Peaches & Lakes 200K Permanent

Expect adventure, indeed!  Yesterday five of us – Daniel, Ian, Neil, Robert (Newcomer), and I – embarked on this recently created permanent route.  It’s a ride we won’t soon forget.

With RAAM taking up a good portion of this month, I was glad to be able to keep up my R-12 goal.  I was even gladder when several of my rando buddies said they would like to join me on this permanent.  Daniel, Ian, and Robert are frequent riding companions of mine, but it was a real treat when Neil said he would like to come along.  Although Neil cautioned me up front that he would be slower than the rest of us, it was so great simply to see him back on the bike.  He’s had several broken bones in the past year and has fought back courageously.  That would be quite a feat for anyone, but Neil is about 70 years old!

June is the perfect time to do the Peaches & Lakes 200K permanent because it’s during peak peach season.  The first control after the start was at Dickey Farms in Musella.  They have peaches, peach products (most importantly, peach ice cream!), and other fresh produce.  Daniel created the Peaches & Lakes route.  Originally, he wanted to run the course in the opposite direction, making the peach ice cream stop the last one of the day, but Dickey Farms isn’t open late enough in the day to make that work.  Fortunately, they open at 8:00 A.M. on Sunday morning.  We arrived around 8:30 after our 7:00 ride start in Thomaston.

A lot of my Macon cycling friends have talked for years about how they ride to Musella for peach ice cream, but this was my first chance to do so.  When we arrived yesterday, the soft-serve peach ice cream wasn’t quite ready.  They asked if we’d like frozen peach ice cream instead, which suited us fine.  We sat in rocking chairs, enjoying the deliciousness of a beautiful, not-quite-summer morning:

After a few minutes, they told us the soft-serve was ready and asked if we’d like to top off our ice cream.  Yes, please!  The soft-serve was even peachier tasting than the frozen ice cream.  The guys and I had a brief discussion (a la Alton Brown on Good Eats) about the scientific principles that made this so.

Before we left, I had to make good on my life rule of never passing up a photo opp where you stick your face in something:

I had Daniel take the picture.  Last month during the Jimmy Carter 300K permanent, Robert had proven himself to be a less-than-optimal photographer at the control in Andersonville.  I kidded Robert about the photo he took of me then:

Robert, the concept is to take the photo straight on, as if the person actually is the object in the photo opp.  In Robert’s defense, when he arrived in Andersonville last month, he was pretty worn out.  I don’t think he knew up from down at that point.

Within a mile after leaving Dickey Farms, Ian’s rear derailleur cable broke.  A lot of randonneurs are MacGyver-like, carrying all kinds of tools and pieces of equipment to address potential mechanicals.  Daniel usually has a spare cable but didn’t have one yesterday.  Ian could have limped along for the rest of the ride with only the two gears afforded him by his front derailleur, but fixing the broken cable was much more preferable.  We were entering some of my regular riding territory, where many of my cycling friends live, and I tried to think of ones close to our route.  I called one friend, who didn’t answer.  Daniel commented that it was about church time.  Therefore, I tried to think of cycling friends who are heathens.  Ha ha!

Just then two angels rode up on their bicycles, my cycling friends John Eddlemon and Dan Groselle.  They were on their way to get some peach ice cream.  When we explained Ian’s predicament, they offered to take us to a friend’s house only a mile or so up the road.  Their friend is a mechanic who works on competition jet skis and motocross bikes.  They said he can fix anything.  Sure enough, he was able to get Ian going.  He repurposed a motocross brake cable, grinding down one end to make it fit into the derailleur cable housing.  How ingenious is that?

We were thankful to be back on our way.  I always love riding on new roads, but it was also fun to ride on so many familiar roads on this permanent.  They included parts of my Tuesday night group ride, my winter group training rides, and my bicycle commuting route.

Everything was going along swimmingly until we reached Juliette, where a train was blocking the railroad crossing.  Reportedly, it had been there for several hours.  There was no easy way around it; we would have had to ride many miles out of the way in either direction.  We came up with a simpler solution.  We crawled under one of the train cars with our bicycles!  We really weren’t supposed to do that, but we didn’t want to be delayed any longer than possible.  (Like brevets, permanents have a time limit.)  I’m just glad that the railcar right at the crossing had a relatively high clearance.

Neil had been behind us for almost the entire ride, and we were concerned about his ability to crawl under the train when he got there.  We tried to call and text him but didn’t get an answer.  Juliette was a control anyway, and so we hoped Neil would get to the railroad tracks while the rest of us were eating lunch.

We had thought we might eat at the famous Whistle Stop Café (from the movie Fried Green Tomatoes), but there’s always a wait.  I was mildly disappointed not to get any fried green tomatoes, but that made me anticipate even more the Green Tomato Casserole that I planned to cook that evening.  Green tomatoes – they’re not just for frying!  (See recipe below.)

Instead, we went to another restaurant, Romeo’s in Juliette:

We had some tasty Paninis and quite a few pitchers of water.

As we were ready to leave Juliette, we saw Neil on the other side of the stopped train.  He said he would have been able to crawl under, but by that time, a railroad official and a sheriff’s deputy were keeping people from going under the train.  I called my sweet husband Robert, who graciously came down from Monticello (not too far away) to portage Neil around.  Wouldn’t you know it – when Robert and Neil got back to the other side of the railroad tracks after driving way around, the train had moved!  By the way, Daniel (permanent owner and coordinator with RUSA for this route) gave Neil a time allowance for the train delay since this was totally beyond his control.

The afternoon was now quite warm – the warmest day we’ve had so far this year.  We all were drinking lots of fluids as we continued our ride.  The next control was a convenience store at High Falls Lake.  I got some Gatorade and was amused by their current sales promotion:

Yeah, I need this.

Daniel is prone to cramping, and the heat exacerbated it.  He had salt sideburns, and you could even see a light coating of salt on his jersey!  He loads up with electrolytes, pickles, mustard, V-8, and anything else with a high sodium content, but they don’t completely eliminate his cramps.  He’s quite a trooper.

My front shifter went out about 90 miles into the ride.  Fortunately, I was able to keep up with the others just fine even with only my small front chain ring.  (I was grateful every time we came to a climb!)  I have Di2 (electronic) shifters.  Ian ribbed me about my newfangled technology because he’s much more old-school when it comes to bicycle parts.  He said that he had been teetering on the brink of switching to Di2, but no way would he do so now.  Particularly since I just had a thorough bicycle tune-up to prepare for RAAM, I assured him that it was simply my carelessness in forgetting to charge my shifter battery.  This did, in fact, turn out to be the case.  Shimano recommends charging its Di2 shifters about every two months, but I don’t always remember that I’ve been riding way more miles than the average cyclist.  I’m reminded of my husband teasing me some years ago, “You know better than to take what you would do and extrapolate it to the normal population.”

This 200K took me longer to do than any previously, but that’s because we spent more time than usual at the controls.  Daniel had said that this is a ride to be savored, and that we did.  When we were actually riding, we rode fairly fast (ride time = 7:26 hours, average speed = 17.5 mph).  Even with the extra bits of excitement, it was still a peachy ride.

Green Tomato Casserole

6 green tomatoes, sliced ¼ to 1/3 inch thick

Salt and pepper

8 oz. sharp cheddar cheese, grated

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Spray a 9” x 13” baking dish with cooking spray.  Arrange half of tomato slices in a single layer in in the dish.  Sprinkle with salt and pepper.  Top with half the cheese.  Repeat layers.  Bake, covered, for 45 minutes.  Uncover and bake an additional 15 minutes, until the liquid reduces to a sauce and the cheese is lightly browned.

Yield: 8 servings

I had only 4 tomatoes, and so I made a smaller casserole.

Here’s a bonus recipe!  You know how you get really hungry the day after a long ride?  My cycling friend Chad Davies says that the critter is after you.  This is a good way to keep the critter away.

Rando Candy

Mix up some dry roasted peanuts, raisins, and chocolate chips in a Ziploc bag.  Place in your jersey pocket for a long ride.  You can eat some along the way, but make sure not to eat all of it.  The chocolate chips will melt and make a big gooey mess:

After the ride, let the mixture cool to room temperature.  The next day, break it into chunks and eat it like candy.

The critter