Ride Lugged

Greensvalley road lies 9 miles from my house. You climb roughly 1000 ft in less than 2 miles, on a dirt road, to get to it. Greensvalley Rd starts easy enough, paved and everything. According to google maps, which is next to worthless, it meanders through a valley and slowly climbs up a ridgeline, dumping out on a perpendicular road. I forgot my camera on this ride, which means everything that follows will have to be taken verbatum. I’ll ride it again, someday, when I exchange my leg muscles for hydraulic super legs. Greensvalley Rd, unbeknownst to me, actually quickly goes from nice pavement to a nice dirt road. Then comes the sign, about 2 miles into the dirt: no winter maintenance. In PA that means, no maintenance, ever, in fact, we arnt sure why we bothered to build this godforsaken road in the first place. Ok so, rutted, really bumpy dirt road. No problem. I have 1.5 inch tires, its cool. So unmaintained roads automatically mean state forest. No houses around. I see two wild turkeys, huge, gobbling as the run in the opposite direction of my clattering bike. I proceed at speed down a huge hill, 35mph for at least 5 minutes, on nasty dirt. I know from experience that too much braking blows tubes.

Rounding a sharp bend, I see a sign: bridge out. In PA, they dont tell you pertinent info until it is too late. I had spent a lot of time going down, and then they tell me this. Ok no worries. Maybe it just has some debris, I can just walk across it anyway. No. I get to the bridge. There was a bridge once. About 90 years ago. Now there are two dirt mounds. So I ford the stream, which isnt too deep, but its a mtn stream, and so its cold, and too rocky to ride across.

The road mysteriously dissolved into a super nasty fire road, ala the fireroads out at the shed. A 1200 foot climb insued, that would have super sucked, but we dont have leaves on our trees yet, so the views were out of this world.

After literally 45 minutes of climbing in my granny gear, I came out on a nice dirt road, turn right. Into a massive headwind. The kind of headwind that is strong enough to require concerted pedaling whilst going down hill. This kept up for the next 15 miles. Then it started to rain. A cold driving rain. I rode up the hill towards my house, only to see Mel coming out with the rescue wagon, as I was 1.5 hours overdue for some reason.

What a great ride. Who’s up for it?