A road bike was a major discovery for me. At the time I lived in a mountainous region. Climbing hills on my old Schwinn monster was more than a chore, it was almost impossible. A bike with ten gears was an amazing thing. Funny to think that now. By today’s standards, that ten speed was geared way too high. But it was such an improvement over what had gone before!
Gradually I extended my range. I roved out into the countryside. I went farther and farther. Of course, I never approached the mountains on that bike. That is, I didn’t approach them until I entered a race. That race was a major learning experience. The single lap that we Cat 4s had to do was about 35 miles long. But it went right up the side of the Massanutten Mountain, down the other side, and thence into the town of Luray, before turning around.
I did a miserable job in that race. I sort of stayed with the pack, until we hit the climb. Then I got spit out the back. I’d almost made it to the top of the climb before the lead riders were coming back the other way. And when I tried descending that thing… Terror doesn’t come close to describing my state.
To say I was challenged would be to put it mildly. I was determined. These other guys all seemed to do the climb fairly well. What did they know that I didn’t?
I learned. I got so I could climb. I couldn’t stay with the real climbers, but I could hang. Some of that was learning techniques. Some of it was in gaining fitness and strength. Some of it was in acquiring better equipment. I learned, and grew, and got better.
Then I got cocky.
Once I learned how to handle mountain descents, I had fun on them. That was enough to lure me to go climb mountain roads at the any opportunity.
It was a fairly modest ride. We planned to start from home, and ride over through Waynesboro, then up onto the Blue Ridge Parkway, and south to the visitor’s center at Humpback Rocks. There was a great hiking trail, leading up onto the top of the rocks. It debouched onto the top of the formation through a narrow defile. I’d always loved the place. It was high, with an unobstructed view to the west, out over the Shenandoah Valley.
We rode out there, did the climb up the side of the mountains, out of Waynesboro, and the big rollers south to “The Rocks.” There were several of us, and cyclists were not that common in the area in those days of yore.
We locked our bikes up, and climbed the trail up to the top of the huge outcropping. We sat in the warm late afternoon sun, eating our picnic, and watching the hawks glide, and the sun slowly slide down the sky.
At some point, we all decided that it would be fun to watch the sunset, from up there on the rocks. We were rewarded with a spectacular light show.
At first the trip back down wasn’t bad. The long lingering twilight helped us. But we were stumbling around, and groping in the dark, long before we got down to the visitor’s center.
The trip north on the Parkway wasn’t too bad. It was a weekday night, and there was not much traffic. A fairly large moon, only a bit past full, helped light the way. But then came the descent.
With the modern light systems we now have, night time mountain descending requires care and thought. In that day, such lighting as was available, was far from adequate to the task. But that didn’t matter. None of us had anything like a light on our bikes. I might add that the brakes of the late ‘60s were not much to brag on either.
That descent was, in a word, harrowing. That none of us crashed is a small miracle. As we entered the lights and bustle of the small town of Waynesboro, a bit of sanity broke out. We all swallowed our pride, and called for rides.
But you know what? I want to do it again. I’d love to do that trip with a modern bike and good, strong dependable lights. But more, I’d do it again with the primitive equipment we had then. Just to be there, to see the sun go down from that height, to live through it all... I’d happily do that again.
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