Pineywoods Purgatory Ride

rural northeast Texas, home of pithy church signs

In addition to doing the usual local fall charity rides, I decided that this year it would be good to find one or two out of town rides that we could do. The Pineywoods Purgatory out of Lufkin, Texas was the first of the two out of town rides The SAG guy, my dh Phil, and I will be doing this year.

Lufkin is a small agricultural town, formerly known for its cotton fields and timber mills, located in the Piney woods and rolling hills of east Texas about a three hour drive north and east of Houston. The Pineywoods Purgatory is sponsored by the Lufkin Host Lions Club to raise funds for the Stubblefield Learning Center. In addition to the ride itself, the Lions club provided a pre-ride spaghetti dinner Friday night and a post ride lunch of all you can eat chicken or beef fajitas. The ride lengths were 25, 52, 72 and 102 miles.

Good things about the ride

1. fantastic weather with temps starting out in the mid 60's and warming to the high 70's with low humidity and plenty of sunshine.

2. good pre-ride on site registration, festivities and a sane non pounding roll out at 8:00 AM.

3. route marking including color coded arrows on the road and distance coordinated signs.

4. friendly support everywhere including many of the town showing up to cheer the riders at the end of the ride.

Better things about the ride

1. the terrain which was a good combination of rolling hills, some steep climbs and some level farmland.

2. the road surfaces were mostly asphalt and fairly smooth chip seal surface and good shoulders with only a couple of sections of rough pavement with a lot of road snakes and no shoulder.

3. the old rough wooden railroad bridges had volunteers there indicating the best way across which was between the ties, covered with 2"x 12" planks with tire eating gaps.

4. the scenery which varied from vistas of mixed pine and hardwood forests, wide sweep of farm fields and meadows and beautiful in a discouraging sort of way, endless series of rolling hills in a straight line ahead.

Best things about the ride

1. the rest stops, sponsored by various philanthropic organizations and private families every 8 to 10 miles. Each rest stop tried to outdo the others with food offerings ranging from crepes, Belgian waffles, breakfast croissants through homemade brownies and cookies, Snickers bars, Paydays and Reeses' Peanut Butter Cups, endless packets of GU and mini Cliff bars to croissant lunch sandwiches, pecan and apple pie, pickles and pickle juice.

2. the Lufkin Police Department which had officers at every intersection, stopping traffic in both directions even for single riders like myself.

On Friday I did a long planned for distance ride with the Friday ladies ride participants. Several of the ladies are doing an iron man competition at the end of October and wanted to do a 50 mile, fast paced ride just to assure themselves that they could do the ironman distance without spending the whole day at it. We got started late, waiting for two of the ladies to show up. They never did show up but it ended up being just myself, one other lady and Ryan, one of the hardcore ride leaders from the bike shop who went along to lead and to set the pace. A fast 25 miles out was offset by a slow 25 miles slog against a 20 mile and hour headwind on the return trip.

By the time I got home, changed and packed we were in a rush to get on the road to beat the Friday night commute traffic leaving Houston. Got to Lufkin, checked into the hotel, headed over to the civic center for pre ride spaghetti dinner and then drove part of the route before heading back to the hotel for a good nights' rest.

The ride itself was excellent. The attitude was very laid back so there wasn't the usual scramble at the start with the hammerheads pounding out to be in front of everyone else. The intersections out of town were all police controlled, and the ride was along an excellent highway shoulder with little or no traffic so there was plenty of room and time for everyone to get sorted out into their own pace groups. We had met several riders at dinner who had done the ride before and they had warned us not to get to complacent at the beginning of the ride as the hills started out early in the route, so by the time the first rest stop and turn off for the 25 mile social riders arrived, we had done several hills including a 14% grade leading up to the turn off for the short route and rest stop. The relaxed and wide open roll out gave me time to get warmed up and settled in enough for the ride that I didn't need to stop so I passed on the first rest stop (breakfast crepes and Belgian waffles) and rode on through.

One of my training objectives has been to be able to last longer physically and mentally in the saddle without having to step down every 10 miles for a brief break. Since I ride long miles anyway, it usually takes me 15-20 miles to warm up and settle in for the ride. Every time I stop or step down there is a break in the rhythm and it takes a couple of miles to get physically back in the post start up easy riding lactic acid burn and mentally into the long distance ride mind set. It's also a matter of training the body not to need to stop every 10 miles, porta potty or no. I skipped the next rest stop (breakfast croissants) and rode on to the 35 mile (almost half way) rest stop.

This portion of the ride was off of the 4 lane highway and onto a two lane climbing and wandering through pine woods and widespread suburbia. The road was quite rough with deep and long road snakes (cracks in the paving running parallel to the edge of the road) deep enough to grab a tire. The shoulder was non existent with a rough edge and drop into a ditch full of brambles and other undesireables. The road was quite curvy but fortunately there wasn't much traffic and for the most part the traffic there was was local and didn't seem to demand the whole road on the curves. There were enough riders on the road yelling "car up" and "car back" that riders had time to slow down or speed up to let the cars get through the curves without encountering any riders.

By the time the 35 mile rest stop came up the body was ready for a step down. This rest stop was the time break point for the century riders and there were several groups waving other members of the group on or down, depending on how they felt. I looked at my watch, figured my average speed, considered my legs and decided that the decisions to do 72 miles was the right one and took a rest stop.

Some people go directly to the refreshments and refuel while they are in line for the facilities. Others stand in line and stretch before they get food and water. Either way it is a good opportunity to chit chat with other riders and take a look around at something other than the road ahead. I got in a good stretching session, and chatted with several riders from Houston while I was waiting.

True to the spirit of outdoing the other rest stops, this one featured homemade brownies and cookies, Snickers Bars, Mars Bars, Pretzels in Halloween bags, and Reece's Peanut Butter Cups along with the standard orange wedges, bananas, apples, water , gator ade or accelerade, and ice.There also boxes of Cliff Bar samples which were the staple of all of the rest stops. I refueld and headed back out on the SW to NE leg of the ride.

This portion had more open farm fields in between portions of the piney woods. Much of the road was along what had obviously been the old railroad trace, which guaranteed that the rollers were continuous but not steep. There were two old railroad bridges to cross. Both were basically wooden bridges where the tracks had been left in place and covered with 2"x12" planks bolted in place. There were flagmen at each of the bridges to warn riders to ride in the middle so that the cracks in the planks would not eat their tires.

By this time I had finally gotten back into the system of riding the rollers that worked best for me and was comfortably cruising along in that riding frame of mind that allows your body machine to work continually and instinctively while your mind observes and thinks about things. Even when I turned south after the next rest stop and hit the headwinds, I could feel my body shift position and settle in a bit deeper for some extra effort without having made the conscious decision to do so. The hills varied in steepness and length, but with the proper gearing I was able to ride up most without having to stand.

We were out in open country on the last 20 miles which meant that you could look down the road and see and endless succession of rollers stretching out ahead. One of the phenomenon of seeing hills in the distance is that they sometimes sem to flatten yout as you get close. The key word there is sometimes. There were several of these that I rode towards, reassuring myself that they would flatten out. Towards the end, I was mentally yelling at them to "flatten you sucker flatten" but they never did. I admit I rode a couple of these by standing to pedal for the last bit which is entirely against my training and principles but I was not going to walk them no matter what.

As we got closer to town, we started hitting an occasional church. The fun part of seeing the churches is reading their signs. Several were at the crest of a hill or on the downside of a hill and by the time I had read the sign and processed it, I was past it and unwilling to go back up the hill to take a picture.

One church was obviously into exploring alternative activities for Sunday. Their sign read "This Sunday, Calf Roping for God, He's paid your entrance fees." This brought to mind a tv program I saw several years ago titled "Christian Wrestling- body slamming for God." This came complete with prayer sessions between bouts and sturdy young men proclaiming the joy of "offering up their pain to Jesus" and "driving out the demons with choke holds".

Another church and accompanying compound, complete with high wire fence and gate proclaimed itself as "Reapers of the Harvest Militant Apostolic Evangelical Church". This one I actually thought about going back to photgraph but figured if they were that militant, they might not take kindly to a latex clad bike rider taking pictures of their sign and facilites. They might have even been miltantly hiding in camouflage behind the sign waiting to apostolically evangelicize anyone who got too close.

The next couple of intersections crossed major highways, and at each intersection there were police or constables controlling the intersections. By this time I was riding between groups, with no other riders in sight and I found it quite amazing but also very nice that they stopped the traffic for a solo rider as well as for groups. At the last rest stop (crossant sandwiches, apple and pecan pie and hot chocolate) one of the riders said t hat the rest of the ride was mild except for two hills, one of which was just long, the other of which was just steep.

After conquoring the steep hill which came just as the route went into town, the rest of the ride was pretty routine. I came in off the ring road, did a little climb, rode through some industrial area, got waved through another intersection by police and rode through to the finish line where a few of the locals were still hanging around to clap other riders and me across the finish line.

When I got to the car, it occurred to me that I had left my car key in the car and was going to have to go into the civic center and find Phil to borrow his key and unlock the car so I could get at my clothes. Bless his heart, since he did 50 miles and arrived ahead of me, he had gotten changed and then left one door open so I could get into the car.

Changed out of sweaty clothes, I went in and found him. He had had a good ride, so it was a successful ride for both of us. After a post ride fajita lunch we headed back to Houston. Half way to Houston it started raining and didn't let up until after we got home. Obviously we had missed the worst of the weather during the ride, and the headwinds were explained . They were the outflow boundary of the storm which was headed north east from Houston. Whatever their reason, they were still headwinds. Actually, I'm not sure I could actually ride without headwinds but I sure would like the opportunity to try.

As for the ride, I did 71 miles in 4 1/2 hours of riding time for an average of 15 mph hills and headwind and all so it was a good ride, definitely Pineywoods, but not Purgatory.

Pithy church sign #2 from the ride