First Ride of 2007: Robertson Bridge Pave Ride

Yesterday there were two GTC rides that both left from Bethlehem, GA. The fist was a 72km ride that featured 15km of Georgia "Pave" dirt roads. After a nice 2 days fo rain, the roads were moist but pretty much blown clear of gravel. I think I counted 10 people on the ride and we even had a tandem. Thanks to Jay, we had a nice selection of 11 dirt roads to ride in the area. The map can be found here for future reference.

The plan was to stay together and average a slow 26km/hr pace and we ended up lower than that at around 22km.hr. On a incredible day like today with winds 10-20mph and cloudy-sunny skies, we were shooting for around 4 hours of total time. However, it is sort of an understanding that once the group hits a dirt section everyone basically hauls ass to the end and waits. This is mostly because it is more fun that way and secondly because the dirt is easier to ride going fast.

Two of the dirt roads were "out and backs" because many of the wooden bridges that used to cross the rivers have been washed away. But most of the dirt sections were through-ways and usually were not flat. Robertson Bridge road was the longest and was not flat...


Another great road was Pope Road which looked like a double track forest road and was very eroded and had lots of standing water which Mike and Jay could not resist riding through twice.

One of the more funny things happened on pavement and that was coming across a bull that had escaped the pasture and was hanging out on the side of the road. I stopped to get a picture and the bull didn't really like that but I was able to get by him without any trouble. Wojtek went back and actually herded the bull back into the field, probably cursing at it in Polish.

As we approached Gratis, we met up with the other GTC ride which had a bigger crowd and some of those folks I had not seen in a long time. Pistures are on the GTC website.

The last section was Jericho road and it has one of the only one lane wooden bridges left.



In the past we have had standoffs with cars on this bridge and also crashes, at the center of both of these was Ming-go figure.



Everyone agreed that this was a great way to begin 2007 and between now and March there should be 1 pave ride posted every other week, alternating with the GTC Winter Ride and others.