Summary
Wow, what a great adventure yesterday was! We had tickets for the Andrew Peterson Christmas concert “Behold the Lamb” last night at the Ryman Center in Nashville and went on a fun double date with my cousins in Nashville. I left right after my daughter sang in a trio at Lakeside in the morning church service and rode north to Smoke Rise, AL where Kristine picked me up to drive the rest of the way to Nashville in time for the concert. The drive was highlighted by a u-turn on I-65 which had been blocked from an accident and then AWESOME rally car driving with Kristine as the navigator calling out distances to turns on very narrow country roads following my GPS set on bicycle directions. After a great dinner at Demos with Richard and Christy, an AMAZING concert, and a three hour drive back to Birmingham we were home by 2AM.
The Details
Analise was singing in a trio at the 10:30 church service at Lakeside so my original plans to ride from Birmingham to Huntsville and have Kristine pick me up got shortened to riding from Birmingham to Smoke Rise – a rural community south of Cullman atop the same ridge line as the finishing climb for the Tour de Cullman. I went ahead and rode to Lakeside so that I could leave straight from there after Analise finished singing and still make it to Smoke Rise in time for Kristine to pick me up to drive the rest of the way to Nashville.
The route was amazing. Check out the annotated topocreator maps of the route below the picture gallery. Low traffic, lots of great climbing, nearly half the route on roads I have never ridden before, and some fun adventure to boot! Adventure highlights from the bike ride include:
- Exploring a neighborhood abandoned years ago after the streets were built but before any houses were built
- Getting stung by a wasp or yellow jacket on my head just above my ear
- Exploring new roads
- The cool boat landing climb up from the Warrior river
- And finally the Smoke Rise climb and descent
Probably the most adventuresome thing that happened on our drive up to Nashville was an accident that blocked the interstate causing us to do some rally car driving through the rural Tennessee countryside between exit 22 and exit 27. What I mean by rally car driving is that I set my GPS to biking directions and asked it to give us directions to the next exit, which it did by taking us on these really small, sometimes gravel roads. There were lots of sudden turns so I put the GPS on the screen which shows distances to the next turn, and Kristine counted down the distance to the next turn, which means we could drive fast without worrying about missing a turn. It was absolutely awesome because the terrain was really steep and there were a bunch of turns. I was careful though to slow down at any blind spots in case there were any cyclists, horses, people, or cars just around the corner. We saw nobody!
There’s a lot more I could say about the ride, but I’ll just leave this post with a lot of pictures. Most of these were taken while riding, which is not easy with an iphone.
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- Analise and the children’s choir at Lakeside Baptist Church
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- Departing from Lakeside after stopping back at the car to drop off my clothes and shoes and reload my pockets with food.
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- An abandoned bridge near Whole Foods in Mountain Brook – this road helps avoid a short stretch of 280 and gives you about 35 extra feet of climbing
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- One of the many roller coaster hills in Mountain Brook, this one is near Whole Foods
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- You can see Bald Rock Mountain (the highest pt in Birmingham at just under 1600ft) and a number of the southeastern ridges from this descent off of N Woodridge Rd
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- This was how verified that what I was seeing really was Bald Rock. I was pretty sure on my ride but I wanted to double check using Google Maps.
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- Annotated view of four of the southeastern ridges .
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- Climbing back up after doing the South Brookwood roller coaster which is WAY too fast (45+mph) to try and take a picture with an iph
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- The roller coaster climb up different portion of N Woodridge which turns into Spring Valley Rd
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- This roller coaster picture didn’t turn out too well because this is on the descent looking down doesn’t give you the right perspective of how steep the climb coming out of the corner is. This was taken with no-hands on the bar descending at close to 25mph
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- Yes, I did make the turn onto the I-20 West on ramp, but it was only to take the cutover to Oporto Madrid Blvd which splits off the on ramp before reaching the interstate
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- The view of the Gate City / East Lake hill which Oporto-Madrid Blvd skirts around on its way to Ruffner Mountain. The route I created took me straight up and over the hill on a nice 26% one lane road
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- After crossing the Gate City hill and making it through East Lake, the road I was on went right by the Southern Museum of Flight, which is really cool for cyclists because so many of the planes are lined up along on the road outside the museum.
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- That is a large jet fighter!
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- Can you find the stealth bomber in this picture?
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- Can you see the stealth bomber now? This is the accidental usage of the “finger over the camera lens” cloaking technology
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- This army crane helicopter is really fascinating.
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- Mig 21 jet fighter – I wonder how we got it from the Russians – a jet exchange program?
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- Annotated view of the airport and downtown Birmingham
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- This plane had taken off from the airport and was flying right towards me before starting to turn.
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- Trying to take a picture of the bee/yellow jacket/wasp sting
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- For some reason I found this yield sign at the train tracks funny and ironic. I guess they realized that nobody would stop at a stop sign so they changed it to a yield sign to remind you that the train has the right-of-way? It reminded me of the sign you sometimes see at airports “yield to airplanes”.
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- View of the pointy mountains north of Trussville – Pine Mountain and Spring Mountain are back behind these front hills.
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- The Church St climb into warrior from the bridge crossing the Warrior River
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- View from the Warrior River bridge of the boat ramp climb
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- View of an abandoned railroad bridge to the southwest
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- You can start this climb from in the river. I did!
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- Ready, set, go! You want to make sure not to apply too much force and spin out with a wet rear tire.
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- Looking up the start of the boat ramp from directly underneath the bridge
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- A very peaceful looking Warrior river
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- It is amazing how many places were affected by small tornadoes during the April 27th storms. This is on the north end of the town of Warrior. Even if you have never ridden this stretch of road, you can tell that this is tornado damage because the tree ratio isn’t correct for the area (i.e., there should be a lot more trees) and that some of the trees are damaged and/or dead. Plus the blue tarps on the house behind the bus also indicate that a small tornado came through here.
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- The name of this road is Grandview Trail. This part overlooks the interstate which is too far down to be seen, but I could hear the cars. The ridge on the other side of valley is on the other side of the interstate.
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- This section here was the steepest part of the climb at right about 20% gradient.
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- One last roller to get to the top of the Smoke Rise climb.
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- Annotated view from the Smoke Rise high pt looking southeast
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- View from Smoke Rise high pt looking north towards Cullman and Hartselle
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- The intersection visible in this picture is Valley Trail. I was looking forward to this descent at the end of my ride, and it was really fast and fun – but shorter than I expected
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- Nearing the end of Andrew Peterson’s “Behold the Lamb” Christmas concert
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- Downtown Nashville after the concert
topocreator map of the route
Cycling Adventures with Brian Toone 