RHEARSALS TWO

The Return Trip

You’ve just pulled into the Bulloch House. Lunch awaits. The food is buffet style, country cookin’, and mouth watering, lip smacking gooood. You might want to save room for desert. It’s exceptional. You’ll probably eat about 1,500 calories, but if you’ve read some of my earlier posts, you will realize you can afford to.

After lunch we’ll sit for just a bit. Time to let lunch settle, re-apply sunscreen, get psyched for the second part of the ride. You may think that you couldn’t possibly get on a bike know. It feels so good to be sitting, and full of good food, nice and relaxed.

You will get on your bike knowing that the pace will be controlled and relatively low effort for the first hour after lunch. It’s nice to discover that it’s mostly down hill for the first five miles. After a good pleasant descent, we cross a small concrete bridge, and we begin the trip north on GA-85 alt in earnest. You will notice something. There appear to be the huge hills ahead of you. Do not be dismayed. You have long sight lines here. These are really just long “rollers,” but you can see the whole thing, foreshortened by the distance they look bigger and meaner than they are.

As you begin to get your “bike legs” back, and find that lunch is settling very nicely, you notice that the rollers aren’t all that bad either. The pace is on the low side of moderate, quite pleasant actually. And so passes the first 17 miles after lunch.

We will take a brief break in Gay, GA, fill bottles, attend to the “necessaries,” and then get moving again.

The first part of the leg leaving Gay is mostly down hill. We are descending into the Flint River Valley. You will cross the Flint on a large concrete bridge right at the famous “flat shoals.” If you look to your right you will see some of the rocks above the water. There are historic photographs of folks washing their Model T Fords on those rocks.

After crossing the bridge, you begin a long step climb up out of the river valley. Be patient, it will take the time it takes. Soon enough you will turn onto GA-18 and approach Concord.

As we enter the town of Concord you will get a brief glimpse of some of the few still standing anti-bellum structures in this part of the state. Then we turn onto College street and leave town. You are almost immediately back in rural Georgia again. It’s now 13 miles of mostly rural, low traffic, scenic roads to the next break point.

You arrive at the store in Digby, ready to get off the bike. This will be the last planned, on course stop. You are now about 20 miles from the end of the ride. Stretch, get a snack, fill bottles, sit for a few minutes. Gather yourself for the last leg, it’s not too tough from here.

From Digby, you will be riding on gentle low rollers into Brooks, Georgia, and then a few dips and rises to get you back to Peachtree City. At the edge of town we will change our riding style a bit. When we come to the four lane part of the Peachtree Parkway, we will form up in a column of twos and take the left lane. We will ride in this formation, all the way up the south end of the Parkway, parading into the finish in fine style.

Bravo!