Peach Peloton started on November 6, but this past Saturday was my first one for the year. I did the Stuckey’s Bird Dog 100 race on November 6, the Journey Ride for Autism on November 13, and the Sasquatch Ride on November 20-21. It was great to be back with my Peach Peloton peeps! And this time we did a dirt edition – very fun!
Last year Robert led a Peach Peloton on mostly this same route, which includes some dirt roads near Culloden and Musella that I had never ridden. Last year I missed the ride because I had a brevet. I’m so glad I got to experience these roads this year.
The 10 of us were a bigger group than most of us
expected. It was very cold at the start,
but we knew it would get more comfortable later on.
It’s a lot harder to draft on dirt roads, and so I really
had to work to keep up with the guys. On
the dirt sections, I pretended I was racing in the Bird Dog 100 again. The paved sections gave me some respite as I
got to draft again.
I laughed to myself because about the only time I got to look at the scenery before the store stop was when I took a nature break. Here’s a pretty view from my first one:
At my second nature break spot I saw some raccoon
tracks. I love their handprints:
The store stop was at about mile 47, more than halfway into our 71-mile ride. The guys dropped me about two miles before the store stop. You’d think it wouldn’t bother me after all these years, but I was kind of irked at their testosterone-driven egos. I rolled up while most of them were inside. I had enough water probably to get me through the rest of the ride, and so I stopped only long enough to open a Clif Bar.
Continuing the next few miles by myself, I was still kind of mad. That evaporated when I got to an unusual dirt road through some peach orchards. Robert had mentioned some peach orchards, but I figured they would be the usual type, visible from the road. This was so different. Although it was a named road, it was really a farm road. In some places it wasn’t even much of a road, just some ditches. It was adventurous, almost magical.
 |
| Peach season is still a ways away. |
These peach trees belong to Dickey Farms in Musella, the iconic destination for peach ice cream.
Now in a better frame of mind, I continued riding. I reminded myself that I know the guys are
always going to ride hard, and it’s great training. I played a game with myself, trying to make
it all the way back before the guys caught me.
I made it by two minutes.
When I’m riding hard, often I get a snippet of song stuck in
my head. I don’t choose it; it just
happens. This time it was from REM and
was particularly appropriate:
We can reach our destination
But we’re still a ways away, but it’s still a ways away
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