The Sanders Family

On this long weekend we spent a lot of time on our bikes. Saturday we went to Hanging Rock to ride with Bryan and Tamara. Because this was Bryan and Tamara’s first time riding in the mountains we decided to ride the 22 mile route to the top of Sauratown Mountain and back up Hanging rock instead of doing the entire 63 mile Hanging Rock Triple Hump which also adds in Pilot Mountain. This turned out to be a good decisions because I am pretty sure that my body would be laying dead somewhere in the woods right now if would have taken them up Pilot also. On top of the extra distance Pilot is the steepest of the three.

There are a lot of rolling hills on the roads between Hanging Rock and Sauratown and as we were getting close to Sauratown I told them that the climb would be starting soon and I got a few worried faces since what we had already done was not considered climbing. The climb up Saurtown is around 3 miles with the second half of the climb being much steeper than the first half. I had warned them about this before we got on the climb, but as soon as we rounded one of the corners where you can see the grade go up I heard Bryan saying “Oh man!”. Everyone made it to the top and at that point Bryan and Tamara weren’t so excited about doing the second climb. Luckily we had parked at the top of Hanging Rock so I was able to tell them if they wanted a ride back home they had to get to the car . Once you get off the top half of Sauratown it is a really easy decent without any real curves but right in the top third of the mount there is  a really tricky switch back corner that I had warned everyone to be real careful through. Susan and I made it down the mountain first with Tamara right behind us. Bryan showed up several minutes later with a few tears in his eyes because he had scared himself so bad through that corner .

On paper Sauratown is the harder of the two climbs but Hanging Rock always feels much harder to me (even when I do it first). Susan and I have ridden there several times and she thinks the same thing. Apparently we aren’t the only ones because Bryan and Tamara both about died on that climb. Bryan got so tired and wobbly that he went off the road at one point and decided that since he was already stopped he would take a quick break. Tamara said she wanted to stop but couldn’t get her foot out of her peddle so she just kept going (a good thing for her since it is very hard to get started on a hill like that). In the end we all made it and had a great time.  OK, that was my take on Saturday…here is Tamara’s http://memosandlovenotes.blogspot.com/2009/05/mountain-climber.html.

Sunday we went on a ride with the Blues that was suppose to be a easy 35 mile ride. None of us had done this ride before but we had a queue sheet so no problem. We took off and all went well at first. Eventually it started raining and then there were a couple places in the queue sheet that were wrong. In the end our 35 mile spin turned into a wet 50 mile ride. Fifty miles wouldn’t have been a problem if we had brought enough food for a ride like that but we didn’t so added in with our ride from the day before I was starving by the time we got done.

Sunday’s ride was a much more relaxed ride. We were going out for a walk with the kids and Tyler wanted Susan to ride her bike with him. Anna knows how to ride but has always been scared to and would never do it so I was going to walk with her. All the sudden before we left she decided that she was going to ride also. We rode all around the neighborhood and Anna did great. She has outgrown her bike so she had a little trouble with banging her knees on the handle bars but she was excited to be riding.

Monday morning Susan had be at work early and the kids and I slept in. I slept until 7, Tyler slept until 7:30 and Anna got up at 8. Normally I am up by 5:30 or 6 and Tyler is also so Susan wanted to know why we can’t do that when she is there. As soon as Anna got up she wanted to go out for a ride again. We rode around for a long time and Anna was asking for a bigger bike. I told her we could go to the bike store and look but that we couldn’t get one right now (I couldn’t pass up a opportunity to go to the bike shop ). They had a couple of bikes that would be good for her and of course she wanted the more expensive of the two. Of course now she has her heart set on the bike so it should be fun until we are able to get one for her.