A Rainy Prelude to a Rainy Ride

I wasn’t sure I’d do a blog this year; after all, we’ve done this trail before (see blogs at right).  And we’re only doing half our normal trip, covering just the GAP portion, ending in Cumberland.  But, this one will be very different than any of our past trips.  It’s going to be mostly in the rain, thanks to the remnants of Tropical Depression Gordon.  We have good rain gear and got to use it some last year in France a couple times.  Rain isn’t terrible, but knowing the first few days of a tour will undoubtedly be wet is a bit daunting.

So, the name of the blog this year is not about the weather. It’s more about our complete lack of training time this summer.  I checked our logs, and we have about 1/3 the miles we had in past summers.  We’ve only had rides over 30 miles twice since May.  Given that, this year’s trip is designed to keep our daily distances in that range.  We’ll only be on the trail for 5 days and the first 3 days of a tour are the hardest, especially when you haven’t trained.  By my math, that equals a lot of Aleve.

We picked up our bikes from the shop for their tune-ups yesterday afternoon, packed last night and drove through rain the whole way to Pittsburgh today.  We discovered that something isn’t working right with my new-ish Thule bike rack bars. The front clamps keep loosing up on my car’s load bars.  After the 3rd stop in the rain to tighten one or the other up, we threw my bike in the back of the car about an hour out of Pittsburgh.  We need to get that issue figure out.

Despite the lack of training and the nasty weather forecast, we’re looking forward to getting out on a trail again.  It really is my happy place.  I’ve often visualized one of our rides while meditating.  So, follow along as we slog up the Great Allegheny Passage in the rain.  I can’t guarantee a lot of spectacular photos, but there should be some stories to tell.

Just getting started packing the night before

Done!