could make 400.

    “Oh,” I said.  “How long did 300K take you?”

    “Eleven hours,” Chris said.

    “Ah, yeah, Chris.  I’m guessing you’ll do fine.”

    There are some hills on the Jumping Off Rock 400 -- by the way, most people call the brevet, the Morrisville 400, but those who take a moment to stop at Jumping Off Rock in the middle of Flint Hill Road, remember to stop again next time to see what it looks like with the trees in a different range of color and the creek at a different rate of flow.

    You miss Jumping Off Rock on the way out because Flint Hill is one riot of a decent.  But even as you fly down the long winding road and pass the unseen Jumping Off Rock, you can’t help but think that you’re going to come back up Flint Hill forty miles further on; on the return.  You don’t think about that very long, though, because you soon wonder if Flint Hill is the great decent you just came down or the long, steep ascent you are now sweating up.  There is a bright side.  On the way home, you get just as exciting a descent as you get on the way out.  It’s just on the other side of Barnes Creek, which is at the bottom of Flint Hill.  And with all that riotous descending and ascending, who really cares which side of the creek is Flint Hill.

    Anyway, on the way back, while coming up Flint Hill -- out of the saddle in your lowest gear -- it would be pretty hard to miss the “Jumping Off Rock” painted in the middle of the uphill lane.  Those who ignore it, and I can understand why they do, miss one of those sights that’s worth stopping for.

    The route description for the brevet claims there are 16,000 feet of climbing.  There aren’t any mountains.  Just lots of hills.  Well, that’s not quite true.  The middle section of the ride, the prettiest section, goes through the Uwharrie Mountains.  Geologists claim that at on time, the Uwharrie were the greatest mountain range in what is now the contiguous United States.  They’re also the oldest and the most worn down.  I don’t know about all that.  I used to be a geologist and I thought we knew a lot more than we could possibly have actually known.  And the way we determined what we knew seemed kind of dubious to me.  In any case, the Uwharrie are now a lot of steep hills bisected by a lot of roiling creeks that made a lot of valleys between the steep hills.  It’s a great place to ride bicycles because you notice the terrain.

    After Flint Hill Road, we turned onto Ophir Road.  The big difference between Ophir Road and Flint Hill Road is that Ophir Road doesn’t go up or down Flint Hill and doesn’t pass Jumping Off Rock.  The reason it doesn’t go up and down Flint Hill is because there isn’t room for another hill on Ophir Road.  Unless you replaced the town of Ophir with another hill, but that would be silly.  There are plenty of hills in the Uwharrie and not enough towns like Ophir.

    As we climbed up one of the Ophir Road hills, John -- he’s the guy behind Byron in the picture above.  They’re ascending one of the Ophir Road hills -- looked at the cue sheet and said to me, “I see the next road is called River Road.  I think I like that.”

    I said it’s kind of rolly too and Byron said, “Yeah, I’ve never seen the river.”

    The river is there all right.  It’s called the Pee Dee River and it’s a mile or so west of River Road.  River Road goes up all the ridges and down into all the valleys that have been cut by all the many creeks that flow into the Pee Dee River.  Those road namers can be so funny.

    (To set up this next section, I have to admit that during all this up and down, I listened to Byron click shifting into lower gears while out of the saddle on hill after hill.  I began to reconsider my fidelity to old Campy down tube shifters.  Now, I will go on.)

    We began to hope that we might catch the lead group before the turn around at 200 kilometers.  As it turned out, we did, and it was a big boost to our egos.  Chris was already there with the fast guys.  Figures.  Anyway, as we pulled up, JP, who flatted earlier, looked at me and said, “My rear deraileur’s stuck.  I think my shifter’s broken.”

    He’s got SRAM Rival on the bike.  I tapped my Campy shifter and said, “Bulletproof.”  JP grimaced and nodded.

    Jerry said the front deraileur still worked so he had two gears.  Someone asked which two and someone else said, “Whichever two he wants.”

    This might sound like a bummer, and it was, but Jerry rode PBP on a single speed and he’s done this same brevet on that same bike.  On the other hand, he’s told me that he’s come to like the geared bike and that it’s become his favorite for randonneuring.  A couple of experts fiddled with the shifter, but who knows how those things work.  SRAM says that if one malfunctions, you should send it back to them and not try to fix it yourself.

    Earlier in the ride, we lost a rider to a broken spoke on a twenty spoke wheel.  John had a fiber spoke and they tried to make that work, but the fancy wheel has a fancy way of dealing with its few spokes and they couldn’t make a go of the fiber spoke.  I don’t think there’s a lesson here.  I can think of a few things that would stop the Red Randonneuse, but these two aren’t them and I’m not putting my thoughts into print because, while I’m pretty sure that randonneuse can’t read, it is a pretty smart bicycle and I don’t want to take any chances by giving it any ideas.   Actually I’m not too worried because I really like bicycles and I hope they know that.  Come to think of it, Jerry does too and that didn’t help him yesterday.

    On the way back home, the dogs that inspired some interval training on the way out were waiting for us again.  I watched a big old hound give John, John, and Byron fits just ahead of me while I fooled with my camera on the way out.  I stashed the camera, took a big gulp of water into my mouth and when Fido came at me, I blew it at his face.  It was a bright, sunny day and the big drops of water sparkled spectacularly.  I was impressed and Fido was freaked.  That same dog looked nervously at me from twenty feet off the road on the way back.

    At the last control, with 100K to go, we caught the fast group again and braced ourselves for dark.  From here on, there would be no services.  People like to make money around here just like they do everywhere.  It’s just that it’s not an obsession with them.  So they open their stores late, close early, and go to church on Sunday.  This meant we had to collect food and drink to last us.

    We all left the control more or less together, but ten miles later splintered into three groups for quiet rides down empty roads under an almost full moon and I thought of my rando buddies doing the SIR 400K across the country.  The moon moved back and forth across the road and glinted off the metal roof of a great big barn in a way that drew praise from all five of us.

    John, Byron, Jim, and I pulled up to the finish at 1:43 and found that Lin, Ed, and Mary had just signed their cards.  I had a real nice time and I think the Red Randonneuse did too.