Training Log: CleverSky

Long drive home (from Harrisonburg VA)...

It's interesting when you expect something to exceed your expectations, and yet it does...

(And that's but a pale reminder that doesn't come close to capturing what we saw.)

After a long drive, Stephen and I have arrived in the path of totality. Nothing left to do but cross our fingers for clear skies tomorrow.

Based on some exploratory observations, I'll theorize that there is not a single Moon Pie left for sale in the state of Tennessee. Sun Chips are also pretty hard to come by.

Walking down to the repair place to pick up my car.

Hah! AP thought this was orienteering. (Maybe because I punched a couple of splits?) I think the first two splits were at stone walls, and I thought the third was at a trail junction, but I don't see one on the map.

Willard Brook SE, In The Dark. I had noticed that OSM showed some trails in this area that looked interesting, so I decided to check some out. Did I do this on foot, in daylight? What fun would that be? Sometime in the past year, on the recommendation of 'Bent, I bought myself a fancy-pants bike headlight, but until tonight I'd never gotten around to using it. Having a light on the handlebars is good, but the one on my helmet was more useful. The one on the helmet wasn't charged up very much, though, so by halfway around it had become pretty useless.

The trail started out pretty genteel, but got a little more challenging partway around. With a bit of practice I think it would be almost entirely rideable, save for a few obstacles that I'm probably not interested in trying to jump over. Two wipeouts, the first at an unexpected turn on a steep downhill just before Old City Road, and the other at an intersection just before the end, when I hesitated before deciding which way to go, and tried to do a too-tight 270-degree turn. Going pretty slowly in both cases, no harm done. Paradoxically, the bike came back considerably cleaner than when I started.

Looking at the GPS track, I was totally not on the trail that I had in mind to do, I was planning on the one that runs near the road, but didn't find that turnoff. And the map shows a trail juntion at the sharp turn after going SW from split #2, but I didn't see that, either.

The next question is, how much faster can I do this on foot?

C • punched a couple of splits? 2