It was a cold and snowy day in Cleveland,Oh so we packed up the Element and headed south. As we drive south the snow changes to a steady rain. yuk! We get on 26 towards Asheville and steady turns to pouring. yee haw ! So up the mountain we go, the Element by the way is the ultimate road trip vehicle it has a ton of power. You almost never have to downshift in the mountains and will cruise 80 mph no prob. Well, we get to the top of the mountain and guess what! The rain just stops like I threw a switch.

Lauren's two friends from college live right next to the hospital downtown where they are both nurses. We get to their house and get out of the car to 58 degrees and a sky full of stars. Does it really get any better in December? So we head out for some grub at the local Friday's where we get ignored buy the bartender,"so much for southern hospitality". Back to John and Kelly's to get whooped on in Mario cart and several different Wii games. Wow that Wii is super cool!

Anyway we get up in the morning to pouring rain, not what the weather man said was gonna happen! WTF? I decide to head for the trail anyway. When we get there we are rewarded with perfect conditions and almost 70 degree temps. We decided to ride in Pisgah on a trail called Trace ridge it was 2.5 miles and 1200ft. of vertical! Hell of a warm up, at the top we missed a turn do to the amount of leaf cover and rode up to the Blue ridge parkway instead. We did a couple miles before we realized we had gone the wrong way. We headed back and found another trail to check out and ended up doing an out and back. My garmin showed over 3000ft. in 8.5 miles. 

So Sunday night I give my buddy Bruce a call. He works part time at Bio-wheels and owns Pisgahworks.com. We set up a time to meet and ride on Monday and decide on an 4-5 hour ride in Pisgah.  Lauren and I head to I-Hop on Monday morning for some breakfast then meet Bruce at his place in downtown Asheville. Bruce pulls out what he will be riding: a full rigid, single speed, 69'er . It's a Jamis dragon with a carbon fork and weighs like 21 pounds. Lightweight or not I think he is a nut!

 Well, we decide to start out on South Mills River trail and make it only about 3 miles before Bruce gets a flat.  He has all the necessary stuff to fix his bike but now we don't have any more air in case something else goes wrong.  I know what your thinking , Carson where is your gear?  In fine Tim form I did not take anything with me so we have to go back to the car.  This time I grab some CO 2 and a tube and then off we go.

Back down the shortcut we took to get back to the car, thank god for good trail guides!  We get back to Mullinax where Bruce flatted and continue on with our ride.  The climbs on this trail system are steep and technical, with tons of big steps and a lot of big rocks to climb over and up.  From Mullinax we got on to Squirrel Gap and the trail got really hairy!  Steep off camber climbs and decents with roots and rocks galore!  Next is Horses Gap and this one is all down hill, thank god cause it was so messed up from horses I don't think we could have rode it up.  It was steep and fast and dumped us out by the river trail.  The first couple miles by the river were super fun with small rideable creek crossings and rock strewn trails.  The last four miles was smooth double track and a really nasty climb back out of the valley to our car.  All in all we were on our bikes for about 4 hours, 14.8 miles, and did 3400 ft. of climbing.  What a great day on the bike!
So of course we are all famished and all decide to go to a little restaurant in downtown called Salsa's.  This place is beyond fantastic!  The food is absolutely amazing.  I think it would be considered Caribbean, the spices were very unique and wonderful to my palate!  I would suggest checking it out if you are ever in the Asheville area.
It was a great weekend of good riding, good friends, good weather, and good white russians"compliments of Bruce"!