Thanks to all who came and rode, and/or chilled and grilled at the Oldfield Green Gable, and massive thanks to our hosts, Stephen and Seana for some incredible hospitality. The Gable is coming along nicely, and provided for the perfect after ride get together spot with food showing up out of nowhere, games on two large screens, cornhole, basketball and a social with riders, legends, friends and neighbors.
The ride plan was free for all which worked out great for everyone but Greg and Rick. I wish they had ridden with Brian Hibbs, who looks like he had a great route. Instead, Rick accidentally pulled up a route that I had made in December, from the OGG. I had not verified that route, I was just mapping out some Clay County stuff I hadn’t seen before for exploration. Two other contributing errors were my calling the route a gravel route, and making it public, but I was sharing the idea with others.
They rode the route with gravel bikes, 2.2 and 47mm tires, one had a lauf fork, the other a redshift stem. Summarizing with a quote from Greg, ‘Everything but skyway itself was good. You’re gonna hate yourself from the 60-mile turnaround to bulls gap’. I personally think it would be enjoyable on a mountain bike, but neither of them seemed excited about that idea.
The others of us ended up doing a couple different routes a couple of different times, and swapping between mountain and gravel bikes. Most of us ended up riding together at different points during our rides. It was awesome how it worked out with folks sharing a bit of their local knowledge and showing the others great adventures.