I left my house Sunday morning with the intent to ride the "Maine Adventure Trail" (MAT) as laid out by Jim Randall, Rick Giddish, and maybe others. I knew it was going to be a crap shoot to make it the 1,500 miles to Vermont in 5 days, but I figured I'd give it a shot.
My first day out was not without "adventure". Shortly after crossing the Virginia state line, I was riding along next to the Clinch River on, what else, Waters Edge Road. It was a fine morning, and despite getting a slightly later start than I'd hoped, I was having fun.
Then there was this...
The offending stick was firmly lodged in the chain guard/guide below the rear sprocket, but had completed dislodged the chain from it's purchase on the rear sprocket. After fiddling with it for a while, I finally extracted the stick, and then it was time to remount the chain. Even after loosening the rear sprocket to move it forward for maximum slack, the chain still seemed to be hesitant to move backwards. It seemed to be jammed up around the front sprocket. Not a big deal...right? Except that in order to lighten the load, my socket set had been jettisoned. Bad choice. I couldn't remove the cover over the front sprocket. But having no choice, I continued to fiddle with it, and it finally came loose. I guided the chain back onto the rear sprocket, tightened things down, reloaded the bike, and was on my way. As noted, I was only feet from the river and it was a nice shady spot. Not a terrible place nor a terrible outcome to have a delay.
I pushed on through the day and made it to a NFS campground at the base of Big Walker Mountain near Wytheville. It was a beautiful evening with a full moon. Alas, I had to eat my "dinner" cold. While I had replaced the pressure pump on my camp stove, the lighter and matches I remember leaving in the bag were nowhere to be found. Dang-nab-it! The temperature was cooler than I had expected, so I bundled up a bit and hit the sack after my cold, and rather unsatisfying, dinner.
Monday morning was cooler still, and the temperature displayed on my phone in Wytheville was 48. Brrr. Definitely cooler than I'd expected, and I wasn't quite prepared. (Are we starting to see a theme here?) I packed up and got on the road. Surprisingly, the campground seemed to be the least warm place I was all morning as I seemed to warm up immediately upon getting moving...a nice surprise.
First on the agenda was taking the gravel road from the south into Burke's Garden. Anyone that's been to TriSTAR or the event that used to take place in Marion knows of this place. Very nice. From the Garden, the route followed another gravel road out to the east. And once again, things went awry. When I got to the turn off, there was an open barrier with a sign proclaiming it to now be a private road that was a dead end. What the heck, Lucille? Not one to be deterred, I went about 3/4 mile on some clunky big gravel and then about a mile on bare dirt. Private or public, it sure wasn't getting any maintenance. Just past a gate off to one side, I came upon this...a ditch dug across the road about 4 feet deep and about 6 feet wide with the dug out dirt piled up on either side. These guys were serious about not wanting traffic on their "private" road. With no way around, it was time to backtrack. It wasn't a burden going out the paved road to the north and then east to Grapefield Road as they are both pleasantly curvy.
After that lengthy detour, I finally hooked back up to the route. Crossing I-77 on one of the few bridges around, I started to climb up Hogback Ridge. If I was looking for adventure, it found me. There were a number of muddy holes, and thanks to the recent dry conditions, they appeared to be much less than what they might have been. I was doing ok in going around them (I once got a bike stuck by trying to go through a mud hole, and didn't want to be in that situation being by myself), but finally found one that had only a narrow berm around one side. I edged up and got the handlebars past one close tree, and then started to roll on. That's when the saddlebag bumped the tree and over I went...into the water. It wasn't terribly deep at maybe 6" (I managed to land in the deepest part), but the wheels were higher than the top of the bike, and in the mud I couldn't get it picked up.
It was pretty obvious that no one would be coming by for, let's say a few weeks, so it was up to me to get the bike up or start walking. I didn't want to abandon the bike, so I came up with a plan. I had a pair of ratchet straps, so I stretched one from a tree to the bike and cranked it as much as I could. It probably only raised the bike a couple of inches, so I attached the other one and cranked it up. Back and forth getting the bike up a couple of inches at a time. Finally, at about 45 degrees, I was able to push it on up. Whew! The bike started right up, and I repacked everything. But looking ahead, the road didn't look any better. I was able to get through the mud hole by going straight through and backtracked back to the nearest paved road.
The good news after all of this was that I wasn't physically hurt in the least. And the bike didn't appear to have suffered any ill effects other than needing to have the front brake lever perch rotated a bit (not possible since I didn't have an appropriate socket...doh!) But my ego was bruised and my confidence had definitely taken a beating. It was ~200 miles in a direct line back to the house, so back to house I came.
I called Jim as I passed through Kingsport on the way home, and he admitted that Hogback Ridge was one of the more challenging roads on the MAT...but not the worst.
Tomorrow I head out on a different bike with a different plan. It'll be a street bike and I'll be sticking to paved roads except for nicely graded gravel if necessary. Adventure is great...I will remember this ride for the rest of my life. But it would have been better with a friend.
