By: Annie Phan
A lot of cyclists use these things called clips. The idea is that you use special shoes which clip into the pedal of the bike. They are supposed to give you more stability, and when you’re clipped into the bike you can use more of your muscles while you’re pedaling (so hills are a little easier). However, using clips can be a little scary, especially if you haven’t developed a very strong sense of balance on a bike, which is true for several members of the team this year. It still kind of blows my mind how little biking experience most of us have - Bethany’s the only member who had gone on a ride longer than 10 miles before starting Spokes.
Anyways, Kate decided that this was the morning that she would try her clips out. To get into the clips (which are called “clipless” clips, just to make things confusing), you need to push your foot pretty hard into the pedal. The scarier part is when you need to get unclipped, i.e. any time there’s a possibility of stopping. To get out, the rider needs to pivot their heel outwards with a decent amount of force. It’s not a very natural feeling, and several times when I was learning how to use the clips, I would fall over at stop signs, or at the tops of hills. It looks foolish since you’re going about 0 miles per hour and then you just fall for no apparent reason, or at least that’s what I imagine it seems like. Kate tested the clips and was able to get clipped in, but she immediately fell at the top of a hill and damaged her bike (although it was easily fixable). So, today ended up not being the day of clips for Kate.
Today was our longest ride so far - 65 miles from Natural Bridge to Shawsville. The first half of the day was pleasant - nice views, gentle hills, empty roads, fairly quick progress for the most part. As we got close to Roanoke, the traffic got a little busier, the hills steeper, and the drivers more aggressive. At one point on the way to our lunch meeting spot, a Mustang decided to cut us off to get off the state road to his exit instead of waiting 10 seconds to not endanger or frighten anyone. I wanted to shake my fist at him, but there were still other cars around, so we just kept biking. Also, he was gone because he was in a Mustang and we were on bikes. A missed opportunity indeed.
Towards the end of our ride, the views became gorgeous. It was like we were surrounded by a vivid green fairy-tale land - rolling hills covered with vibrant foliage, interspersed with quaint farmhouses and the occasional sweeping wheat field that would blow your mind. It was gorgeous. I wanted to stop and take photos, but at this point I was worried that if I stopped, I wouldn’t be able to get going again - so we kept pushing on to Alta Mons Campground.
Our campsite was conveniently the closest one to the river, which sounds nice until you realize that that’s where all the mosquitos lived. We decided to spend the rest of the night as far away from our campsite as possible, running a couple of errands and ordering way too much pizza in town.
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