I’ve always had a fascination with high places. As a child I climbed absolutely everything that could be climbed, and many things that shouldn’t have been. I can’t explain this, but I was (and am) fascinated by heights, and by the process of attaining them.
I’ve spoken of my “first real bike.” It was a glorious Schwinn cruiser. When I received this thing, my family was living in a series of relatively flat places. Sometimes I would encounter a hill. Occasionally, I would have to get off the bike and push it up one of these. They weren’t particularly large, but the coasting down was fun.
When I was just 15, we moved back to the homeplace, in the mountains of Virginia. The town of Staunton, to be exact. (If you are curious, use Google Maps. Find Staunton. It’s almost due west of Charlottesville, in the Shenandoah Valley. Now use the terrain feature. You get the idea.) Flat, Stuanton is, emphatically, not.
This presented a problem to me as a bike rider. These were honest to goodness hills. I could simply not get up most of them. Even if I stripped all of the excess stuff off of the bike, I could not ride up most of those hills. This was when I entered the “running phase” of my life. I could run up, or down almost anything. I also did a lot of climbing in the mountains. I climbed everything from small rocks to major ones.
Then I discovered bikes with gears. I don’t mean the old two speed “kick-back,” or the three speed Sturmey-Archer, but rather bikes with derailleurs and ten gears.
The first one of these new fangled things that I had was pretty crappy. But it could climb stuff. Not well, but possible. (I would later learn that lower gear ratios actually were possible.)
Eventually, the idea occurred to me. I could ride up some of the mountains!
Now I had already been taking my old Schwinn into the mountains to coast down fire roads, and bash around on trails. But this was a new idea. I think it was spawned by finding out about European road racing, through finding an old copy of a cycle sport magazine. Anyway, it opened an new realm of possibilities.
Just a bit east of Staunton, is the town of Waynesboro. Just to the east of Waynesboro is Afton Mountain. The pass at the top of Afton, was then, an intersection betweent he northern end of the Blue Ridge Parkway, the Skyline Drive, and US-250. In those days, the Interstate Highway System was under construction. The interstate over Afton Mountain, would not be started for several years.
I loaded my bike on a car, drove to Waynesboro, unloaded, and started my ride. My intention was to go up US-250, then a three lane road, to the Blue Ridge Parkway, then ride the Parkway a bit, and return.
The climb was awful. It was long. I was overgeared. It was hard, hot, slow, sweaty, and I had to stop fairly frequently. But I made it to the top. I cruised the wonderful road, south along the Blue Ridge Parkway. I stopped at one of my favorite overlooks and ate the small snack I’d brought. Then I turned around to head back.
Remember, this is taking place in the late 60s. And I did say the bike was pretty crappy. It was, even by the standards of the time. And trust me on this one, the best that was available then wasn’t all that great. We just didn’t know it.
Okay, the shifting was problematical. The gearing didn’t have nearly enough range. It wasn’t high enough or low enough. Brakes were awful. And speed wobble was common.
As I turned onto US-250, and began my descent, I didn’t know how much I didn’t know. Books have been written about performance cornering and braking. I hadn’t read them. I had no idea what was about to happen.
I do not know how fast I was going. Reliable, solid state cyclecomputers were still science fiction. It’s safe to say I’d never been that fast on a bike before. At first it was wonderful. Then it started to shake, shimmy, and rattle. There was a turn coming up. I felt like I was going too fast.
After three good strong applications, my brakes faded to almost nothing. The pads had gotten hot enough to start melting.
Obviously, I made it down off the mountain. It wasn’t pretty. It was terrifying. But I survived it.
Gradually, I learned. Slowly, I got better equipment. For a long time, I hated climbing on the bike. It was too much work. Later, when I was racing, I had new reasons to hate it. There were other riders who were so much better at it.
It took a long time for me to come to a couple of realizations. I had to learn how to climb. I also had to learn that, while I would never be as fast as the light climbing specialists, I actually enjoyed the process. With those lessons, climbing became a joy, and the mountains a wonder.
Oh yes, I’ve since learned how to descend too, and that is a real blast!
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