Moss rock lights

Church class and regular loop on a Sunday

Dog park with K

BBG tasks

Samford Santa run

Somehow I managed to find 144 miles of roads I hadn't ridden in Alabama (see wandrer dot earth for more info). They were awesome ... except for the dogs ... within a couple miles of crossing the border at Cloudland, I was riding a rural road and saw a family gathered around a fire enjoying the cold morning air outside. I said, "how are y'all", and they said "great", and then a herd of dogs (about five from their house) came at full speed, as I accelerated and said "no" I made it to the next house where maybe another five dogs came out. There must not have been any rivalry because they were unified in surrounding me and barking. This was all uphill so it was all slow motion, but none of them came in to bite me as close as several of them got while I continually stared, pointed, and said "no". After a minute or so, I was out of range of both houses (even on a hill) and they just abruptly stopped barking and turned around. First serious dog chase of the ENTIRE ride and wouldn't you know it's in Alabama. They always talk about the "dogs of New Mexico" and the "dogs of Kentucky" in some of the more popular cross country routes ... try riding anywhere in Alabama or Mississippi.

That being said, this was a great ride although it put me on immediate alert for all the new backcountry roads I'd be riding. I did get chased by many more dogs but none as seriously threatening as that first encounter with a pack. As somewhat of a romantic, one of the things that helps me through the final 100 miles of a ride back home is the comfort/repetitiveness of riding roads I've ridden many hundreds of times. Those last miles almost don't even "count" in my mind so sometimes when I'm doing calculations of how many miles to go, I only calculate the distance to places I know very well. Because summit fever will get me the rest of the way there.  But this ride was especially challenging because I was on new roads until about 30 miles to go even though I was in very familiar areas ... Little River, Boaz, Cleveland, Locust Fork, Morris ... and yet I was on roads in the dark I didn't know at all. That made for an especially tough ride. So at 60 miles shorter and several thousand feet less climbing, this ride was significantly harder than the ride the day before ... oh and also "the ride from the day before" contributed to how hard this was.

The handup pants / button-down shirt held up until the end. Saddle sores kept at bay with vitamin a/d ointment and even though temps got into the 70s i could just unbutton the shirt to ventilate. Also, the challenge was stuffing all my winter gear (arm warmers, two vests, long finger gloves, ear warmers) into my very small camelbak backpack ... along with all my cables/plugs/battery packs for charging. The blue downtube bag (it's technically a handlebar bag but wouldn't fit b/c of my light) worked wonderfully as a place i could put food and retrieve without stopping.

Funniest, best thing about the handup pants was the back pockets. I could stuff trash in my back pockets rather than having to re-open something ... normally i put trash in my jersey pockets but the button down shirt doesn't have jersey pockets ... the pants back pockets were perfect replacement ... lol.

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Brian Toone

Home from Gatlinburg day 2

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Moss rock lights

Church class and regular loop on a Sunday

Dog park with K

BBG tasks

Samford Santa run

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