Can you hear the drums...

...Sherando?!? Ah, how I love a hideous pun. The lowest form of humor. Oddly, even though I have an encyclopedic knowledge of pop music and often have an iPod blaring out whatever noisy crap shows up in one of my playlists, I still fall victim to having some terrible pop song getting stuck in my noodle. Thus the mental audio pun of hearing the first few lines of Abba's Fernando rattled in my head intermittantly whilst riding up at Sherando Lake on Sunday.

I left my cozy environs before dawn (note my zombie-like palor) to head up to RVa to meet my old pal DJ and his pal Ross shown giving me the stinkeye.

DJ graciously offered to drive the rest of the way from Richmond which seemed like a pretty short drive maybe an hour or so. We met up with their friend from Snowshoe, Darrel who was a good rider and pretty amusing. Although Ross had rode here before and DJ had hiked it nobody was exactly sure of the route.

A few false starts and we finally got into the thick of the riding which consists of mostly bench cut ridge line single track up the mountain side. The first word for the day was rocks and the second was leaves; tons of both. There are very few sections of the ride that are smooth and did not require yr undivided attention. The bulk of it is rideable although a few really steep (up and down) or messy parts require a hike-a-bike. The fall colors are in full swing and that made the views rather nice. I found all of the climbs pretty mild and thats saying something since I was on the biggest bike and probably weigh more than anyone else.

Call me a sicko, but I do not think it becomes a real, epic or great ride until someone wipes out or bike parts break. We avoided the former but came away with my rear tire's sidewall getting slashed open early on one of the descents (not so bad) and Ross's front brake dying (not so good). I was able to change the tube and rig the inner sidewall with duck tape to finish the ride. Ross had to hang back and walk some of the hairy sections. Overall it was still a blast, even with our bike's getting a little banged up (its mountain biking, dammit, not bird watching).

I look forward to checking out more of the rides throughout the Blue Ridge corridor including Doughthat, Massanutten and of course Snowshoe. I leave you with another Swedish nugget that I hope gets caught in yr noodle. Ha!