Country Ramblings

Welcome back. Some of you may know that I have a thing for long bicycle rides. I also love maps. I love studying them, looking for new roads that might be a nice addition to the repertoire. No road is too small to get my attention, although many are too large. Recently while creating a new loop, a line on the page grabbed my eye and kept drawing me back to it. The road was WV151/ Westside Road, and here she is.
With the Siren song wailing, I readied my bike with extra food and tubes. Lack of both of those things have made exploratory rides like this great lessons in bringing plenty in the future. Bad decisions=good stories, right? I woke up early to leave by 7am. The forecast for the day wasn't totally optimistic so I wanted to make good use of the window of warmer, dryer weather that they said would be leaving later in the day. Which, by the way, didn't happen. I believe that the weathermen are some kind of  terrorists that play on our fear of discomfort. I haven't figured out what the agenda is yet, but I'm sure someday they will make their list of demands known. Anyway.

Top of US33

 The most direct way to get there is to jump right on 33 and head west. While I normally avoid this road for it's volume and speed, it is practically empty early morning on a Sunday. After the climb up Shenandoah Mt. I paused and put on my windbreaker for the descent, which at 9% can have you hitting 40 mph without even trying. This kind of thing always has a way of making me feel hyper aware of my body and it's impermanence.
Once down the other side, after 33 makes it's last bend and straightens out, when you are feeling the relief of seeing the road run out in front of you, 151 has just zipped by on your right. I enjoyed the momentum and after turning back around, pedaled back up hill the half mile, grateful for the chance to warm back up.
151 is about as rough of a road as most folks will feel comfortable riding a road bike on. There are no monster climbs on it, it kind of rolls along the bottom of Shenandoah Mt., keeping a pretty steady elevation. The surface gets soft at times, but is mostly pretty firm with a nice small grain of gravel that will tempt you into picking up speed, right before rushing into sections of angular bedrock. Nothing too different from most of the forest roads around these parts, it is wonderful and remote feeling. I saw turkeys and deer and stuff. What made this road most memorable though were the six stream crossings.

All of them were running deep and cold. Rather than getting my shoes and feet wet, I opted for just wet feet. At each crossing I took my shoes and socks off, waded the stream and then dried my feet and put back on my shoes. If you find yourself in a scenario like this I would highly recommend this tactic. Even though the temperature was in the lower 40's, my feet would be dry and warmish by the next crossing. While this did slow down progress linearly, it also gave me pause and reason to sit next to streams in the middle of the woods. Sometimes the process of progress is not linear.

A thousand words.

 While the transcendental aspects of riding are formless, the roads are not. All things come to an end. 151 reconnects to the hard surface roads in Sweedlin Valley, offering yet more options for you to choose your own adventure. As for me, I'm back at the maps daydreaming about Spring.

Watch out for cattle gates.

 “Not I, nor anyone else can travel that road for you.
You must travel it by yourself.
It is not far. It is within reach.
Perhaps you have been on it since you were born, and did not know. 
Perhaps it is everywhere - on water and land.” 
― Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass