Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Rocktown to Foofville

I was out there on the edge of the Internet earlier this week, really deep, far out there, where things like public healthcare are debated, and total strangers call each other asshole, and elf porn happens.  And I bumped into this: a one-way road ride from Harrisonburg to Charlottesville.

http://www.mapmyride.com/us/harrisonburg-va/harrisonburg-to-charlottesville-route-61524282

And I thought to myself, hey, that's swell, I wonder if there's a similar ride on dirt?

...

....

Waiting, waiting.
...

Nothing.
I had crossed over into the nether-regions of the internet, where the maps aren't on paper yet, and the gas stations only have kerosene.  There's nothing out there.

And I thought to myself, hey, wait a minute.
I know those dudes in Rocktown ride to Massanutten and back, pretty much all on dirt.  And if you can get to Massanutten, you can cross 33 and then the Shenandoah River, and find yourself at the base of the West side of Simmons gap without too much trouble.  And if you can do that, and you've got panache, and you're an enterprising individual, you might very well make it to the top for the start of the Trans-County route, and be at BRC by dusk.

If I do recall, I tried to talk Kev29er into round 2 of that same transcounty ride not long ago via email:
Me to Kev29er:
BRS to Walnut - the trans-county point to point is back and slightly longer.  This ride was a hoot last summer, now giving it a try in the cold to see how it goes.  

Blue Ridge School start
Up brokenback
Down the super d
Up markwood to the Paranormal loop
quick paranormal rally
Aid station 1 (my house)
A new connector and fence hop to Buck Mtn rd 
Bleak house singletrack (Sunday only)
Up reas ford to earlysville
Aid station 2(the new and critically acclaimed cruise-in diner)
Poach a little Danny flow half track(Sunday only)
Advanced Mills to preddy creek (paved)
Preddy loop ( conditions permitting... It's been muddy there)
Aid 3 (Dunkin donuts)
Gravel to fo' lakes
Fo lakes singletrack (conditions and permission permitting)
Into town - perhaps via the Dunlora link
Rivanna trail 
Aid 4 (blue ridge Cyclery)
Rivanna to o hill to old lynchburg
Old lynch to walnut
Finish down the goat trail(conditions permitting)

Kev29er to Me
that email made me throw up a little

So we didn't do it.

But we could have.

It's like the Giro bus stopped at summers market, opened the doors, and said, "everybody out, let's party."

S.O.T.

So, I dunno, just spit-balling ideas here, because it's winter, and it's easy to assess what's do-able and what's not from your office chair as the workweek winds down, and you're not actually grinding your saddle into your taint on mile 140 or whatever it might be, in the rain, out of food, muttering something about trolls.  But, to compare the transcounty ride (which I've done) to a Rocktown-to-Foofville one-way (which I profess has not been done yet), I guess you'd have to more or less double it to account for whatever lives west of Simmons Gap, figure out exactly what that is, pull out whatever doesn't fit into daylight here on the East side of the mountain, and you'd have a dirt route from Rocktown to Foofville. It's a far cry from the sort of pioneering that Chris Scott did when he put together the Virginia Mountain Bike Trail, but for two towns with such filthy-great bike culture, I sort of thought this kind of thing had already been executed successfully and described with voracity on someone's strava widget.

Turns out, not so much.  Just goes to show: there's shit the internet hasn't done yet.
But, I'll go on record here with the following:

It will.

Any takers?
Up, up, up.

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