Hey folks,

I’m back in the office after being “away” for a few days…

In those few days “away”, I pieced together some good stuff for you guys. By “away” I mean up in the Northern Georgia mountains doing some good training for the upcoming Tour of Georgia. For this trip, Neil Shirley, Trent Wilson, Evan Elken and I stayed at Tom Palmer’s mountain cabin at the very top of some mountain out in the middle of absolute nowhere. Tom is a great guy and very gracious supporter of the Jittery Joe’s Pro Cycling Team, who was very kind to hand over the keys to a couple of guys like us. (Just to set the record straight, we didn’t burn the place down). So… on Monday we loaded up into the team van and were off… destination: The North Georgia Mountains.

Trent and Evan had taken the time to go online and track out the directions to the cabin. You know folks… the problem with these online map and direction programs… sometimes they send you down dirt roads… I have some good footage of that for later. Anyways… after an hour and a half of driving we were up in the mountains and we stopped to use the restroom.

“Hm?, weird… Is that pollen in the air?”

Nope, it was snow… the same damn stuff that made for a hellish Saturday in Richmond. Well, it was back. Later on, it would be my 2nd ride in the snow in 3 days…

Here’s some video proof as I caught Trent when he walked out of the “servo” (Aussie for gas station):

We got back in the van and started driving. A few minutes later the directions took us off of a decent sized road and headed us down a not so decent sized road… that got smaller… and smaller… and then dirt… and then dirt and really small. A few minutes later, we were basically four wheeling in the large 18 passenger team van.

Those things are a bear to turn around in the middle of the forest… But finally, the road dead-ended into some sort of grassy area surrounded by a river and we were able to turn around. This is when Evan heroically took it upon himself to climb out of the van and guide us to safety… and then he cleared a large tree branch out of the way in one single swoop… and bravely forded a wild and untamed gushing river… and ran… and ran.

I know, I know, that sounds crazy… but you guys know me, come on now, a bit of respect… I get that kind of greatness on video. Always have and always will. Click play.

So… after all that we finally found our way to Tom’s cabin… but not after driving up the wrong dirt road where Trent peered into the wrong cabin’s windows to see if it was infact ours… which subsequently made the woman inside scream for her husband, who came out to see if we were up to no good, which we weren’t because we were just a little lost, who then after awhile calmed down enough to give us the proper directions we needed to finally find our place…

By the way, Neil just told me I should talk about him in this post. He said it would make for much better reading. Here’s Neil.

Alright, see you later.

Categories: Daily Jibber Jabber.
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