This was my 5th year attending the Cycle North Carolina Spring Ride. 2013’s ride put Ronan, Ethan, and I back in Edenton, NC, the scene of the craziest weather we’ve seen on one of these rides.
I finally got a bike rack installed on the roof of my little car so I could get myself to the ride. I enjoy a road trip as much as the next guy but I was really looking forward to a couple of quiet hours with a podcast or two for the drive. Driving myself also let me set my own schedule for riding or running errands (or hiding from historically scary weather).
Early Spring brings crazy weather anyway but we seem to pull especially odd stuff when we camp for this ride. We finished pitching the tents just as the sleet started falling. Sleet that eventually gave way to rain but not the 2″ they were calling for. It was still freezing cold. We may have overindulged in some bourbons to celebrate successful tent pitching. Maybe.
One of the things we riders are supposed to do is spend some money in the host town (meals at restaurants, shop at the shops, local hardware store for junk you need, stuff like that). Edenton happens to have a small wine and beer shop with a decent little craft beer selection. The three of us are hiding from the cold and checking out the beers when we see a bottle of Brooklyn Brewery’s Black Ops on the shelf. Some friendly chatter with the shop owner and we learned he had the one bottle on the shelf and 2 more hiding in the back of a cooler. Being good beer nerds we bought them on the spot and asked him to keep them cold until that evening. We rode bikes, showered, ate food, collected our bottles and sat enjoyed a couple of rounds of delicious, rare beer.
Friday’s and Saturday’s rides were cold and windy and each night’s sleep (in a small tent on a camping mat) was getting progressively worse. On Sunday the warm weather showed up and we said goodbye to the windswept farm roads to spend the morning pedaling through tree-lined back roads and neighborhoods. When we opted for the 37-mile route it included a sound crossing on a bridge. The view was incredible and I wanted a picture but didn’t want to stop and take one since it was a 2-lane 55MPH zone. So I pulled an Adam and took off a glove, reached back and took my camera out of my pocket, snapped a handful of photos, put the camera back into it’s bag in my pocket, all at 17MPH. Getting the glove back on was the hardest part.
We stopped after crossing back over to get a quick picture because it was going to be tough to describe. The bridge went out low over the water and then had a high-ish hump in the middle of the 3 1/2 mile crossing. It was far, for sure and a terrific end to the weekend of bikes.