What gets your heart pumpin?!

            Don’t get used to the daily blogs, but we’ve been lucky enough to have internet each day, so we may as well post something!  We have to start off by thanking the Office of Outdoor Recreation at the University of South Carolina for sponsoring Sassafras Mountain in honor of the late former University of South Carolina President Dr. Sorensen.  They have been extremely supportive of us and we love our Outdoor Recreation family at South Carolina.

This reminded me of when Dr. Sorensen’s son spoke at his memorial service.  Dr. Sorensen rode a bike around campus everyday.  He told his son he liked it because it got his heart pumpin, then he said he loved to interact with the students because it got his heart pumpin…it was all about getting his heart pumpin.  Well I tell you what, our hearts were pumpin yesterday.  When we would stop to take a breather after (or in the middle) of a big climb, we could hear our hearts beating in our ears.  It was awesome and it reminded me of his son’s speech.  Our hearts will be pumpin the rest of the trip, event when we don’t want keep goin, but we can always think back to the inspiration of Dr. Sorensen riding everday.

As far as today was concerned, it started off great.  Our friend Clay, who lives literally two miles from the summit, made us breakfast.  You can’t beat some good old bacon and eggs.  He then gave us a quick tour of the up and coming Young Life camp he was the property manager for, Carolina Point.  It’s going to be one heck of a camp. 

We then hit the road for what we expected to be an easy 50-mile day of riding…and it started off that way.  The ride down from Sassafras was far more enjoyable than the ride up, and the water was actually soothing.  Well, that was the end of the leisure ride, because we hit some major hills again.  We actually crossed the continental divide twice today.  It was pretty tough and we had to dig a bit deep to finish a couple of the hills.  Lo and behold our struggles were rewarded with an amazing decent 30 miles into the ride.  It was a beautiful 8% grade for 10 miles.  I hit 45 mph on the way day.  (All I could think about was the video where the downhill racers bike broke, scary)  Luckily we were good, nothing broke and we had a blast flying down the mountain.

Tomorrow we are taking a quasi rest day with a short 25-mile ride to the base of Clingmans Dome, where we will prepare to summit the next day.  (It appears to be as tough of a climb as Sassafras or worse, so we can’t wait!) 

Until we meet again,

Brent and Michael