It's all uphill cycling on Blue Ridge Parkway

My friend Bruce and I pedaled this early in our Trans-America bicycle trip back in 1984 (May 19th), and it goes down in memory as one of the most serious miscalculations of the ride — or that day at least.

This columnist, Paul Woody for the Richmond Times Dispatch, pedaled out of the Afton Mountain overlook, at 1,895 feet, and continued south. He writes about the spectacular fall scenery, but also the butt-busting climbing. Like Bruce and myself, we expected virtually level cycling along the ridge.

“You'll have to forgive me for asking, but if you're heading south, why is it you have to spend the first 10 miles climbing 1,300 feet?

“But the Blue Ridge in the fall is not a place where the focus should be on suffering. The focus should be on the word that kept coming to mind as the miles – all right, the yards – passed by. And the word was beautiful.”

Hey, try it on a loaded touring bike. We had started that morning in Charlottesville, down in the flatlands. We stopped on the Afton hill climb at the Cookie Lady's bicycle house. After visiting and filling up on cookies and lemonade, we continued uphill to the overlook (that's Bruce pictured above) and then rode south to a campground about 21 miles down the parkway..

Here's the rub: I misread the map. The campground was 21 miles past the Visitor's Center at Humpback Rocks, not Rockfish Gap. Humpback Rocks is a hard 5 miles from the overlook.

We weren't yet road-hardened bicycle touring veterans. We were weak-kneed wimps barely one week into our tour. The realization that we had an extra 5 miles crushed us. We crumpled into the campground, Bruce crawling into the tent and not even emerging for dinner.

We had seen some glorious views of blooming crabapple and faraway pastures, though. Woody writes about it:

“The parkway has more open spaces. On some ascents, you feel as if you are riding on the rim of the world.

“But there is one thing.

“The distance between milepost seven and milepost eight has to be far more than a mile.

“What other explanation can there be for the time it took me to cover the distance between those two mile markers?”

Enough already. I'm not feeling sorry for this guy anymore. Didn't he say that he left from the Afton Mountain overlook? Sounds like he has some sweet downhills heading back to the car.

Do you wish someone had figured out the relative difficulty of different sections of the Blue Ridge Parkway so you could better plan a trip along its 469-mile length? Someone did.

Ike Jeanes published a table on his webpage, “Techniques for planning bicycle trips on the Blue Ridge Parkway.” It takes into account the 61 “significant” climbs or descents and recomputes them as flat mileage. A cyclist who can ride 50 “flat” miles comfortably, knows he'll start getting uncomfortable around mileage marker 23, as that equals 57 miles when difficult climbs are factored in.

Aw. That's too much to worry about. Check out his other pages, which have lots of Blue Ridge Parkway information.