Heifer Ride Day 1- Mobile to Bay Minnette

The day began with the official weighing in of the luggage and breakfast at the van. Our limit is two bags or 50 pounds. Laurie made us each weigh in before we loaded it onto the van.

Judy from Canada was over on her first bag and was negotiating with Laurie about whether or not she needed to repack to redistribute the weight.

After we got the luggage loaded, we all sat down to breakfast.

Finally, before starting our ride along the Underground Railroad from Mobile, AL to Niagara, Ontario, Canada, we all posed in our Woman Tour jerseys for a group photo in front of the fountain near our hotel. The ringer on the far right in the blue t-shirt is our lead guide Laurie Collins. That's me in the center taking a knee, and my sister Kirsten is the first person on the far left in the second row. As usual my favorite SAG guy, DH stepped in and did photo duty with about 15 cameras dangling from each arm.

After the "photo shoot" we headed out. Since today is a short 35 miles, we had a leisurely later start and didn't really roll until about 9:15. On the remaining days of riding, by this time, we will probably be past our first Sag stop and several hours into the day's ride.

The first big excitement was motoring up the slope of the Cochrane Africatown bridge to the high point of the span, which Laurie had referred to as "kinda high" and our first "hill." Yes, indeedy it was, but the view up river to Mobile and it's two distinctive towers was pretty awesome. And as always, with a decent shoulder, the down hill was a fun payback.

View from the top, with the towers of Mobile in the background

We crossed the rest of the estuary and the river on a causeway with short stretches of land packed with fishermens' cars and fish restaurants. Once across all of the water, we headed east on highway 90 for Spanish Fort and began climbing rolling hills. although none were over 500 feet, at least according to the topographic maps from Adventure Bicycling, they were long, and as always the downhills were too short and over too fast. My garmin did record a record 32 mph on one downhill slope though so I guess there was as much down as up. At the turn off to route 225 north, I missed the turn and went on a 3 mile scenic detour before it occurred to me that I didn't see any riders in front of or behind be. I turned around, motored back and caught up with a couple of the riders just before the SAG stop.

Although the day was mostly overcast, and at times looked a little like rain, the real impact came from the heat and the humidity. Temperatures took a bit of a jump during the night so we were riding in the high 80's and the humidity was very high. Fortunately, the wind bringing in the clouds was mostly a tail or side wind, so although it didn't do much for cooling, it did help (mentally at least) with the hills.

The riders were all pretty stretched out all day, I rode mostly between groups. It will take everyone a while to figure out who rides at what speeds and can maintain lose groupings so I was mostly concentrating on trying to keep someone in view ahead or behind, which worked pretty well.

The hills were not as bad as I had anticipated, and although I was huffing at the top of several of them, by and large I recovered quickly and several hours later don't hurt or feel exhausted.

The rest of the ride was pretty peaceful, mostly through piney woods on a two lane highway with not much traffic. What traffic there was mostly slowed down and swung out around the riders with the exception on one big pick em up truck that honked loudly and repeatedly at every bike he passed even though there was no one ahead of them and plenty of room to pass. Ah well.

I pulled into the motel in Bay Minnette about 1:30 and found several other riders there ahead of me. Since our rooms weren't ready we went to the local Arbys to get some lunch. We were sort of a spectacle to the counter people who when they found out who we were and what we were doing kept shouting "No way" and " Are you crazy?" Even the customers kept us busy answering questions.

I spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing by the pool, getting caught up and doing a bit of repacking and organizing.

At the map meeting tonight we were informed that there are severe thunderstorms slated throughout the night and into the early morning, so if they haven't cleared out, our 6:15 AM start may be delayed which means that it might not end up being a 100 mile day after all. The guides have to manage a sane balance between letting as many as want to attempt the mileage, have the time to do the miles, and the mechanics of ferrying more people and bikes than the van and station wagon can carry vs the danger of tornadoes and having us stuck out on the road in a thunderstorm. It will be interesting to see what the morning brings.

Today's stats

Distance 38.29 miles

Time 2:43 minutes
Average 14 mph