Laurel Highlands 50 and Coopers Rocks

Don Powers asked if I wanted to ride on the mountain. I wanted to.

Don Powers mapped out a route that strung together every long painful climb in the Laurel Mountain area. I wanted to kill Don Powers.

I felt good for the first couple climbs, then my back started to lock up. It just wasn't ready to grind up that many miles of steep dirt.

Over on the Laurel Mountain side of the mountain parts of the fire road were still frozen.


We rode across on Beam Run Trail, which is just another fire road, then hit all the rocky single track through Black Bear, Wolf Rocks, and Fish Run.

I was eating vegan cookies and granola bars that I pilfered from Colleen. For some reason, they weren't doing shit for my energy levels. I'm done with sawdust and cranberries on long bike rides.

After beating ourselves to death on ten miles of rock gardens, Don insisted that we ride the whole way down the mountain.

Then we rode the whole way back up. Something in my lower back felt like it was going to rupture every time I turned the pedals over.

Don will probably want me to mention that I was tired in the last ten miles. So there. I mentioned it.

When we finally got back to the cars I drove straight to the Pie Shop and bought two cherry turnovers and a Starbucks bottled sugar coffee thing.

The next day we headed to Coopers Rock in WV for an easy ride with a hunchback and some other people.


I brought two king sized Twix Bars and some Reese's Cups and felt great all day. That proves that processed sugar garbage is superior to processed soy garbage for bike riding.

Coopers has a really nice network of trails. I'll have to hit that place more this year.

I was keeping my camera in a plastic bag (I'm very open to clever dry-camera suggestions), so it was a pain in the ass take pictures. I did a bad job of documenting the ride. But there were nice views:


Some standing and shin welts:


And dirty dirt:


We went to Burger King afterwards. Everybody ate some floppy little slabs of meat. Mine had two miserable slices of bacon. Don was very proud of consuming three double cheese burgers. I was very grossed out.