eLIFELIST.com Bike Trip

Day 10 – Kentucky!

Even after a good nights sleep, in a bed, we still needed some Ibuprofen to loosen up the stiff muscles from the previous day’s climbing. We thought that the big meal from the night before would be some good fuel for the day as we planned on leaving the state of Tennessee.  After today I think we have come to a few additional conclusions. We are always going to get started later in the day than we thought we would. The terrain is ALWAYS going to be hillier than we estimate. We are always going to finish the day later than planned. And we will find someway to eat more than we possibly thought we could get in our stomachs.

Due to some routing issues, we did not encounter too many gas stations, restaurants, or really any place to grab some food around lunch time. So instead we plopped down at a backwoods railroad track and scavenged all the snacks we had in our bags and had ourselves a ‘Stand By Me’ moment at the railroad tracks throwing rocks at broken bottles over lunch.

After spending the whole day in Northeastern Tennessee and Southern Kentucky, we have also learned another valuable lesson and have a good rule to go by. People driving any truck prior to a 90’s model, a loud exhaust system you can hear from a half mile away, with super swamper tires, lots of Confederate flag stickers all over their truck generally aren’t too big of fans of cyclists. Also, everyone has a dog and I mean everyone. Fortunately, most of them are chained up or fenced in and I am a dog person too… Some of these dogs look possessed and think in their eyes our legs look like giant drumsticks.

Our last adventure of the day was dealing with a little more rain. Despite our best efforts to set a blazing pace and beat out the storm, we were accompanied by a thunderstorm for the last 10 miles of the day. After about 10 days, we already have had two days of rain, which is not looking good for our rain bet, for me at least…

-Brent

Camping in the Smokies and climbing to the top.

Video of our ride from Asheville to the Great Smokies

Day 9 July 8th of the bike trip has been officially coined "Dig Deep Day."  We knew it would be the toughest day we'd faced so far and quite possibly one of the most difficult climbs of the whole trip.  We camped out about 5 miles into the Great Smokies at the "Smokemont" campsite.  The night of July 8th was the first night we had to camp out since our first night in the Outer Banks.  The ground was hard and we didn't get a great night's sleep.  Unfortunately we didn't see any bears, (that would have made a great video).  

We started out from Smokemont with 12 miles to the top of the smokies and the North Carolina, Tennessee border.  Over that 12 miles we would be gaining a little over 2800 feet in elevation.  We left from Smokemont about 9:00am and pulled into the top about 12:30pm.  The climb and sweat was intense, we would gain about 400-500 feet of elevation or before our hearts felt like they were going to explode, rest, catch our breath and repeat.  Doing this all the way up we had about 5-6 stops.  Getting to the top was great, especially because we knew we had about 20 miles completely downhill afterwards.  The views were beautiful, the people were nice and most thought we were completely out of our minds.  

Here's a list of responses we get from people when we tell them what we're doing, most of them with wide eyes:
"You're kidding??!?"
"Oh My GOD!"
"WHAT?"
"California!?"
"You guys are crazy"
and the best one "Ya'll are gonna die."

The ride down was great, we averaged 30mph going down the other side of the mountain into Gatlinburg, TN.  We were going as fast or faster than the speed limits for cars.  

We pulled into Gatlinburg feeling good and accomplished, had some lunch at the "Smokey Mountain Brewery."  Bad news was that we had 45 miles to go to Knoxville after an insane morning.  Filled up on fries, hot pretzels, and chicken we headed out to finish the day.  We pulled into Knoxville about 6:30 to be greeted by Brent's brother Brad and his girlfriend Tracy.  Brad normally lives in Chatanooga, TN but is doing a three month residency in Athens, TN.  Brad rode Brent's bike around the parking lot for a minute or two and said "It's not that bad."  Brent got a call from Brad a couple days later saying he had gone on a 12 mile bike ride the day after he saw us and said he almost passed out and couldn't walk the next day.

We had a great time hanging out with them, we ate at "Calhouns" by the river in downtown Knoxville.  Calhoun's says they have the "Best Ribs in America" and they were definitely pretty awesome.  After we destroyed our meals we headed back to the hotel and started fading fast.  

Thanks to Brad for putting us up at the hotel and to Tracy for the meal!  It was great to see them and hang out.  

The Smokies were beautiful and the temperature was about 20 degrees cooler than it was after Gatlinburg.  It was definitely a great day to have behind us.

July 6th Day 7 –

The first rest day and massages!?!

After six pretty intense days of biking, we were extremely ready for a rest day. Not just any rest day, but a rest day in real luxury. First off, the Kopacs could not be any nicer to us. Two, their log cabin in Asheville is beautiful. Three, they fed us like Kings. And Lastly, Mary is a licensed masseuse. After she gave each of us an hour long Swedish muscle massage, we seriously considered buying ourselves a message table to attach to another trailer to pull. It may be worth it, but the only problem is that Lee and I would have to massage each other so that was the end of that idea…

Seriously, we wanted to thank the Kopacs for all of their hospitality and the help they gave us our first day back on the as we headed towards the Smokies, they were amazing.

Another exciting tidbit from our day off was being interviewed by the Channel 13 News crew. We made the 5:00 and 6:30 news as the ‘two stupid guys biking across the country’. Ok, I added the ‘stupid’part, that could have just been how I heard it. The video of the segment should be up shortly.

The rest day was just what we needed and were able to spend some quality time with the Kopacs, which is all that we asked for…

Well day #6 started with us holding our fingers crossed that our patch worked fix on Lee’s tire would hold until we could get a proper new tire. After not being able to find the correct size replacement tire for Lee’s blowout in Hickory(at 5 PM on Forth of July of course and failing to bring a replacement tire, doh) we used some scrap tire, epoxy, and a load of duck tape to hold the thing together. Our first stop was in Morganton, NC where by a stroke of luck or fate, Lee yelled out to a guy riding his bike down Main Street if he knew where there was a bike shop in the area. As it turned out, the bicyclist turned out to be someone, Chris, who was opening his own bike shop (Table Rock Cycles) in Morganton in two weeks only a block away from where we were. What are the chances? He said at first, he thought we were cops in our jerseys and riding Treks pulling his leg about opening the shop. After we explained we weren’t cops and what we were looking for he biked two blocks back to his home and picked us up one of his own new tires. Chris was extremely nice and very helpful when he didn’t have to give us the time of day when he had a lot of work to do. He showed us the inside of his new basement shop that he is remodeling and told us about his previous life as a competitive cyclist and Ironman days.

After our encounter with Chris, we made it a few blocks away to see Lee’s grandfather’s birthplace, which is no more than a few steps and open field now because of a fire from several years ago. Lee’s mom was there to snap a picture at the old homesite with Lee. In addition to the house, we also stopped at the place where Lee’s great-grandmother worked (picture).

From Morganton, we made it to Marion to stop for some lunch at (name of restaurant). While at lunch we ran into Jeremy Hayes, who had just driven up from New Orleans to bail his two brothers out of jail and was waiting for the bail bondsmen. He does not know what they did or why they were even in the state of North Carolina, but he did know that they were going to wish they were somewhere else after he got them out… Anyway, Jeremy was very excited for us, the trip, and what we were doing it for and gave us a $100 right out of his wallet. THANKS JEREMY!

With half the day gone, half the miles biked, and not even started the serious climb to Asheville yet, we still had a long day ahead of us. From the suggestion of Chris and our original route calling for it, we were going to take old Hwy 70 towards Asheville since it was much more scenic, had a lot less traffic, and allowed us to avoid I-40. This Hwy was very beautiful until we realized that a section of this Hwy is actually closed and it routed us through a fire road to get to the other side of the mountain. After a couple of miles of never ending switch backed fire roads, about a 1000 ft elevation gain, and a couple of gallons of sweat we made it back to old US 70. In addition to having to repair a tire, the longest mileage of our trip and the biggest day of climbing, we had a timeline we had to get to Asheville for, the Smashing Pumpkins concert. When we got back onto 70, it was 4 PM and we were still 25 miles from where we were staying. My friend, Matt, had contacted his parents who live in Asheville and were extremely gracious to offer us a place to stay for two days.

As we found out first hand, which they had warned us about and offered to give us a ride up, they live up a very long hill on the outside of Asheville. We decided to give it a shot and that shot almost killed us at the end of a very long day. We will not lie, we had to walk the bikes up about a quarter of a mile, but we made it and made it in time to eat a enormous wonderful meal that Roger and Mary had made for us and make it to the Pumpkins concert in time to rock out.

Tire blow out. 

Everything was going great until about 2 miles out from Hickory when I took a spill and got a tear in my front tire.  We were literally 2 miles from our hotel.  We stopped in Walmart, the only place that was open on the 4th, to look for a tire that would work.  None fit, however we did a MacGyver like patch job on the tire.  We basically cut strips from the tire we bought in Walmart and apoxied it to the inside of the tire and then duck taped another strip of tire to the outside.  We were pretty pleased with the patch job and it held up nicely the next day.  We have since bought a couple spare tires to carry at all times, we weren't expecting a torn tire this early in the trip.  

We want to be sure to give a big shout out to Mr. and Mrs. Duquette of Hickory, they are the parents of our good friend Pete from college.  They weren't able to put us up at their house, but before we could say anything they had booked a room for us at the Fairfield Inn, on them.  Quite generous and we are very grateful to them for supporting us.  Pete is getting married this August, wish we could be there Pete, best of luck to you and Karen.  

Our buddies Ramy and John Barden met us in Hickory and hung out for a bit on the night of the 4th.  It was great to see them.  They were heading to San Deigo the next morning for the wedding of another friend of ours Tim Kinnery.  The four of us had a good meal at Carrabas, mmm pasta.

We didn't get to see any fireworks on the 4th however, but we did see some a few days earlier at the bulls game.  

Next: the montrous ride to Asheville and a dude named Chris.  

Day 5 Video

Day four into Winston-Salem was great.  The ride was tough and we were both really exhausted.  Getting out of Chapel Hill lived up to it's name.  Ramy's mom made us a big breakfast before we took off.  We arrived in Winston about 4:30 and had a lot of family members come over for dinner.  My aunt Beth and uncle Steve came over with my cousin Matt who just graduated from Roanoke College.  Brent's aunt Janet and uncle Marvin also came over.  The food was great, the company was great and it felt nice to take it easy in Winston.  Although we got a call around 5:30PM that we had to be at the local TV station WXII at 6AM the next morning for an interview.  Didn't quite get as much sleep as we'd hoped but the interview in the morning was fun.  Austin Caviness interviewed us on the set with all our gear and kit on.  You can see the clip of us on the news here.