This past weekend was the weekend for randonneurs to join a team and ride a Fléche, but I was in church on Saturday night, so there was no fléche for me.  I did spend three nights and two days near Asheville, North Carolina, though, and I was able to get out for eighty some miles of perfect mountain riding on Friday.

    Mountains always beckon bicycle riders and these Blue Ridge and Smokey Mountains have beckoned me since before we moved to this beautiful state.  I made a brief foray into the mountains of South Carolina, while on the Caesar’s Head Brevet a couple of weeks ago, and that only whet my appetite for more miles in these valleys and through these gaps.  

    Gaps?  What are gaps?  What some people, in some mountain areas, call passes, are called gaps in this part of the world.  I like both terms, but I think that in these steeper and shorter mountains, gaps sounds right.  Rather than seeking a pass over the mountains, here we look for a gap through them.

    Before our Revolutionary War, bicycle riding was forbidden beyond the eastern slope of the Appalachians.  In fact, King George determined that European settlers should keep out of these mountains altogether.  He reserved the game, streams, valleys, and gaps for the Cherokees.  But after the Revolutionary War, and the Indian Wars, and after treaties between the Cherokees and the new Americans, the mountains were opened to settlers and by 1784 the State of North Carolina began granting homestead rights in the area where modern day Asheville now thrives.  Of course, since bicycles were still a hundred years from being invented, and mountain bikes were even further in the future than that, there was precious little bicycle riding going on in those bygone days.

    I thought I would make up for lost time.

    It was dark and 25° when I woke at seven so I didn’t make my early departure, but it warmed up as soon as the sun climbed over the peaks and I finally left.  I hadn’t ridden very far before my cold hands and feet began to warm, but I made the longish, out of the saddle climb up Maney Branch Road with my jacket still on and I wore it on the fast, steep, switch backed descent.  One thing I am already learning about mountain rides around here is that the climbs and descents can be very steep.  Later in the day, I came to a descent that was so steep I wanted to take a picture of it, but I was afraid to stop without a rope and someone to belay me.  It was scary, roller coaster steep.  The people who ride here all the time, and there are some, must have legs and nerves of steel.  As it was, I must be still have some climbing left in my legs from last summer because I enjoyed the first gap and the two that came later.

    Maney Branch Road became Paint Fork Road and five and a half miles later I came to NC 197.  Now you might think that a road called Highway 197 might be a bummer of a road -- I wasn’t looking forward to it when I saw it on the cue sheet, but it wasn’t.  It was terrific.  In fact, I was as nice a road as I think I have ever ridden.  After five miles of very quiet two lane, NC 197 became a hard packed unpaved road.  I wouldn’t call it gravel and I wouldn’t call it dirt.  Since the cue sheet calls it hard packed unpaved road, I’ll go with that.  

    NC 197 rose carefully up and up, but it was a mellow rise through the woods and across babbling streams.  I knew I was gaining altitude when every once in a while I would come around a curve and see the road I’d ridden on far below me through the still bare trees.  I found some snow on the sides of the road near the top and there were little icicles  hanging from rocks and tree roots along the intermittent road cuts.  The few cars and one truck I passed acted as if this was a one lane, one way road going in their direction.  I could hear them coming and was able to move over to the right, but I have to imagine that there must be some head-ons on this road.  The one truck took the whole road and I rode off into the leaves along the side to let it go by.

    Four and a half miles later, the pavement restarted and so did the descent.  It was not nearly as steep as the first drop of the day and the pavement was in fine shape.  This was pretty much a sixteen mile descent and, for a few miles, I have to think that someone has designed a perfect road for bicycles.

    The road, which was just fine to begin with, dropped down into a broad valley and it just switched back and forth and back and forth.  There were trees, but they weren’t thick.  And there was grass between the trees that looked as if someone mowed it; like a long park.  I looked down this green valley and saw the grey road switch back and forth through the green, grassy, woodlot and I might have cried it was so perfect.  And it just went on and on like that. Switch back after switch back.  It seemed there were more than needed as if they were added just for fun.  In some of the switch backs, cars had cut it too tight and put gravel out on the pavement and I was glad I had my 28c Paselas when I hit a couple of baby fist sized rocks where the gravel was too thick to pick a line through it, but there was very little of that.  

    It was while coming down from this gap that I decided I will check my brake cables before I come up into these mountains again, but everything was working perfectly on this day and the Yellow Roadie was acing the line in every turn.

    At Pensacola, I made a brief stop to take the picture at the top of the blog.  A little sign on the pump said, Gas 19 1/2, S. tax 4¢, F. tax 1 1/2, Total 25¢.  Even though the price was right, I didn’t need any gas, but I went inside the grocery store to check it out.  There were no groceries!  Half of the store was small engine parts and the other half was upholstery supplies.  The lady inside told me that she does upholstery and her husband fixes small engines.  She apologized for not having any groceries, but offered me some water.  I told her I was fine and that I’d really just come in to say “Hi” since I’d taken the picture out front.  She wished me a good ride and I left.  Except for some photo ops, that was my only stop.

    Sometime later, I rolled through the town square of Barnsville.  Asheville is really way to built up for me and some cyclists I spoke with there told me it’s really a ten mile ride out of town before the roads become fun, but Barnsville still looked pretty nice.  As I left town, I came onto some of the strip development that is so ugly, and later I found out that there is some big development planned for the town, but the town square is still very nice.

    As pretty as the mountains and seashores are, I have to say that as we move there, they lose what first attracted us.  I think it is kinder of me to visit the mountains and the sea shore while living in less spectacular country.  That’s not to say that Randolph County isn’t beautiful country, it is, but I think it can stand us better than the mountains can.

    Pretty quickly after Barnsville, I got off one of the two busy roads of the ride and got back into pretty, old country.  Here I was in more developed land with steep, old farms and pasture land on both sides of the road.  There were still lots of streams and trees, but people have been living in these valleys for a long time.  I passed along on Prices Creek Road, and rode along Walker Branch  and Paint Fork Roads,  I crossed Jupiter Road and headed toward the town of Mars Hill and turned down Flat Creek School Road.  You have to be careful there because you pass Flat Creek Church Road just a little before you come to Flat Creek School Road.  For someone like me, who rides without a computer, that is a navigational mistake waiting to happen.

    When I came to the French Broad River, I knew I was nearly back to the motor court.  I wondered if I could ride a little longer, but I promised Nina I would be back early because we had plans for the evening and I had to shower and shave before we went down into Asheville, so I kept on track.  

    Just before I found the river, I came upon an extremely obnoxious dog.  It came at me snarling and slathering and kept getting in front of me and trying to get my feet so I couldn’t get a sprint going to drop him.  I told him he had done well and that I was impressed and that he’d driven me far from his yard, but he kept after me.  Finally I stopped because I thought he was building courage for an attack on my foot.  That’s when I saw his master coming up the road, huffing an puffing and begging the dog to please stop.  I yelled to her that her dog was going to get hit out on the road one day and just then a UPS truck came over the hill, but he stopped in time.  The dog got distracted by the truck and I lit out.  I’m sure my departure was a relief to the relief of the poor woman pleading with her dog.

    North Carolina has suffered a drought for a while, but the French Broad River was running full and that’s good.  I think that a lot of the western part of the state, and even as far east as our home, is coming out of the drought and will soon recover if the rains are good this year.  I hope so, because this is just a beautiful state and a wonderful place to ride bicycles.