When you complete the Assault on Mount Mitchell, they give you a little patch. I got mine after and gruelling climb up to the highest point east of the Mississippi River. Can I have another one as a reward for surviving a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day?

I’ll write about the ride later. Right now I just need to get the other events of the day out of my system. Maybe it will have a positive purging effect.

Things started out well enough as I had a wonderful breakfast and finished pulling things together for the big ride. The ride over to Spartanburg was uneventful – though I was running about 10 minutes behind time. Still, I made it in time to park along with some other riders behind a church that faced Church Street.

At this point I was rushing a bit putting my bike together and sorting out everything that was to go in my pockets. It took a little bit longer to get the timing strap on my cycling shoe. At last I locked the car and headed toward the start finish line.

You’ll have to come back later to read what happened on the ride. I will say that this was truly the last Assault on Mount Mitchell I will ride. It isn’t that it took too much out of me or that it is too hard. It is simply because the ride itself was not fun – in the “let’s all suffer together” kind of way.

When I arrived back in Marion after the ride, I immediately looked for my family. They were there to pick me up and we would head quickly back to Greenville to make it to soccer games for Things One and Three. However, I couldn’t find them.

I left my cell phone in my car because last year it kept coming on during the ride and by the time I reached the top the battery was dead. The phone kept looking for a signal and it just burned it down. So, it didn’t seem to be worth the weight.

After getting some great BBQ and eating it, I started getting more concerned. If they didn’t get here soon, we wouldn’t make it back to Greenville on time. Oh, well, I wasn’t going to worry yet. I would just go check on my bike.

Arriving at the bike pickup area, I learned that there was an issue with them getting the bikes off the mountain. One truck had broken down and there were not enough volunteers at the top to load the bikes for the trip down. Things were moving as a snails pace.

Finally I sat near the entrance of the camp ground and waited for my family. At last – about two hours after they had planned – they arrived in our Suburban. Hmmmmm. They were supposed to be in the Fit.

I rushed over to check on them. It turns out they picked up a nail or something and had a flat tire between Greenville and Spartanburg. The beautiful redhead had to get the car off on an exit and call her mom to come pick them up. She went home and got the Suburban hoping to still make it in time.

We would have made it except for the fact that the bikes were late. I won’t go into any great detail because it makes me upset, but I handed my bike off at the top of the mountain before 1:30 PM. I finally pulled out of the park heading for home after 9:00 PM. It took much longer for my bike to make it down from the mountain than it did for me to ride it from Spartanburg to Mt. Mitchell!

Around 10:15 or so we finally arrived back at the car I left in Spartanburg. I knew immediately something was wrong. The car was moved out of the parking place and sticking partially in the street. I walked up and the first thing I noticed was the back window was broken. The next thing I noticed was that the passenger side door was ajar.

I opened the door and immediately looked at the dash. Sure enough, they had attempted to remove my radio. The dash area where the radio is was trashed. I looked around and nothing else seemed to be missing. It wasn’t until I arrived home that I remembered leaving the phone in the car!

Tired and frustrated I just went ahead and drove home. Finally, around midnight, I dragged my sore body into bed. I was definitely shell shocked. Thankfully, sleep came much faster than I thought it would.

Now this morning is being spent trying to work with my phone company to stop calls and clear the data from my PDA phone. I’ve got a tire to replace on the FIT and things to work out with my insurance company for the BMW.

Oh yeah, I also have to be at work. I have an important meeting this afternoon that I have to finish preparing for. Still, today the sun is shining and I don’t have to ride my bike up the mountain. Things are getting a little back to normal and it can’t nearly be as bad as yesterday’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day!

 

Tags: Assault on Mount Mitchell, Spartanburg

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 19th, 2009 at 8:45 am and is filed under Events, Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.