Kelly and I went out on Pedlar Reservoir last week to do some sampling. I had a couple cameras with me so I handed Kelly one to play with. It didn’t take long for her to turn the camera on herself and make this image. Her super shiny sunglasses grabbed a lot of detail of the reflection of the lake and made a cool shot.
This is Jimmy Dean’s house on the James River in Richmond. I used to see it every month when we would go sampling on the James. It would be hard to tell it from any of the other mansions out there, but if you look closely at the shrubbery it’s in the shape of the Jimmy Dean logo. This picture doesn’t really do the scale justice as everything is actually much larger than it looks.
Yesterday we finally got a clear, sunny evening for the week’s most fun ride. With the great weather came lots of riders. I was late starting, but when I caught up to the group I found more than 20 people had shown up to chase down the treats. My root beer float tasted so much better in 90 degree heat and since we were in a bit of a hurry I ate it in 4 minutes. Check out the rest of the pictures on Flickr, and if you haven’t made it out on a root beer ride yet, meet us at Blackwater Bike Shop any Monday evening this summer.
Kelly nabbed this shot of me today at work on the Meherrin River. I walked up this downed tree to see if I could find anything interesting to photograph. Kelly was sitting on the bank and when she finally noticed I was up there, she was kinda startled. She told me that it was like finding a goat out of place, which I understood having seen many goats in odd places before.
I took this picture on Thursday while I was at work. Kelly and I went out in the National Forest to monitor a few creeks. The weather was slightly brisk, but the sky was clear and the sun was bright. It was a treat to get to work in creeks this beautiful all day long. After we finished we grabbed a fresh squeezed lemonade from Woodruff’s on 130 in Amherst. Pretty sweet for a day at work.
I’ve blurred out the license plate, but I can tell you that he didn’t have a handicapped plate or tag in the window. We saw the guy lock up the store and leave, dressed in a suit and walking perfectly fine. I guess he was a manager or something and just thought he was too important to be bothered with all the open parking spaces on the other side of the street.
Kelly, Davy, & I did this ride today shortly after lunch. We started at the visitor center by the James River on the Blue Ridge Parkway (BRP) just outside of Lynchburg. Riding on the parkway is different from other road rides because you are riding up and down a ridge line of mountains. That means that the ride consists of few if any flat sections, rather it’s all up or down. The ride starts with a 13 mile climb, then descends for a bit, then another long climb, and another descent, and then back uphill again. This continues for 35 miles until you get to Whetstone Ridge where you can refill your water bottles. After taking a short break, we started back to the car. Luckily the trip back was much easier and ended with a 13 mile descent. Despite the profile being easier, I was tired and hungry and the next to the last hill almost killed me. I don’t know how long it was, but I’d estimate 4 to 6 miles. It wasn’t particularly steep, but I was about 45 miles into the ride and was starting to drop off. I was in my easiest gear doing about 6 mph and it was all I could do to keep the pedals turning. Every time I came around a corner I hoped that it was the last, but more often than not it wasn’t. Finally I made it over the crest and caught my breath. The last climb wasn’t as bad and much shorter. Then the end of the ride was down the 13 miles of road that we climbed to start. It was a blissful end to a long hard ride that had taken all the effort I had to give. Check out the links to the pictures in the interactive map above or click the link below the map to open a new window with a larger version of the map.
Tonight was the Thursday night group ride at Candler’s Mountain. The weather was great, but the ride was hard as always. At one point on the ride I unintentionally did a nose wheelie for a while after I failed to clear a log pile. I was able to avoid falling on my face until Jeb came up from behind and helped me back to the ground safely. We chased after the girls who got a head start, but didn’t catch them til we got back to the parking lot. Tired, hungry, and out of daylight we loaded the bikes and went to dinner.
Aimee at Chipotle doing what she does best. Destroying burritos!
This shot is from a lake sampling audit that Kelly and I went through today. The people in the canoe next to ours are from our central office and were there to observe our sampling technique. It wasn’t stressful at all because the sampling isn’t difficult and Aimee G. and Stu are good friends of ours. The best part of the day was having someone to race the canoe against, but unfortunately for our friends, Kelly and I are really fast.
SilentScott.com 