there were a couple firsts last week... i finally went to Bear Creek for the first time and rode every square foot of it. the trail was featured in last month's Bike Magazine as Georgia's representative. to be honest, i don't fully understand why they chose BC, but what is there is super fun. lots of gravel road climbs and super fast single track (but not enough to rep GA!). the skies were finally blue, there was still snow on the ground and the water crossings were deep and cold. beautiful! that was Sunday... i would love to tell the 'first' i rode on Monday, but then i'd have to go into some witness protection program or something. it was so great that i don't mind keeping it a secret and i'm stoked to have been invited back. there was also some riding at the track and some Planet Earth watched while on the trainer.
then came Friday... i had been debating on riding this year's first Dirty Spokes 6 hour race at Heritage Park. once i saw the weather moving in for the weekend and noticed the late registration fee and then also realized that my mom was coming Saturday and staying at my house, my decision was pretty easy (i didn't go if you were still wondering). i was at home Friday night getting the house ~clean when the weather became loud. it was about 9:35PM. Buckley and i went onto the front porch because we're be fans of loud violent storms. it began to hail and the rain was flying completely sideways. Friday was trash day and i was laughing because all of the trash can's that people had left at the street were now cruising down the street in a raging river. they were all piling up against my neighbors truck which was parked on the street. it was dark and crazy and maybe the worst 'thunderstorm' i had ever seen. then my phone rings and it was a buddy telling me to turn on the news. he just had a funnel cloud hop over his truck. he was downtown at Philip's Arena and a tornado in downtown Atlanta was unheard of. well... turns out that it was a tornado. it was later determined to be a high F2 with winds over 135mph. it left a 6 mile seam through downtown into the in-town neighborhoods and then lifted up about 1000' feet from my house.
we took the mountain bikes out on Saturday for a destruction tour ride. the news did not come close to capturing what the damage looked like in person. downtown was practically shut down because of falling glass and clean up efforts. people were out helping their neighbors. at times i felt like i was in the Will Smith NY vampire movie. we had the downtown streets to ourselves but we had to watch out for police tape, broken glass and sheet metal. crumbled brick buildings and abandoned wrecked cars littered many corners. it was just plain surreal. after seeing the damage and hearing the stories, it is really amazing that so few people were hurt and no one in Atlanta was killed. some close friends had some close calls and will be a little uncomfortable for a while. we were caught in another wave of storms Saturday afternoon and as it started to hail pretty big we ditched the bikes and ran into the closest Willy's. we had a burrito and a beer while we watched the warnings on the news and the weather out the window.
**i only took a few pictures. didn't want to be too much of a gawker.
family came in town the the weather finally blew over. we had a cookout and all was well... it was my niece's birthday on Sunday so the plan was to go over to their place for breakfast. once i thought about it, i actually had 3 birthday get togethers on Sunday and i was really excited about the opportunity to squeeze in a couple hour road ride between what ended up being a noon breakfast at Cafe 458 and another birthday cookout on the A&P rooftop. i took an in-town loop which tours my favorite in-town neighborhoods. i was feeling a little guilty because i was enjoying the weather and my ride so much but i was having to weave through some seriously damaged parts of town. i got my first ridiculous tan line of the year and made it to A&P for some beverages and grilled foods. i had to take off from there for another friend's birthday dinner which happened to be at a restaurant in the first floor of 101 Marietta St. the building was all busted up and we were surrounded by damage again. our party of 8 was the only table in the place the entire night (weird) and that was the end of a roller coaster weekend.
last night was the first Monday night advanced training session at the velodrome. it was tough and i threw up a little. 4 separate 8 minute intervals with 100% sprint efforts at random will pretty much do it... green beer followed and i was real happy.
Buckley and i just got back from the Oakhurst dogpark and it is officially spring-ish (when does spring start?). the place was slammed with lots of rowdy pups and i couldn't help but notice the bikes. i honestly saw at least 60 people ride by while i was tossing the ball. there were three different group rides that went by. each group had between 10 and 20 riders and a completely different paces/age/vibe. then there were several small groups of friends just cruising and some soloist doing hard efforts. bring on spring and good/dry/non-funnel shaped weather!!
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