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Columbus GA to Perry GA – 92.73 miles – 4335 ft climbing

The ride started out early, about 20 minutes before dawn. With the most of the clouds blowing out before dawn, the morning was much brighter than the last several days. I wanted to get a jump on traffic by getting off the road out of town, which is a US highway.

My plan worked. The early start got me off the main highway (still 2 lane though) right around 7 am. The roads heading northeast were practically empty in my direction. There was a significant stream of traffic heading into Columbus, though. I am really glad I did not have to deal with that traffic.

The wind was rather brisk out of the northwest, so when I reached the middle segment where it was mostly at my back, I was making excellent time. After that I dealt with the wind as mostly a cross wind that did not feel like much of a hindrance, but the occasional solid tree on my left to block the wind made a difference of about 4 mph.

My worst case analysis of the new route estimated 4 miles of macadamized road. It ended up being 5 miles. It was rough by standards in the southeast, but still nowhere near as bad as New Mexico.

Once again the hills for the most part were gently rolling, so there was no major climbing effort needed. I did trudge up a couple of long climbs, but they were both rather gradual.

The diversity of land use was more pronounced on this stage. I saw some cotton fields still unharvested, peach orchards, and lots of workers in the fields today.

There were still plenty of forests and rivers, though.

The towns were few and far between and hardly any cemeteries on this route.

The early morning departure had me bundled up for upper 40s temperatures and heading into the wind to boot. By the end of the ride, I was able to shed most of the top layer, but never got around to removing my glove liners. I wore a new pair of blue glove liners since the black pair was springing holes. One annoying feature of these new gloves is that they have an affinity of sticking to Velcro, whereas the old pair did not.

The ride went so well, I only consumed 2 of the 4 cliff bars. The 2 Boost drinks just before departure seem to give me a nice charge that carried me well into the ride.

Tomorrow is now a century day, I figure around 105 mile or so with another complete reroute.