The fourth day of the trip began with waking up, collecting clean laundry, and eating a supreme breakfast. I even collected the left over bacon to eat during my ride. We stopped to buy some peaches to give to June Curry, the famous "Cookie Lady." We did not actually get to meet her when we arrived at her house, but we did get to visit the incredible bicycle museum next door. The place is absolutely packed with postcards and bike parts and anything cyclists thought to leave behind. I saw several Bike the US for MS items, and I left a sticker of my own.
Now, about the climbs. The hills began slow at first, then they began to slow me down to a crawl. I didnt want to burn out, so I kept to a "comfortable" pace (It was actually painful, but maintainable). along with the slow climbs there were some very fast descents. My max speed for the day was 45.7 mph. Nearing the end of the ride, we gathered at the top of the last, longest, and sweetest descent. The descent into Vesuvius is 4 miles of curvy downhill awesomeness. You just have to watch this video that Pepper took last year to understand.
We have a few new videos this year that will be going online as soon as we can get them up. When I got to the bottom, I found George and Amanda gearing up to ride up the thing because they had been on van duty, so they didnt get to ride down at first. I stretched and fueled up and joined them just to see how far I could get up that monster of climb after a long day of riding through the mountains.
It was a grueling climb with many short stops. Eventually I got comfortable and found my rhythm. Before I new it, I was at the top absolutely stunned at the fact that I had really made it. The second descent was even more fun than the first since I got to ride with others, and we got sweet helmet cam footage of it.
We got food at Gerties almost immediately after we reached the restaurant. I ordered a triple cheeseburger with bacon and called it my victory burger. Eating that whole thing was a victory itself.
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