DON'T Let me NOT be Frank.

Rob - You should post....."It isn't NOT about the bike." .....in reference to a future blog post.

What a weekend of fun. We bailed on the 115 mile Cherohala Challenge and settled for an epic 20 mile ride up and back to the top of Yellow Creek gap. We had just climbed this climb in the middle of May during the "Cherohala-Fontana" version of Climbing Camp. I never posted anything because I don't have the pictures yet. ":o

As we were driving to our ride start, we were descending down the Cherohala Skyway from Hooper Bald and we started seeing many many many cyclist coming up the mountain riding the Cherohala Challenge. Frank (that's me) was in rare (old) form this weekend......."we should, like, park down at the bottom of the climb and then ride up the climb (with our fresh legs), dropping all these cyclist....giving them 'the look' and attack them up the climb".....their poor souls looked WASTED. The cyclist who we were seeing were the last batch of 75 or so of 400-ish starters who were at their 70-ish mile marker. They had just started up the long 13+ miles of the Cherohala Skyway. "We could like, sit on their wheel....and pretend we are talking to our team car...'sure Johan, attack now?'....then just drop them". Then, we see a guy on the side of the road stopped and bent over his bars......Frank's true form come out. "hey man, you okay?....there is a rest stop just up the road around the next turn" (there really was). Then, we started honking the CAR HORN OF ENCOURAGEMENT for the remaining cyclist encouraging them up the climb, fists pumping in the air. After several minutes of seeing cyclist after cyclist struggle up the climb, Frank says,....."let's tell them, that they are 'almost there' when we pass them...". LOL. We continued to honk to them waving our fists in the air. "you can do it, mon". .....man, I wish I had my cow bell. Venga, venga, venga.

We got our lazy wine-drinking camping-butts on our bikes and ascended up Yellow Creek. I wanted to show Rob this climb, "it is really steep". He had just returned from Italy......and climbed the Zoncolan....he later said, "Frank, I've been climbing steep climbs for the last 3 weeks in Europe". Why should I think that Rob would find this hillbilly mountain climb incredible after that trip? I just don't have any idea what I was thinking. ....thanks for the cool Giro shirt. "I'll wear that to work next week".

Anyway, I watched the 145-pound Rob climb away from me with his seasoned Zoncolan legs.....and his American painted Colnago....with a TRIPLE, with like a 30x32 for his lowest gear against my SRAM 39x26. He climbed away from me....spinning through the 15% section...and then when the climb dropped to around 8%. I eased my way up to him slowly...he never looked back to see where I was. I targeted the last short pitch of a few hundred meters to catch him. It jumps up to about 10%. I shifted up two gears to eventually close the 250m-ish gap....but, to only just miss his wheel and a bike length across the finish....he heard me coming.....he never looked back the entire climb to see where I was.....I WAS WASTED....circling the top of the climb for some relief. He got me. What fun.
We got back to the campsite (Andy's 27 acre mtn property @ 4400' asl) and fixed us up a good ole stir fry frenzy. "All hands on deck" we are cuttin the vegetables and cooking them over the fire with steak and chicken. Everything was awesome. Along the way we started talking about "double negatives" and that is where the motivation for the title of this post was derived......DON'T let me NOT be Frank. I was frank that night, I guess. There was a lot of frank conversation, laughing, razzing each other, laughing, something something about Frank's Blog.....I can't remember much of the conversation right now.....but, recall that I was retaining my rare form from earlier in the day when we were passing all those cyclist climbing up the mountain.

Andy Z., Rob, and Me

Many dark hours and four smores later (11:30PM), we finished off that night with a late night drive to the top of Hooper Bald. It was a clear night and the Milky Way was laid out above us. There were two guys up there with telescopes looking at Jupiter, Saturn, etc. They showed us those planets and the Globular Cluster M13, which was directly overhead. The Milky Way looked like clouds in the sky....if I could only touch. Saw 3 quick meteors.

Rob, Stephanie (hammock), Debi (banjo skillet) and Andy

Woke the next morning (Father's Day)....slept like a rock! Always start the day with coffee. Not a whole lot else to report....uh, we didn't NOT not do a ride. Odd for a Sunday with no ride. What do I have to train for? Took out a few trees (Andy is clearing space for a cabin) and went home. Hit the slushy mart on the way home and purchased $10 worth of lotto tickets.

-Frank