- Tim's rear wheel. I saw a lot of it!
- Gary in his tri jersey, no matter what the temperature was!
- Brian who was a 17-year-old high school senior traveling with his family. Brian's dad was riding a tandem with Brian's younger siblings. For the first three days, Brian's 7 -year-old sister was on the back of the tandem and for the final four days, his 8-year-old brother was on the back. The night in Concord, both of them were a part of the indoor camping sleepover. I cannot imagine doing those climbs on a tandem -- especially with virtually no help from the rear.
- The soap opera in the indoor camping area and the comment afterward. "I'm with my new friends. Dudes. They're safer."
- Les saying that there was a cock roach sighting at Laurel Hill. Fortunately, he told me this after we were already in White Lake. In retrospect, I suspect termites. The floor at the front of the gym was kind of sketchy.
- The look on peoples' faces when they realized that they could have whatever they wanted in the Wingate University cafeteria.
- Lake James is really beautiful and a lot larger than I thought it was.
- The Reed Gold Mine rest stop where there was someone with a nugget of gold. The first memory is that they said that in it's heyday the Reed Gold Mine was worth more that Wall Street. Someone said that it was true again! The second memory is a few rest stops later someone -- Jon or Tim -- said we could have taken the guy with the gold nugget, what would he have said, someone in tight black shorts with a really colorful top who was on a bike robbed him?
Several people have asked me what a typical day for me was on Cycle North Carolina.
5:55 am - Alarm goes off, beat the 6 am crowd to the rest room. Put on sports bra, brush hair, wash face.
6:00 lights on
6:00 Pack sleeping bag and sleeping pad.
6:00 - 6:45 - breakfast
6:45-7:15 - change into riding gear, pack sleeping gear and other items, bring bags to luggage truck
7:15-7:30 - pump tires, head to designated meeting place
7:45 - 12:30 ride bike
12:30-1:30 - locate bags, save a space for sleeping, shower and change
1:30-4:00 - find food, explore the town, talk to the area representatives, talk to my friends
4:00 - Doug usually showed up from his hotel about then. We would talk, see anything interesting
5:00 - Dinner
6:00 - 7:30 explore the town, hang out with Doug and other cyclists
7:30-9:00 social time
9:00-10:00 head back to the gym if not already there, hang out and talk. A big sleepover
10:00 lights out
If I do CNC again
- Buy coffee by the day instead of getting a mug for the week
- No Bubba towels - use camp towels to dry off and bring one regular towel for modesty
- Consider bringing a power strip to ease recharging congestion
- Less/almost no first aid stuff. Mostly bring band aids, Benadryl, etc.
- Packing bike gear in individual bags, a one gallon bag per day, was a good idea!
- Consider bringing instant oatmeal, bowl and spoon as a backup breakfast. I'm glad that I had the food plan though.
- Set up a core group to ride with before signing up. The group that I was with was great but I got lucky this year. Next time, do some more coordination up front.
- Bring every charger known to man. I had car chargers and wall chargers for everything and I was happy about that
- The iPod with marshmallow earbuds was great for white noise. I used the iPod and an audiobook from LibriVox if I needed to block out camp noise to sleep.
- Beware of the October sun -- I got a bit more sun than I expected and I should have use more sun screen
- 480.76 miles
- 14,930 feet of climbing
- 24 hours 17 minutes of ride time
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