11/1/07

ya know?

what would it take, seriously?

a truck, a trailer......a mini van w/ a U haul behind it for a week.
Or a U haul box truck plus mini van....
4-6 like minded people, familiar with the route.

Meet at the finish spot, morning time.
Load bikes onto racks, gear into trailer. Run two vehicles to the start point, have a wife or girlfriend along to take the extra vehicle home.....camp out, ride in the morning from Blacksburg up into Craig County. Meet the shuttle w/ gear, overnight at The Pines. Day two takes you to Douthat. Repeat camp scenario.
Day 3: Douthat to Braley's
Day4: Winding Route from Braley's to Brandywine.
Day 5: Gnarly North Fork to Seneca.
Day6: Spruce Knob Love
Day 7: From Seneca up thru the Sods to Davis.
Day 8: Plantation/Moon Rocks/Party and hang with Chip.

Shorten this up to something reasonable, like 4ish days....

Day 1: Frederick 'shed to southern Meeshow.
Day 2: Tour Meeshow
Day 3: Up into the Tuscarrora to Fowler's Hollow.
Day 4: Road type day to State College/Coburn?
or follow ridges to towards the river and shoot for Lykens?
Day 5: Local loop celebration.

What's it take?
minimum.
Vehicles, two for the first shuttle with one able to
carry overnight gear for the full pull.
2 folks to help with the shuttle/moral support.

Figure the menu and know what you need up front, keep the roster tight, and do it on a shoestring. The Grand Tours inspire, what's the next step? Why not just do it?

Enlist a friend(s) to help/watch you suffer and run support, look at the map and say, I'll meet you here, via this....by dark.

Find someone to drive me to Frederick on a Friday, and try to get home by Sunday night, on as much trail as possible. Though road based, Crushing the Commonwealth might be a neat ride to cut the teeth on.

And there's the rub, maximizing trail means you can't be overloaded with gear due to the nature of the trail, so it's hard to balance the cost to benefit ratio when looking at the route vs level of outside support.

of course, I guess the first step is to do the S-D-S wknd and learn some more, and to also follow thru on the idea of driving down to the southernest end of Meeshow, then ride home by maximizing the flow of trail south to north, then ride back the next day with the same mindset to pick up the car.....that one's easy enough to pull off, logistically. Could probably put together a pair of high quality 8hr days, if not more....from the MasonDixson to Carlisle and back......

I need to look into that.
When's Easter?

5 comments:

fxdwhl said...

I like your thinking. A mini east coast GDR would be sweet. Even a lightly loaded bike through Michaux is daunting. Self supported would be killer though.

Anonymous said...

Sounds pretty cool! I'd be up for beta testing.

riderx said...

Starting at Caldonia I have Michaux --> Fred. Watershed --> Gambrill mapped, but I don't know the Michaux part enough to make a go, I need local knowledge (hint, hint Camps ;)). Between Michaux and the Watershed lies 15 miles of country road, but about a third of that can be done on nice gravel/dirt stuff. Going north to south seems to be the may to yield the most pleasure from this route IMO.

Anonymous said...

While you're ponderin' all this with your 3rd or 4th Elf, check this out and smile:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2007/11/01/scibeer101.xml

Anonymous said...

a pint is good
2 pints = 2Xgood