6-18

I got to go for a ride with Dawn from Liberty Bikes.   She wanted to pre-ride the ORAMM course  minus the Kitsuma section.  I was worn out from the past week of big rides but was game since she wanted to go slow and steady. 

 The skies were blue with some cloud cover at the beginning of the ride.  We rode up Star Gap to Lower Heartbreak, wound around Jarrets Creek Rd, and onto Curtis Creek Rd.  Once on CC we started seeing other pre-riders,  Kip &co, Janna who I helped with a flat 4 yrs ago at the Assault on Mt Mitchell, Mark and Joel who I have race with quite a bit.  All friends who I have met at one race or another.  And here we were, in the woods, riding around, fun stuff.

fast

 After bombing down the other side of the Parkway, stopping for ice cream and grinding back up we hit the parkway and then Heartbreak.  At this point we started hearing thunder, and the skies got cloudy.

The above picture was take about 2 minutes before the storm overtook us and had us scampering down the mountain for our lives.  40-50 mph gusts blowing rain sideways, obscurring vision,  it was insane.  The trail is a corridor of stunted trees and shrubs which protected us from the majority of the madness, but when a gap opened up we were pelted .  It was amazing.

I remember being caught in a storm like this when I was 14 yrs old.  I was in a windsurf race in Bonaire, NA.  The storm blew up and I made my way to Klein Bonaire, a little neighboring island, where I crawled under the sail to wait out the storm.  Good memories!

We made it back to the cars wet but safe.  Fun stuff.