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West Virginia - Wild and Wonderful
Before we logged 40 miles this morning, we were already crossing the Ohio river into West Virginia, Wild and Wonderful as the sign said.
The day was not as difficult as I had previously played up in my head. Sure there were a lot of hills, but the temperatures were not overly oppressive, the humidity was down some from what we experienced yesterday in the Hocking Hills, and we spent much of the day on 4 lane divided state routes with 12 foot shoulders. In this situation, the grades do not generally get much steeper than 5 to 6 percent. It's usually the back roads you have to worry about where the grades go as high as 15% on some of those puppies. We had some of that as well, so there was a good mix thorughout the day.
As we left Athens this morning, we got on a fantastic small county road which meandered next to a river (and through the woods) which had lots of gentle, short and twisty climing and descending grades. At about mile 22, we joined up with Route 50 which was 4 lane divided. The shoulder was junk to start with and I had 2 back to back flats about 6 miles out from the first support stop. This was a bit of a pain as I lost touch with the riding group I started the morning with. I would eventually see most of them at some time or another throughout the day.
After a bit, the shoulder improved considerably which was welcome relief to my poor tires. This was a fairly long stretch of road with lots of hill repeats at 5% to 6% grade. These types of hills were not the rollers I am used to riding in Wisconsin. My roomate Gene told me he was measuring the distance of some of these climb/descents. One of the longer ones was at about 1.5 miles. I would guess that most of these hills were in the neighborhood of 1/2 mile to 3/4 mile in length. At thes grades, these hills were not too much worry. Most of this sectoin was chanraterized by climbing at 10 to 11 mph, with descents in the 28 to 30 mph range. Average it all out and we were in the 17 to 19 mph range for most of the day.
After lunch we were treated to some real backwoods riding, mostly on a road called, get this, "Meathouse Fork Road". No disrespect to the fine people of West Virginia, but c'mon, how do you get the names of some of these streets? Some of my other favorites were Dry Fork Road, Red Lick Road, and Beech Lick Road.
We finished the day on Route 33 east with some very long climbs and lots of traffic by now. Lots of logging trucks and garbage trucks going past us. One of the final climbs of the day was nearly 2 miles long which never seemed to end. As with most good climbs, come great views and fantastic descents which is what we were treated to as we entered Elkins. A great end to a great day. The scenery in this part of the country is just superb.
Oh yes, I nearly forgot, I completed about 7 "bonus miles" again today as I was paying too close attention to my cue sheet to pick up on the updated pavement markings telling us that our lunch destination had been moved because of road construction and a bridge out. I eventually found out for myself that the bridge was indeed out and I had to backtrack to get to lunch. After two miscues on our St. Louis day, I may very well be the leading milage guy on this 2010 edition of the Elite Tour! Not to worry, Susan assures me that PAC Tour does not assess any excess milage fees, so riders are free to accumulate as many as they like!
Here are some of the pics I shot today:
Entering West Virginia
Barge on the Ohio River
Slow upills, fast downhills!
Scenic vistas
My favorite road today: quiet and winding Meathouse Fork Road.
Remember, your meathouse fork always goes on the right! Salad fork on the left.
John finishing up the last big climb of the day
and still looking strong.
Riding down into Elkins.
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