Warm Up Down South

by Brenda Ruby

Shoveling snow can be a meditative experience and last winter somewhere in the midst of popping a few pain pills and pondering why exactly snow is so heavy I had an epiphany—it doesn’t have to be like this!

Normally the scenic options and great riding our region has to offer spoil us, but once the cool weather (and snow) arrives, even the die-hard rider might yearn for a little warmth. Whether you want to extend your riding season, kick start the next, or just escape the awesome upper-body workout shoveling offers, peel off those arm warmers and head a day’s drive south where you can cruise the greener (and Spanish-moss-laden) pastures of Charleston and Beaufort, South Carolina, and Savannah, Georgia.

Kick starting our riding season is exactly what my friends and I had in mind but how did we decide on this trio of towns? Individually we each had a desire to visit these places, so it was the combination of interest, accessibility, and gentle terrain, which appealed, especially to our early-Spring, unprimed legs. Though we’re all seasoned bikers, none of us had ever planned a full bike vacation on our own. I say this just to emphasize that you’re not alone if you view planning a road-trip riding adventure with trepidation—it is more complicated, but completely doable with a bit of planning and a flexible, adventurous spirit.

The planning takes place before you leave and, in this experience, the flexibility became necessary about an hour after pulling out of the driveway. What constitutes “a day’s drive” can mean different things to different people— in our case, two cars, four drivers, and a nine-hour route equaled a day.  

But I should note that I use the term “day” loosely. One should avoid, for instance, driving through a cluster of tornadoes if at all possible. Tornadoes, however, are nasty little buggers that spring up without warning and, at the very best, cause insane traffic nightmares, turning a doable nine hour drive into an epic 15 hour journey wherein you’ve needed to shelter in an Interstate bathroom with dozens upon dozens of others and wept tears of relief and joy at pulling into your hotel close to midnight, not even caring to check if the hail dented your car. So do be warned, some “days” require a little more patience than others and that you cannot plan for!

With little direct experience in any of these towns, our basic idea was to plan for two rides in each area, trying to capture the most scenic, historic, and representative sights the locales have to offer. That’s a lot to expect from a ride but we all had particular interests that were worked into routes developed from our research—the most helpful online resources for cue sheets came from the Coastal Bicycle Touring Club (www.cbtc.org) and Coastal Cyclists (www.coastalcyclists.org) and the most useful book was an old copy of 25 Bicycle Tours in Coastal Georgia and the Carolina Low Country (a newer edition is titled 25 Bicycle Tours in Savannah and the Carolina Low Country).

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Team In Training

Cyclists members of Team in Training of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society are training locally for upcoming rides in Tucson, Arizona and the SeaGull Century in Salisbury, Md., this October.  This group did the "covered bridges" ride in northern Maryland recently.  For details on how to get involved contact Ben Clausen of TNT at ben.clausen@lls.org.