Archive for the ‘Biking’ Category

Bicycling and almost Sinking (3 times)

Tuesday, December 16th, 2008

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We rented bicycles and began the day by stopping at a produce stand for some fruit. After biking for about 45 minutes, we found a cave that was being turned into another tourist attraction. Then a man recruited us to take a ride down the river in a bamboo raft. The guy told us that the bicycles wouldn’t be a problem. He was right except that they made it really hard for him to push us. The water was pretty shallow in parts and we actually had to lift the raft over parts that should have been underwater. By the third time, I thought the raft might come apart! But the mountains and the water were absolutely beautiful! The only bad part of the “cruise” was that I saw a dog on the side bank that had had its head cut off. Very sad.  

After we finished the cruise, we biked back to Yangshuo and hiked up to a TV tower to see the view! Beautiful!! We left Yangshuo for Guilin as it was getting dark so that we would be able to make our flight the next morning! We ate dinner again at the place from a couple of days before-just as good and…they remembered us!

View as we hiked up to the TV Tower

Virginia Creeper Bike Trail

Saturday, May 24th, 2008

17 miles to Damascus, 35 to Abingdon

Meredith (my girlfriend) and I took a trip up to the Virginia Creeper Bike Trail last weekend. It’s about 35 miles downhill from Whitetop Mountain to Abingdon, VA, which is a quaint town surrounded by rolling hills that were once and still are used for farming

and cattle.

The drive up was fine, but I had spent the night before trying unsuccessfully to get this page synced up with my own domain, www.dannyclimber.com, so Meredith drove a good portion of the way. The town had many early 1900s buildings and the bike shop was one of the more prominent buildings right off the highway. Hanging our bikes from a trailer and borrowing some unwashed helmets, we took the shuttle through Damascus to White Top. Damascus was having a city wide rummage sale that took about 20 minutes to get through!

The trail and weather were beau

tiful and all downhill as you can see from the terrain map, but it still got a little tiring after three hours. There is an optional shuttle ride after about 15 miles, but what’s the fun in that? TI saw some geology, did some wheelies (about wiping out once), and enjoyed Meredith’s company. My bike is way to small now and my back was killing me when we were done, but I felt pretty well accomplished. I think it would be a great course to run for an ultra marathon. Uphill would be nuts.