We Survived 100 miles Into the Wilderness (Day 3)

Day 3 of bikepacking 100 miles into the Pisgah Forest Wilderness with my son Jonah. Good morning. It's raining again in the morning, so sorry I can't shoot on the main shooter. We just packed up camp. Our earliest start yet, 7:36. Our chains are rusty, but we did oil them and that's helped. It's helped a bit. It's hard not to when it's been 2 and a half days of Bikes being soaked. We've got a bear box at the group camp. We have decided to drop our stuff, have Austin come pick it up and drop it off where we're gonna camp. A little risky because somebody could find it here, take it. Somebody could— we've told Austin as best to best our ability how to get here and then how to drop it, hide it in the woods. Where we're going. That needs to be there, or we're gonna have to bike 45 miles. Yeah, we just have to finish. 42. 42. 42. Is that all we got left? Yep. Okay. I woke up in the middle of the night with shot knees, and I thought, oh, it's just from the hyperextension from the hammock. We're sleeping in hammocks. I'm 46 years old. Um, I said, I hope it wears off in the morning. Well, the morning came. I walked around, limped around. It warmed up a little bit, but not a whole lot, and I just had to cross my fingers and hope to die that I could finish this trip because this is an all-or-nothing thing. When I got on the bike, it was doable. And, and funny, we started pedaling, getting into it. When I would come across a hill and I really came across a lot of exertion, then I had no pain. So I feel like it's this adrenaline thing, and let's just hope it lasts because I'm going to need my knees in biking. We're going into the biggest climb yet, 2,400 feet in 6 miles, and it's crazy. In some spots it's like this, a lot of parts it's carry a bike, it's certainly hike a bike a lot. But I'm glad because it's in the beginning of the ride and we're going to get that out of the way. And it kind of feels like we're heading back home after that climb. Kind of downhill from there. There's a few climbs after that, but mainly easygoing if we can get up this mountain. We're about a third of the way up the Pine. We're about to go on most difficult. It's the gnarliest Pisgah has to offer. We start going up the mountain and I think to myself, if we can get to this mountain by noon, we might be able to finish today instead of the planned 4 days. Could we really go 42 miles in one day? That would be a record. And 42 miles after we just did 31 the day before and 26 the day before and slept outside. So it's a big iffy. If we can get to the top of this mountain by noon, I estimate it'd take us 9 hours the rest of the way. We could be home by 9 o'clock. We get to the top of the mountain by 11, a good sign. I'm super sore. I say we're gonna stop and take a break. I realize I'm not gonna be able to take a break. I'm gonna get cold, uh, you know, not warmed up and hurt, so I gotta keep moving. Joan and I decided we're not gonna do lunch. Got to the top of the mountain by 11, and we figured it'd be 5 hours from there, and that was smooth sailing for the most part, up and down, mostly down. We are smoking it up this mountain. New ETA, 6 PM. Finished. Not to camp, finished. As long as our bikes hold up, but we don't have any crashes. 6 PM, it's incredible. Took us not 5 hours but 4. We are at the 18-mile mark. Where are we? Let's see if we told the boys right to hide our stuff. Guys, you did so good. We're gonna add to it. Here, put some of your— so much stuff. I know. Oh my gosh, we wouldn't have— we wouldn't— there's no way we'd be here at 2:45. Okay, if all goes well, it's 3 o'clock. We're estimating we'll be at the finish line at 6 PM. We're gonna be like back here picking up our stuff. It's gonna be surreal. It's hard getting back in the saddle. Is your butt not sore? A little bit. A little bit? Oh, it'll be 17. At this point, I completely bonked. Jonah's strong. I feel so bad for him because he's like going so strong. Poor Jonah, I slow him down. Or I pace you good. Yeah, at one point he looks over at me, says, "Pop, if you're a 10—" you could tell, you know, I'm struggling here at the end, I'm grunting, whatever— "I'm a 1." I'm like, "I'm happy for you, bud. Thanks for sharing. I'm happy for you." We came in 8 miles from the finish. We had already lined up Rebecca to come, so we had some pressure to get there on time. Time. We're thinking it's gonna be like 5 o'clock, 5:30 now at this point, and we get a flat tire. All right, I'm flat. No, no, so bad, bad flat. 8 miles left to flat. But we changed that tire in like 3 minutes. I don't know if it's because we changed one before on this trip or not, but I realized we're very fortunate. We didn't have any chain breaks, we didn't have any other mechanical issues. We only had 2 flat tires the whole time. We fixed that flat. The last 5 miles is like paved and downhill, and we're just cruising. And we finished. We thought it'd take us 4 hours. It took us 2 hours and 45 minutes. And we get home, and it feels just so good to have finished that because we had been wanting to do this for over a year. We had tried it once and failed, and here we were doing it again, making it, doing that together. Oh, such a good feeling. And it wasn't the greatest feat in the world. There were mountain bikers that passed us. There are much better mountain bikers. Or when I, when I got to Rebecca, she showed me these reels. She saw some dude running 250 miles straight. I mean, there are greater acts of strength, but for Jonah and I, that was our greatest act of strength. And we set out to do the impossible, and extraordinary things happen. We wanted to do it 4 days. We did it 3, which is, uh, respectable. That's actually what the app recommends happening. We laughed at that when we first saw that, but apparently it's possible because we did it, and we wouldn't have known it was possible had we not tried. Congratulations! Yep. Oh my gosh, hot, piping hot food. I lost 5 pounds. House in 3 days. How's the food? It's good.