Waking up Friday morning at the
firehouse I expected a fairly uneventful yet calm and scenic ride most of the
way to Anniston, Alabama. I had about 44
miles to go on the Silver Comet trail and Chief Ladiga trail combined before I
got back onto the main roads and had to deal with traffic again. These trails are awesome by the way. It is basically the same trail but the name
switches as you cross the border between Georgia and Alabama. Together the trail is over 100 miles solely
for biking walking, or running. It was a
rails to trails project that has turned out great. 
The day before I hardly saw anybody
for the 18-mile stretch I rode to reach Cedar Town. Although I did meet one fairly interesting
guy right near the end. His name was
Steve Varnum and he had just finished in August with riding his bike at least
100 miles in all 50 states. He would
travel to each state in his motorhome but would get out and ride each time for
a couple days. We talked for a little on
trail and then he kept on heading into Cedar Town.
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| Some of the Etowah Roadies |
I didn’t expect to meet anyone like
him on the trail Friday and I was right.
They were not like Mr. Varnum but they were a group of local riders who
turned out to be very generous. The first
half of my ride I saw a couple people going one way or the other but didn’t
really stop to talk to them as I enjoyed a leisurely pace and enjoyed the
scenery without any concern for cars.
After I had made it to Alabama I was crossing about to cross a bridge
but there was a decent sized group of people hanging out there taking a break
from their ride so I slowed down as they moved out of the way. In the process of passing to them they asked
where I was going so I stopped to chat with them for a little. It turns out they were a group of people from
the Etowah Roadies club. Etowah is a
county in Alabama. They were very
interested in my story and I was actually pretty interested in their group
because they had 2 couples on tandem bikes as well as a wide range in ages for
everyone that was there. After talking
with them for a while they invited me to have lunch with them about 16 miles
down the trail in Jacksonville which come to find out is also the home of the
Gamecocks. The ride to lunch was great since
I actually got to draft off some people, which made job a lot easier. Especially riding behind the tandem bikes
since they were so much bigger.
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| Ed Raccoon Benton |
After lunch we hit the road again
and headed towards the end of the trail.
Once getting there the group all split ways as they all drove off and I
continued on to Anniston. After getting
a couple miles down the road I got a call from a guy named Ed Raccoon Benton
(Raccoon was his trail name when he hiked the entire Appalachian Trail) saying
he got my name from one of the people in the group that I had just left and
that I was welcome to stay the night with him and his wife so I reprogrammed
the GPS and off I was to my home for the night.
When I arrived at Ed’s house he
told me that he could not stay long because he was heading to an authentic
German dinner at the Elks club he was a member of. He did say that I was welcome to come though
and of course I took him up on the offer.
It was a good decision to because dinner was delicious. Afterwards it was back to home and off to bed
so I would be ready for Cheaha Mountain the next day.
In the
morning it was nice and cool. Perfect
weather for a summit day. I set off a
little bit later than I planned on but that’s about par for the course on this
trip. After the first few miles I had
made it out of town and on to more country roads, which was nice. Cheaha is not a tall mountain by any stretch
so I expected it to be a pretty straightforward climb and then be over with. While it still was not hard there was definitely
a lot more to it than I expected because you got up on the ridgeline and rode
that going up and down the whole way.
The true
summit was a little disappointing because you could not really see anything due
to the trees. But there were a ton of great
views on different parts of the mountain that made it well worth the
climb. On the way down the mountain I
had my first encounter with a true jerk on the road. In an area that had a posted recommended
speed of 35 due to the curves of the road I was going about 30 mph. I decided it would be ok to more just a
little more towards the middle of the lane and night ride the shoulder all the
way down since I was almost doing the speed limit anyways. I looked behind me and did not see anyone so
I moved over. A few seconds later I here
a car behind me gunning his engine so in an effort to be polite I was going to
move back to the side of the lane. Just
as I am about to do this though I hear gravel starting to be thrown around and
when I look over this guy is passing me on the outside of the road where there
is not even much of a shoulder. He gets
all 4 of his tires off the road, passes me, and then cuts back in front of me
and races off down the hill. I couldn’t
believe what just happened so I just moved to the side of the road and stayed
there for a while.
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| One of the awesome overlooks. Actually took this right next to a pool!!! |
The rest of
the ride went without incident and was actually very nice. O well there is always bound to be at least
one bad egg in the bunch and you Can’t worry about it too much. That makes 4 summits down and off to Mississippi
and Woodall Mountain for number 5.
- Michael
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