Arkansas Love Letter / My Individual Time Trial of the Arkansas High Country Race (June 3 - June 11, 2020)

    

Passing through Leslie, AR

This race, initially scheduled for June 6, 2020 has been postponed to late October. I had my sights set on doing this event back in June 2019 (the event's inaugural year), but I chickened out, fearful of the demands of the hilly, buggy course and the hot weather. This summer, better trained and prepared and with nothing scheduled in the first half of June to keep me from going to ride it, I was determined to give it a good go as an Individual Time Trial (ITT). I had an ambitious plan to cover the 1,000 miles of the Arkansas High Country Race in about 8.5 days, a schedule that left no room for major setbacks or breakdowns. The goal was to be done by June 11th, but I had a couple of spare days since I didn't need to be back home in Texas until the end of the day on the 14th. About seven other people were doing roughly the same thing, some starting at other points along the course two or three days after me. 

Day 1 Fayetteville to near Venus, AR. 143 miles. Max temperature: 108. Time over 100 degrees: 30 minutes. Elevation change 9,764'

    So, there I was, lying on a slab of pavement somewhere in the Pea Ridge National Military Park near the Arkansas-Missouri border, pinned under my loaded bike and questioning my decisions. I had attempted to ride across a narrow low-water crossing when my wheels lost grip and slipped out from under me, sending me skidding across the cement. I moved my shoulders, arms, hips, knees and ankles to see if I had badly hurt myself (I hadn't). Then I extracted myself from under my bike, stood it up and took inventory. My left brake lever, aerobars, handlebars, and saddle were all crooked, but nothing was damaged. I got my multi-tool out and went to straightening and retightening everything, resolving to be more cautious of low-water crossings (I was to hit about eighty of those things in the ensuing days). At that point I was about fifty beautiful, easy miles into this first day's ride.

      Except for my wipeout, the ride for the first several hours was easy and scenic and I had no idea I was even in Missouri until I saw the sign announcing I was entering the town of Seligman. Soon after turning back into Arkansas the route takes the riders across a suspension bridge over the Beaver River located at, you guessed it, the town of Beaver. Both ends of the bridge were flooded and it was closed to all traffic. I carried the bike over the submerged north side and walked to the other end of the bridge where it disappeared again into the flooded river. Since I was the first rider to depart from Fayetteville riding the course in a clockwise direction I was the first to come across obstacles like these. On the far side of the bridge the black water extended into the woods too far for me to see any dry land. The crossing looked a little unsafe but I was most worried about my electronics. I knew I could hold the loaded bike out of the water up to about waist deep, but what if it got deeper than that or I lost my footing? There I'd be wrestling with a bike in who-knows-how-deep water with my tail lights, phone, and bike computer dunked and possibly ruined. Thinking back on it now, I could have put my electronics in my dry bag, waded/swam the bags over the deep water, and made another trip for the bike. I could have saved myself an additional hour of hard, hot riding on Highway 62. But safety is paramount in excursions like this, especially when riding alone. So, I backtracked, sent an email to the race director and other ITT riders and rerouted about 10 - 15 miles to the charming, funky town of Eureka Springs, AR. If you're considering a career in palm-reading, tarot cards, herbalism, shiatsu massage or any pursuits associated with spiritualism but you're attracted to Arkansas for the warm weather and low cost of living, Eureka Springs is your place.  

     I stopped at the King's River Country Store in Marble at about supper time, ate and drank all I could hold, and continued to ride with snacks and an additional BBQ sandwich in my bike bags. The road got rougher as I rode south through the darkening evening in the Ozarks. Much of this part of the course is in Madison County. It seemed that every single mile of gravel road in the country had been freshly graded. One would think, "Nice, that means they were flat and free of potholes and washboard." One would be right, but freshly graded (and not yet rolled) also means loose dirt and rocks through which bike tires must plow, making for rough riding and slow going. I continued riding until about midnight when I started looking for a place to sleep. My detour meant that I wouldn't make it to the informal campsite I had planned to use, and I wound up laying out my bivvy in the wet grass behind an abandoned chicken house. Thunder rumbled in the distance, indicating a large thunderstorm passing through Harrison. I lay snug in my bivvy sack, tried not to worry about rain that may or may not be coming my way, and slept for about four hours.  

Day 2 From near Venus to Buffalo River to Compton  47.6 miles Max temperature: 99. Elevation change 4,833'

    I got packed up and started pedaling about an hour before daylight with a plan to reach the community center at Witts Springs by day's end. I turned off Highway 16 around Red Star and headed north toward Ponca, effectively switching from the Arkansas High Country Northwest Loop to the Central Loop. I was soon caught in an ominous thunderstorm, eventually waiting out the worst of it under a skinny shelter that covers one of the mapboards at a trailhead in the national forest. When I resumed pedaling my bike started making an awful noise, leading me to believe that my rear derailleur was out of alignment. I stopped a couple of times to adjust the cable tension and b-screw, but the bike continued to make a worrying racket as I pedaled. Like a lot of things, bikepacking presents the rider with a series of problems that must be diagnosed and solved or mitigated to continue. This was the first simple problem that I mis-diagnosed. There was nothing wrong with my derailleur, I had just been rained on hard enough to wash the lube off of my chain. I now know the exact sound a thirsty chain begins to make in the larger cassette cogs, but I didn't figure it out until much later in the day when I had to completely wash and re-adjust the bike. 

    My wet brake pads and mushy brakes made me decide to walk the steep, long downhill into Boxley Valley and I got to the Outdoor Center at Ponca late in the morning. I sat on the floor of the long porch, refilled my bottles and drank and ate all I could while sandaled tourists side-eyed me as if I were a mangy stray dog. They were buying souvenirs, waiting for their raft trips on the Buffalo River to depart, and studiously avoiding me, the rain-soaked white-haired guy with the muddy bike. This was the trend for the whole trip, most people wouldn't even make eye contact with me until finally one person (usually someone about my age) would ask about my bike and my route. I loved the solitude of the long days and nights on the bike, but was glad to talk to anyone with good sense. 

    I left Ponca, pedaled the long, paved climb up to Compton and then turned right on the downhill to reenter the Buffalo River Canyon. Where it got steep and rough about five miles from Compton a sign announced that the road was closed, which for a bikepacker always raises the question, "Closed to whom?" I pushed past the roadblock down the rough road past unattended graders and other earth-moving machines that had been doing much-needed repairs on the road. After about two miles of barely-rideable downhill the road turned into thick, black, pebble-infused gumbo that stuck to my tires and immediately built up to the point where my wheels stuck in the frame. I got my paint stick out of my bag and went to work scraping the mud off the tires, but pushing the bike another six feet repeated the mud build-up. My shoes soon grew Frankenstein-like, with inches of thick mud adhering to the soles. We've all seen pictures and video of people carrying their bikes on muddy events like Mid-South and DK, but here we're talking about a 45 to 50-pound bike on a steep hill. If it had not been rained on over the past couple of days it might have been passable, but this was a no-go, with what I estimated to be ten more miles through the muddy canyon until I reached better road just a few miles from Jasper. I decided to reroute, but now I had the problem of extricating myself from the mud and getting back up the hill. I wound up taking all the bags off the bike, slowly hiking about a mile uphill to deposit them where the road turned back into chunky gravel, then returning to the bike, scraping the mud off one last time, shouldering it and carrying it up to my bags, straining my lower back in the process. I reattached my bags to the bike and started to ride slowly back up the hill to Compton, soaked to the bone with sweat and rain, bitten by mosquitoes and deer flies, and totally demoralized. I returned to the convenience store/campground in Compton having wasted most of my afternoon exhausting myself and making no forward progress. The only possibilities for reroutes were back down through Ponca and up and over Mt. Sherman and Low Gap (a trip of 23 miles that included another long, steep climb) or through Gaither, which was 30 miles.  

    My bike needed attention and I needed rest, so I paid to stay in a hardback tent with a wood floor, the most expensive place I lodged during the whole trip. I ate a pizza, cleaned and lubed my bike and tried to tighten up my problematic brakes. Indicative of how rough the road had been, when I dug through my bags to fish out my multi-tool, I found that it had completely come apart, leaving individual allen wrenches and screwdrivers strewn about the bottom of the bag. The small moveable pin in my chain-breaker had similarly some unscrewed. In later moments along the way I would discover that my wheels' through-axles had managed to loosen and come partially unscrewed. Here I was more than a half-day behind schedule on the second day of the trip and as the sky darkened the weight of melancholy set down on me. Tomorrow had to be better.    

Day 3 Compton to Silver Hill 93 miles Max temperature: 115 Time over 100 degrees: 3 hours Elevation change 9,370'

            

 

    I rolled from Compton at daylight and bombed back down the paved road to Ponca, losing in a scant few minutes the elevation I had worked for about two hours to gain the day before. The outdoor center in Ponca was closed, dashing my hopes for breakfast tacos to fortify my ride to Jasper. My mushy brakes were worrying me. I was having to grip the brake levers almost all the way to the handlebars for the brake pads to engage, and I lacked the stopping power I needed to make me ride with confidence on the downhills. Unlike my previous experience on a 500-mile race in East Texas where sand ate away my brake pads, here my brake pads were in very good shape. At a convenience store in Jasper, I bought enough water to top off my bottles and drink my fill and ate a biscuit sandwich. As I prepared to ride out of Jasper, a woman approached me intent on engaging in a long conversation. In her first sentence she conveyed to me that she was in excellent physical shape for a 56-year-old and that the secret to her good health was the fact that she walked everywhere. She repeated the fact that she was 56 a couple more times in our conversation/her monologue. I have no idea how old she thought I was (I'm 56), but I did not offer that information as fodder for comparison or commentary. She lit a cigarette and went on to tell me that she currently lived in Section 8 housing, had grown up in the peanut farm-rich lands of East Texas, had divorced in 1993, and that she valued the company of three elderly dogs as an antidote to loneliness. My preparations done, I politely thanked her for the conversation, bid her good day and got on my bike, leaving her in the stifling late morning heat sitting there on the picnic bench with a halo of Pall Mall smoke around her head. I was hoping to find a restaurant in Mt. Judea, but could only find a general store that didn't appear to sell any hot food. The owner/manager sported a t-shirt that featured some combination of images of firearms and a Bible verse. I topped off my water there and continued south, soon finding myself negotiating a series of long, steep hills. As I flipped through data screens on my bike computer I was shocked to see the temperature registering 115. I had some nice, easy gears on my bike with a granny gear of 34x46, but I often found myself slowly walking the bike up some of the steepest climbs just to work a little less hard and cool down my core temperature. To climb with a loaded bike up a long, steep hill as part of an all-day ride that is part of a multi-day trip is one thing, but it gets harder when the surface is loose gravel, it gets harder still in the afternoon heat, and even a little harder in the stretches that are devoid of shade. Then there were the deer flies with the uncanny knack of biting you on the back right below a shoulder blade at the moment you need both hands to muscle the handebars in the climb. I was trying to get to the only store in Witts Springs, increasingly conscious of the fact that the only substantial food I had eaten so far that day was that sausage and cheese biscuit in Jasper. This was to be my second big mistake of the trip, one that I would unfortunately repeat: buying one sandwich where I should have bought three, eaten two of them and packed the third along with other calorie-dense snacks. 

    Since the trip was so long and there were so many unknowns, I failed to plan my nutrition and was beginning to pay a steep price for it. Prior to the race I thought, "Well, I'll just eat a lot." That's no plan. I know my calorie requirements on the bike: 400 calories per hour of easy riding, 600 calories for an hour of very hard effort. So there are about 5-7,000 required calories for a long day. The biggest meal you typically eat at a restaurant is fewer than 2,000. You can shortcut the calorie requirements for a day or two, but when you deplete your glycogen stores your muscles just go into survival mode. The lesson learned for me is to look at a planned day's ride and figure out where and how I'll be able to carry and eat 7,000 calories. The heat and hard work made me run out of water, too, and I refilled a bottle from the fast-flowing Richland Creek, which was clearer and cleaner than it appears in this photo. 

Richland Creek

    

By the time I got to Witts Springs the store was closed. The community center where I had planned to sleep the night before was still open, though, and I walked into glorious air conditioning starving and dehydrated. The community center supports cyclists who call ahead and request access in exchange for a small donation. In the refrigerator I found the makings of sliced turkey sandwiches and prepared three of them while I dried out my wet clothes. I also found a container of cooked spaghetti noodles and heated a bowl of them in the microwave. There was no sauce, so I flavored them with ranch dressing and salt and devoured them. I resolved to stay at the community center until I was fed and re-hydrated. Since I had the time and good light to do so, I replaced my front brake pads, still puzzled at why my brakes were so mushy. I walked around on the tiled floor in flip flops while my bike shoes dried out, and I noticed that the soles of my feet were hurting, the left more than the right. I could have showered and spent the night at Witts Springs, but I was now a full day behind schedule and was determined to make up a little time. I rolled out a little before dark hoping to make it to the campground at Tyler Bend. I didn't call ahead. Another mistake. 

    Soon after passing through Snowball, the route diverted through section of muddy, weedy double track. I eventually reached and waded through the knee-deep Calf Creek crossing. 

The far side of the crossing at Calf Creek

A thick fog settled on me and when I got to the Tyler Bend campsite I could barely make out a sign that indicated it was full. I eventually slept for about four hours behind the outdoor center in Silver Hill. 

Buffalo Outdoor Center at Silver Hill

Day 4 Silver Hill to Fifty-Six 54 miles Max temperature: 111. Time over 100 degrees: 2.5 hours  Elevation change 5,197'

 

    The fact that there were fewer long climbs after Witts Springs fooled me into thinking this part of the route would be easier. It wasn't. There was a long initial climb up to Marshall, where I stopped and ate two breakfast burritos at a Sonic while sitting at an outdoor table. Say what you like about Sonic, it is one of the only fast-food places you can count on to have outdoor seating. While restaurants are taking measures against COVID-19, you'll be eating your egg mcmuffin sitting on the hot sidewalk at a McDonald's. By now I could hardly stand the smell of myself, prompting me to remember when I went for 60 days without showering and wearing one uniform during the Persian Gulf War in 1991.  

    Much of the route after Marshall was comprised of short, steep climbs with low-water crossings at the bottom, some of which required wading, and many of the uphills included parts that were too steep and/or loose to ride. Here is where I started to experience real pain in the soles of my feet and under the toes. At one point I sat down, took my shoes and socks off and inspected my white, puffy feet. Could it be trench foot? Can you get trench foot in three days? I didn't think so, but I wasn't sure. My shoes are Pearl Izumi X-alp elevates, very good mountain bike shoes with a rugged outsole for walking. I used thick cork insoles made by Sole. My socks were Smartwool, the best socks I've ever had. The entire shoe/sock setup had been tested in training and a 500-mile race. I decided my feet needed to dry out, so I rode the next few hours without socks. Another misdiagnosis. Another mistake. 

    I saw rental cabins as soon as I reached the town of Fifty-Six, so named for its school district number when it was founded in 1918. Although I had only covered a scant 54 miles so far that day, I was whipped, starving, and my feet felt like they were on fire. The young mom managing the cabins assigned me a room where the A/C worked the best, let me use her landline phone (no cell signal in town) to call in an order at the only restaurant in town (Hunter's), and in an act of profound kindness, washed and dried my clothes. As my feet dried out I could see blisters starting to form just behind the calluses on the balls of my feet and under four of my toes. So this wasn't trench foot at all, just good old friction caused by hiking the bike for hours up and down steep hills. That was why the left foot hurt worse than the right. I had been walking the bike on the non-drive side and my left leg was doing more pushing than the right. I was unable to find moleskin at the gas station in town, but was able to get something like New Skin liquid bandage. I spent the evening and night eating and resting.  

Day 5 Fifty-Six to Conway 103 miles Max temperature: 113. Time over 100 degrees: 3.5 hours Elevation change 7,247'

 The route out of Fifty-Six took me through the beautiful Blanchard Springs park and then through a double-track closed-to-traffic dirt road that functioned as some kind of Olympic Training Center for small, athletic ticks. I could actually feel them jump onto my legs as I pedaled through the tall weeds. I soon arrived at Mountain View and hit the Walmart like a pirate pillaging a small coastal village. In addition to snacks and water, I came out with moleskin and gold bond powder. About the only open restaurants in town were fast-food places. Sonic was again best in show with its shaded patio seating. 

Downtown Mountain View, AR

My last big climb of the day, the one that would mark my temporary departure from the Ozarks and entry in the Arkansas River valley, took me through Prim where, being the Lord's Day, the gas station was closed and the churches were full. I managed to find a water hose at the gas station, but the water I put in my bottles had an overpowering taste of rubber hose and I was able to drink very little of it as I continued to ride south. I resupplied at a little grocery store in Greer's Ferry and continued in the killing heat of the afternoon. The riding was easy, though, with much of the route paved and generally downhill. I slathered sunscreen on my arms and legs, put a bandana under my helmet to cover my neck and reveled in the easy speed. The previous day's extreme foot pain was now almost gone and I was making good time. I toggled the raucous playlist I had listened to for much of the day onto classical music. As the afternoon heat started to relent a little bit, just as Mozart's Motet in D Major Ave Verum Corpus started to pour through my earbud, I rounded a bend in a gravel road and was treated to the sight of a beautiful, lush green field where round bales of hay stood like sacred monuments. It seemed to me to be a perfect moment of communion with God, recompense for my struggles and an endorsement of my quixotic enterprise. 

    I made it down to the big town of Conway a few hours later, checked into the Howard Johnson's, got cleaned up a little and headed over to the IHOP where I shivered in the air conditioning and ate a huge meal. I should have ordered another meal to go, but I still hadn't learned my lesson and I passed up another chance to catch up on my calorie deficit. One good decision I made was to contact Eric Leamon, the owner of "The Ride" bike shop right along the route through Conway, and arrange for some bike maintenance before they opened for their regular hours. Eric, an avid cyclist, runner and triathlete, is a Bell and Co. Mountain bike teammate. 

    I spent a long time in the cool of the hotel room studying the map and the predicted weather. My planned schedule of 8.5 days was in tatters, rendered ridiculous by my slow progress and obstacles in the Ozarks. I was now facing the prospect of having to reel off six consecutive hundred mile days to make it back to Fayetteville early enough on the 14th to get back to Texas late the same day. Those distances were fairly doable down to Little Rock and over to Mt. Ida, but I had enough experience in the Ouachita Mountains to know that 100-mile days through that part of the course were extremely tough. The safer option would be to just ride the rest of the central loop route from Conway over to Russellville, then back to Fayetteville via White Rock Mountain, just a little over 200 miles instead of 600 miles. Of course, that shortcut would invalidate my time trial. To complicate matters further, the outer bands of Tropical Storm Cristobal were headed our way. I thought I would just ride the next day as far as I could, wait for the worst of the rain to pass through, and then continue riding. I went to sleep not sure whether I would commit to attempting the remaining 600 miles or taking the shortcut through Russellville.  

Day 6 Conway to Mayflower to Conway 26.5 miles Max temperature: 77. Elevation change 587'

 Eric Leamon and Mike Brown very kindly met me at the shop at 7 a.m. and quickly tuned up my bike. Nothing major was wrong with it. My mushy brakes were healed with nothing more than an increase in cable tension (a simple fix that had mystified two other bike mechanics and myself) and my faulty shifting was similarly fixed with a few decisive turns of the barrel adjuster. I had a donut and kolache breakfast at the nearby Shipley's and started pedaling toward my decision point, Toad Suck Park. Pumped up by my conversation with Eric and Mike and with my bike now running like a Swiss watch I told myself, "Yeah, I'm going for it. You only live once." I took a selfie at Toad Suck Park for race documentation and pressed on toward Maumelle and Little Rock. By the time I got to Mayflower the sky was dark and winds were starting to pick up. On the ride down there, though, I could tell I was already extremely low on calories in spite of my breakfast and big restaurant meal the night before. In spite of the fact that the road was flat and paved I had no energy and I was repeatedly getting up out of the saddle to pedal, a sure sign of being underfed. I bought a honey bun and candy bars in Mayflower and found a park pavilion in the hopes that the rain would quickly pass to the north of me. Nothing doing. This was not a quick late-afternoon shower that's done in an hour, but a heavy yellow to orange-colored storm that lasted all day and into the night. Every time I checked the weather the band of showers just got wider and it wasn't going anywhere.

The outer bands of Tropical Storm Cristobal. The satellite picture had been more bleak, but this was the image I captured when I knew my 1,000 mile plan was sunk

I just wasn't going to ride 80-100 more miles through that and now the decision was unavoidable. My 1,000 mile ITT was slipping away and I was going to have to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear with a shortcut back to Fayetteville. With a heavy heart I contacted trackleaders and asked them to classify me as "scratched" and take my tracker icon off the webpage. Then I posted about my situation on Facebook. I was prepared to wait out the rain all night under the pavilion in Mayflower, but Wes Pruitt, another Bell teammate who lives in Conway very kindly offered to pick me up. Wes is an alderman in Conway, representing about 15,000 people, and an exceptionally good dude. We ate pizza, hung out with his beautiful family and fabulous dogs and cats, and I went to bed early.    

Day 7 Conway to Russellville 68 miles Max temperature: 104. Time over 100 degrees: 2 hours Elevation change 2,208'

 I pedaled out of Conway (again) at first light in cooler temperatures than I had experienced thus far in the trip. I bought a breakfast sandwich (just one, not three) at Toad Suck and pedaled west toward Petit Jean Mountain, which was to be about halfway between Conway and Russellville. Most of the route that day was as flat as a Parisian runway model, but Petit Jean is a fairly steep paved climb of nearly 1,000 feet in about three miles.

Arkansas River from Petit Jean Mountain

I spent a couple of hours waiting out a thunderstorm at the state park's beautiful visitors' center and ate a tremendous breakfast burrito that managed to include crispy hash browns INSIDE the burrito. Mentally, the pressure was off because I knew I was in the process of a relatively cushy 200 miles back to Fayetteville. The extreme heat was beating down on me as I passed through Dardanelle, over the Arkansas River and into Russellville. I checked into a Motel 6, washed my clothes, and made my way over to the Cracker Barrel where I ate one big meal and ordered another one to go (see, I was slowly learning to order that extra meal). At this point the pain in my feet was totally gone. I had managed to keep my blisters from breaking by protecting them with moleskin and the skin on the soles of my feet bounced back tougher. In fact, at the time of this writing a couple of weeks after my ride, I have the feet of a Hobbit. They are of such cinder-block texture that I must take care stepping into underwear or running shorts for fear of tearing the sheer material.  

    I planned to camp on White Rock Mountain for my last night of the trip, but the timeline of the next day's plan hinged on getting to the general store in Oark (the oldest continually running store in Arkansas and one of the very few places to get food between Russellville and near Fayetteville) some seventy miles nearly all uphill before they closed at 4 pm.  

Day 8 Russellville to Turner Bend 89 miles Max temperature: 93. Elevation change 7,408'

   

     I got up at 3 am, plowed through the second meal I had ordered at Cracker Barrel the evening before, and babied my loaded bike down to the dark Motel 6 parking lot. The first few hours of the day's ride out of the Arkansas River basin and back into the Ozarks would be either slightly or steeply uphill. Thankfully the gravel was firm and fairy smooth and the temperature was mercifully cool. I listened to podcasts as I rode, but I couldn't stop worrying about my timeline to Oark. I would do the math over and over, then repeat the process when I could see I'd covered ten additional miles. I'd catch myself looking down at my bike computer, constantly recalculating time, speed, and distance. My anxiety made no sense. I had plenty of time as long as I didn't have some kind of major equipment issue. There were no rivers to cross and no more tricky navigation decisions to make. I guess that eight days is a lot of solitude, and I need to get better at managing the thoughts rattling around in my head on a long solo trip like this. I eventually forced myself to stop looking at the numbers and look instead on the beautiful forested mountains around me.

Near Pilot Rock north of Russellville, AR

By late morning I was again conscious of my calorie deficit and I started rummaging through my bags and compartments for any and all food. I ate the last of my Trail Butter and mixed up and drank the last of my Spiz but I arrived at the Oark general store just after noon (!) with not just my stomach but my muscles on empty.

The face of glycogen depletion and helmet hair

The restaurant seating was closed, but you could order through the window and eat outside on the benches and picnic tables. I ordered and slowly ate two hamburger meals as I watched motorcyclists, Confederate flag enthusiasts, apparent gun rights activists, young families, and elderly couples circulate up to the window to order. A woman in her 80's, surprised to see that the restaurant seating was closed, turned to me for an explanation. When I told her that we had to order at the window and sit at the picnic tables or benches outside, she clenched her teeth, narrowed her eyes, and stared at me for several seconds as if I were COVID-19 itself. I stuck some french fries in my mouth and stared back. I ordered a third hamburger meal to go and left, riding slowly along the paved road that parallels the class III rapids of the gorgeous Mulberry river. The Wolf Pen campground was closed due to flood damage, but I napped on a picnic table where the afternoon sun struggled to reach through the leaves of tall oaks, hoping the 3,500 or so calories I had just eaten would soon boost my energy levels. Having researched this later, it takes many hours to replenish depleted glycogen levels. I'd have been much better off topping off my calorie levels throughout the trip, instead of attempting to occasionally refill an empty bucket. I continued through the town of Cass where, according to my published family history, my great-great grandparents Dan and Catherine McGraw homesteaded after moving their young family from Mississippi in 1878. My grandfather Harvey was born and raised in Altus, just a few miles down the road from the race route. 

    The road that turns off of Highway 23 to White Rock Mountain is steep and twisty, and I was surprised to see a sign announcing its closure. Then the bikepacker question, "Closed to whom?" followed by a cell phone call to the White Rock Mountain campground where I was hoping to spend the night. The lady who answered my call told me that a large section of the road had been washed out, but that it would be OK to just carry my bike around the hazardous section. I thanked her, hung up, and continued climbing, but soon after received a text informing me the road was closed to cyclists, too.

I pedaled down to the Turner Bend outfitters just a few miles off course to the south, where I was able to roll out my bivvy at the cleanest, most idyllic campground I've ever seen for $12.  

 

Day 8.5 Turner Bend to Fayetteville 45 miles Max temperature: 88. Elevation change 2,425'

Add caption

    The closure of the White Mountain road forced me up Highway 23 out of Cass which climbed 1,200 feet within about three miles.

From near Mulberry Mtn north of Cass, AR. They say the Ozarks are not very tall, but the valleys are really deep 

My empty stomach was gladdened to behold the Pig Trail Bypass Country Cafe and Gas station on Highway 295, where I ordered a breakfast burrito. As I waited for it to be cooked, a heavily tattooed long-haired man came in and loudly, profanely, and descriptively announced to the owner/manager what he'd like to see done to Nancy Pelosi. I paid for my one burrito and hustled outside to eat it before continuing west toward Fayetteville. I was hungry again when I passed through Elkins, a scant seven or eight miles short of my destination, so I stopped at a McDonalds and ate another breakfast. I got back to my truck before noon glad to be done, but without any strong feelings of personal accomplishment. I was hoping to get together for a coffee with my fabulous Cuban friends who live in Fayetteville and teach at the U of A, but also in a hurry to get my seven-hour drive done and get home.   

    I had fallen short of my goal of completing the entire 1,000-mie Arkansas High Country route, but I had completed a 670-mile loop back to my point of origin and traversed the parts of the course that go through the challenging Ozarks. My plan had been ridiculously optimistic, but my experience will help me build a better one. I come away from this experience grateful for every pedal stroke, thankful to those who helped me and prayed for my safety, and wiser about doing these kinds of bikepacking adventures. I feel like I have unfinished business with this race, though. Sixty-seven percent is not a very good grade.