Saddle up for an exhilarating journey across Georgia with the Cycling Men of Leisure as we lead our largest-ever team of 43 riders through the challenging Appalachian foothills. This episode captures the first half of our fourth consecutive BRAG (Bike Ride Across Georgia) adventure, where the terrain proved anything but flat.
From Rome to Jasper to Dawsonville, we navigate the notorious "Three-Headed Medusa Hill" – a punishing 14% grade climb that humbled even the most experienced cyclists in our group. Between the grueling ascents, we discover the rich tapestry of small-town Georgia, including a visit to "the only legal distillery in Jasper," where smoked cinnamon old-fashioneds become our recovery drink of choice.
Beyond the cycling, this episode reveals the logistics, camaraderie, and unexpected moments that define a great bicycle tour. We explore our experience with Padre Cycle Inn's full-service camping option (a game-changer for multi-day rides), engage in a playful rivalry with the "Cycling Women Against Leisure" team, and encounter remarkable local characters like Chris, who created an entire cycling park from recycled factory materials.
The episode features on-location audio from our distillery visit and an interview with the team behind Padre Cycle Inn, showcasing how their service transforms the traditional camping experience for cyclists. Whether you're planning your own cycling adventure or simply enjoy experiencing the journey vicariously, this episode delivers equal parts inspiration and practical insight.
Stay tuned for part two, where we'll reveal who conquered the go-kart track, share our interview with BRAG's executive director, and wrap up our Georgia cycling adventure. Subscribe now to ensure you don't miss the conclusion of our cross-state odyssey!
Support
Jersey Store
Embarking on a journey of camaraderie that spans years, Adam and Michael have cultivated a deep friendship rooted in their mutual passion for cycling. Through the twists and turns of life, these two friends have pedaled side by side, weaving a tapestry of shared experiences and good-natured teasing that only solidifies the authenticity of their bond.
Their cycling escapades, filled with laughter and banter, are a testament to the enduring spirit of true friendship. Whether conquering challenging trails or coasting through scenic routes, Adam and Michael's adventures on two wheels are a testament to the joy found in the simple pleasures of life.
If you're on the lookout for a podcast that captures the essence of friendship and the thrill of cycling, look no further. Join them on this audio journey, where they not only share captivating stories but also invite you to be a part of their cycling community. Get ready for a blend of fun tales, insightful discussions, and a genuine celebration of the joy that comes from embracing the open road on two wheels. This podcast is your ticket to an immersive and uplifting cycling-centric experience.
and Remember,
It's a Great Day for a Bike Ride!
https://www.facebook.com/cyclingmenofleisure
https://cyclingmenofleisure.com/
http...
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
Well, it's time for Road Adventures with Cycling Men
of Leisure, the podcast forcyclists who understand that
riding is not just about gettingto the destination, but the
experience along the way.
Now here are the originalCycling Men of Leisure Adam and
Michael.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Welcome to Road Adventures of Cycling Men of
Leisure.
I am Adam and again I am joinedwith my good friend, mr Michael
Sharp.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
Hey Adam, how we doing.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
You know I am good.
I'm back in the land ofMichigan after our wonderful
adventure.
How was your flight home?
Uneventful, which is the way welike it.
It landed where it was supposedto.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
It did.
Indeed, it was a little late,but you know, you know, we got
there.
We're happy about that.
Uh, no problems.
How about yours?
Speaker 2 (01:09):
I was delayed as well .
You, you actually texted me andsaid you were delayed and that
was about an hour delay.
They took me down to the end ofd and uh, like three flights
leaving from like a 10 minute, a10 foot spot.
It was kind of crazy.
People just kept pushingforward.
I'm like, is there like a, likea, like a plank that people are
(01:30):
jumping off of back?
There's nowhere to go downthere.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
So at least they didn't make you fly out of the
outpost t.
Yes, now all the way there onthe end what are we talking
about?
Speaker 2 (01:40):
we're talking about our adventure across georgia.
We had a phenomenal time.
Yes, we, uh, we were lucky, we,we were able to complete the
well.
No, no mechanicals, no flats nomechanicals it was a good thing
(02:01):
all the hotels, all of yourhard work with the rental cars.
This is the first time I'mgoing to mention armando in the
show.
Armando was huge to us and tookyou into south carolina for a
rental car.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
So hard to find a rental car on a saturday in
heartswell, georgia, but he wasnice enough to detour, go up
north, drop me off.
So it all worked and we had acouple of very successful team
events as well.
We'll talk a little bit aboutthat and, just to give everybody
kind of expectations, I thinkwe're turning this into a
(02:39):
two-parter.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
Two-parter?
Yeah, definitely.
After looking at all of theadventures across the great
state of Georgia, we've beenable to interview some people.
We'll put those interviews inthere.
We've got some good stuff foryou.
We're pretty excited.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
So tell you what Excuse me, while I, pour some
cycling mental leisure, bragKansas City style whiskey there.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Nice, nice, that speakeasy we had, we'll get into
a little bit later.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
Oh, that was good too .
We had a.
It was just.
It was a good ride.
I will tell you which youalready know, but I will tell
our listeners and our viewers.
I will tell you which youalready know, but I will tell
our listeners and our viewers.
(03:36):
Northern Georgia is really thebase of the Appalachian
Mountains.
There was some long climbs andthere was some very steep climbs
.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
So that made for a fun and interesting time.
So yesterday I had to ride thebus home and I drove my car to
work, but I unfortunately had alittle bit of a radiator leak
and so it's getting repaired inmy van.
And so I booked myself a ridehome on the bus and a passenger
(04:03):
I saw I used to drive when I wasdriving and she said, oh, she
said I didn't realize, you stillworked for Letts.
And I said, yeah, I still do.
And she said she said oh, shesaid what happened?
I said, well, I came back fromthe airport and unfortunately
flew it under my van, yada, yada, yada.
And I said so I had to book abus ride home.
(04:25):
She said, oh, where were you?
I said I was in Georgia ridingmy bicycle.
She said, well, it's flat,right.
And all I could think about waswell, maybe 75 is flat, but
where you and I were wasdefinitely not flat.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
So not flat, but we'll talk about that.
It was a good ride and we'vegot a lot of interesting stories
.
We did do a better job thistime.
I will let me give you kudos.
You produced a reel for usevery day to kind of keep people
who are following us on our, onour Facebook page or on our
(04:57):
inner on the internet keep themkind of informed of of what we
were doing.
And we also did manage to get afew clips.
We've always had trouble in thepast like getting clips because
we get carried away.
We do have a few clips andwe're going to share those, uh,
throughout these next twoepisodes let me, we can
definitely do that.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
So, um, let's start with some of the basics.
We had a team of 43.
We were the third, uh, threeyears in a row, um, uh, we had
the largest team.
We did have a little bit of arivalry, and so we'll get into
(05:41):
that, um, which was all good andfun.
Okay, yeah, we'll talk aboutthat.
I mean 43 to 10.
I don't know if it's muchrivalry, but anyway, we do love
you, savannah, so we'll justkeep going with that.
But, uh, um, no, all good andfun, but, um, you know the thing
I think we should do first,since we mentioned that we had a
(06:03):
team of 43, why don't we payhomage to our team?
We'll go first name only.
Here.
I think we should mention ourteam members and thank them.
We had such a wonderful time.
I'll go first here.
Credit to Peggy, jean, lynette,amy, sandy, natalie, virginia,
(06:27):
carrie, lisa and Tamara, whichwas our ladies team, and Audra.
Thank you, ladies, thank youvery much.
And then we have Tommy, william, armando, gary, mark, joe, don
and Bill, and I'm going to letyou go with the rest.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
All right, and we also had David Scott, harold
Will, david, different David,steve, neil Trip, two guys named
Michael and Adam Alex, adifferent.
Michael, stephen, zach, brian,paul, david, john Jeffrey.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
Doug, another Paul, Larry and Audra, and then we had
some who did Brag Light.
And then let's get into ourhonorary member, Gary.
He had a wedding to go to.
As you teased him, he shouldhave went virtually, but he did
send me a photograph.
His family he was asharp-dressed man and looked
sharp with his family,great-looking family.
But every girl's crazy About asharp-dressed man.
(07:39):
That's right.
Okay, you too, please don'tblock us.
That's right.
Okay, you too, please don'tblock us.
We also want to mention a veryspecial young man, honorary team
member of ours, Phoenix.
Phoenix did not qualify becausethey did not consider him an
adult.
I don't think I qualify as anadult either sometimes, but
(08:02):
that's okay.
Probably not, but you and I wereable to come together and get
this man an honorary team memberof ours, which was really
interesting because when we toldthe story to other team members
, other teams have done the samething where they honored him,
and not just Phoenix, butsomeone who was not an adult.
(08:25):
But so I know that we are soappreciative of our team.
We had a great time.
Many, many people returned and,luckily for us, we actually had
some.
You and I did some advertisingthrough the show and we got some
organic writers and met somenew people and just had a great
(08:48):
time.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
Fantastic, fantastic time, fantastic turnout.
Thank you everybody.
It was great meeting a lot ofnew people that we've never met
before first-time riders.
And then it was really great tojust see some of our friends
that we've been riding with foryears, not just at the Georgia
ride but at, you know, michiganand Kentucky and in different
(09:12):
places.
So always a good time.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
So, before we go into the deep dive of our adventure,
I think that we do need toclose a loophole.
We ended our last show, like wealways do, with a listener
spotlight, so could you give ussome clues?
Speaker 3 (09:33):
and I need to, uh, organically search for the
guesses while you're reading theclues, because we had people
coming out of the woodworks withguesses we had a lot of guesses
, so we'll we'll see if any ofthem are right, but I will give
you the hints that I provided onour last episode.
This city began in the early1860s.
(09:57):
Its name changed twice beforethe railroad selected its
current name.
It was named in honor of anative chief.
Historically, it is best knownfor a disaster that occurred in
(10:25):
the vicinity, and here is thefinal one Snow helped elevate
this town into notoriety.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
So, I'm not sure the order.
I usually take a.
We've been.
We've been working tirelesslyto get these shows together, so
I do apologize the order, butI'm going to go with our, our,
our good friend Steven, whowrites us all the time, who said
love the show so much.
Guys, one of these days we'llride together.
(10:58):
Guest for this listener.
Spotlight is Truckee.
California had a privilege totake the California Zephyr from
Emeryville, california, toChicago in 2023, thanks to the
Amtrak conductor for pointingout the park and the monument to
the settlers who perished whenthey failed to negotiate the
Donner Pass through SierraNevada mountain range.
(11:19):
Before October, the snowstormalong the section for I-80,
trucks being stuck for days.
Truckee, indeed, is named afterthe Indian chief who had two
English names before beingrenamed.
Keep up the great work.
Our monthly supporter.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
Alex, I'm sorry.
I just had to laugh because youwere talking about the Donner
Party and it's like they wereunable to navigate.
It was just the way you said.
It was just very, very humorous.
That's why I was laughing.
It's like, well, that wasn'ttheir only problem, let me tell
you.
But anyway, go ahead.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
They had other problems no they had a lot of
other problems uh, our friendalex, um and uh says.
Here's my guest for thisepisode's listener spotlight
truckie, california.
Truckie was named for theCentral Pacific Railroad in the
1860s during the construction ofthe first transcontinental
railroad.
Previously names were Gray'sSection and Coburn Station.
(12:15):
The town name comes from theP-A-I-U-T-E Pawtee Chief, whose
friendly greetings to earlysailors or heroes were choque.
Meaning all is right wasmistaken for his name.
The Donner Party tragicallyoccurred in 1846 to 47 after a
(12:36):
heavy snowstorm trapped 87pioneers traveling west.
41 have died.
The survivors restored,resorted, not restored, resorted
to cannibalism.
See you guys in a few more days, which we had a wonderful time
with him.
Um, you know, I do know.
(12:58):
Oh, here's another one.
Uh, uh, our friend from Ohiowho gave us a ride, and uh and
our first brag and stored ourbike boxes.
Um, uh, Matt, um.
He says listener, spotlight,Truckee, California, gray
station, Everybody gets the sameone Wow.
(13:18):
I know and then I do know.
I'm trying to find it.
I know our friend Jeffdefinitely mentioned Truckee.
Speaker 3 (13:31):
And then, I believe, armando put in a guess.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
He did, and I think that's in our resident thread
with Armando, and it's adifferent city, so I want to
make sure I get to that.
So give me just one second here.
Speaker 3 (13:48):
Everybody's really going on this town in California
, aren't they?
Speaker 2 (13:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
Won't they be surprised when I announce it's
St Louis?
Speaker 2 (13:58):
Oh man, really, I'm just kidding.
So am I?
I don't know, I'm trying tofind it here.
Speaker 3 (14:13):
And then just to, while you're doing that, I'll
fill some time here.
We will not have, because it'sa two-parter.
There will not be a listenerspotlight at the end of this one
.
There will be a listenerspotlight at the end of the
second part of this, uh, thisepisode as part of the
conclusion.
So, and right now we just lostlike 50 of our listeners.
(14:35):
It's like oh, oh man, they'renot gonna.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
Um, listening to the broadcast just found out that
you're doing Padres.
I am as well.
Uh, great minds think alike.
Um, yeah, I know, he said adifferent city.
Do you have that?
Speaker 3 (14:57):
I believe he said someplace in Nevada.
I don't know, I didn't lookbecause I didn't look, but
Armando did it, did do anotherguess Someplace.
That was not what everybodyelse guessed, yeah, anyway.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
Unfortunately I can't find it, but I assumed that
when four people came withTruckee oh, you know, dead space
kills radio.
I know I can cut it out, though, but no, uh, I cannot find it,
(15:43):
but I know that he was.
He talked about it whilewriting and I was thinking to
myself well, buddy, I think theworld of you before people came
out I'm gonna go with truckiecaliforn California, the fifth
guess, are you sure?
Speaker 3 (15:57):
Well, I mean, if it walks quacks smells, I'm giving
you a chance to opt out and trysomething else.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
No, no, I'm going to go with Truckee.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
Well, apparently I'm making these things way too easy
now, because Trocay, californiais in fact the listener
spotlight for this episode.
Okay, let me tell you a littlebit more about it.
It was founded in 1863.
(16:25):
The name changed twice, which Ibelieve, uh, alex, I believe,
mentioned it was gray stationand coburn station.
And then the railroad, thecentral pacific railroad, came
in and says, uh, we're going toname it Trocay I believe it's
pronounced Trocay In honor of anative chief.
(16:46):
And then the Donner Party yeahright, not too far outside of
town, donner Party in 1846 raninto little problems.
They started out on the OregonTrail and they had some
infighting and they were tryingto take some shortcuts and they
(17:07):
just didn't get along.
And then they had an early snowand things just spiraled
downhill from there and thensnow.
Actually, this is the.
The hilltop lodge was one ofthe first snow lodges to have
(17:30):
lifts, you know, like ski lifts,and it is one of the snowiest
you know resort areas in America.
So there you go.
So congratulations to all fourpeople.
We've never had four people getit.
I must be slipping, but that'sokay, I'm glad people are
(17:54):
getting that.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
Does Cycling man of Leisure have an R and D
department?
Speaker 3 (18:01):
Uh, we can certainly have one.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
We need to get a better one, because we need to
make them harder.
No, just kidding.
Oh well, I can.
Speaker 3 (18:08):
Oh, don't even give me that.
You know there's always beenthat question.
It's like, well, this is toohard or too easy.
I don't want to make them tooeasy, like I've said, but then I
don't want to make it so hardthat no one can ever guess it.
But you know we've I've eitherbeen making them easier the last
few months or I'm not thinkingthey're any easier.
(18:30):
I'm thinking people are juststarting to figure out kind of
how I develop my clues and andare putting more effort into
them.
So I'm not going to say it's me.
I'm going to say they'restarting to to get into it more
and really do more research.
Beep.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
This is a show edit.
You guys are geniuses.
Thank you very much.
No, no, I'm I'm glad peopleinteract and everything with
this show.
But all right, let's get intoit.
Speaker 3 (19:05):
We did have a lot of comments about the listener
spotlight this last week on theride.
So thank you all for the verypositive comments and the fact
that you guys really kind ofenjoy that, uh, that trivia,
trivia, part of our show.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
So you, you are absolutely right all right um
what do we got now?
Well, we, if you do notregularly listen to the show,
and we do know that we have somenew listeners who asked us
about the show when they were inGeorgia and saw the jerseys and
the shirts- Lots of peopleasking about the show.
yes, and we know that there'sbeen some new listenership
(19:43):
because we saw from when Braggwas going on and over.
We obviously have some statsand we could see we had some new
listeners and so we really wantto just thank anyone who's new
here.
You and I went on an adventureacross the great state of
Georgia this was our fourth yearin a row doing that and I
(20:06):
figured without going, and thenwe went here and then we went
there.
We could we could just givesome highlights of some things
that we that we, yeah, let's dothe highlights of brag 2025
there were some hills.
Thank you, have a nice day.
I'm just kidding, there weresome hills.
We had a big team.
(20:28):
We know we've been we you knowanyone who does a bike adventure
.
There's some logistics thatcome into play somehow.
Some way you got to get fromthe start.
You're going to get to the endon the bicycle traditionally,
and then you've got to get backhome, and you and I, because
it's such a long drive, weusually fly when we go to
Georgia.
(20:49):
So it's the, you know, takingthe bike apart, which we've
gotten a lot better and we weredefinitely apprehensive at first
.
But you know, it's kind of parfor the course for us now.
I mean, only twice we've hadextra screws on yours.
Speaker 3 (21:02):
I'm up to five, five extra screws.
Ever since I started reputtingmy bike together, I keep a
little bag of the extra piecesand parts.
Yeah, and all these years I'veonly got five little extra
pieces, so apparently theyweren't important.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
Don't worry about that shifting, it's not
important.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
I'm kidding.
I'm kidding, I don't wantpeople to think I'm driving a
bike with no brakes or something.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
Tell the story of what you really do with the
notification you get.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
Oh, because we've got these huge bike boxes, our
friends at the at the airportwho are responsible for our
safety, and let me tell youright now I appreciate what they
do.
It is not an easy job and Ireally don't mind that.
They have to go looking throughmy luggage, as long as they
(21:57):
don't, like you know, ripeverything out and then just
kind of throw it all back in.
Almost every single time and Ihaven't checked this time, I'll
be honest you get the littlenotification because they see
these big boxes and they'rethinking, oh yeah, they've got
something good in there.
So they always pop them allopen and they're going oh, it's
just a bike and some shoes andyou know bike pieces and parts,
(22:23):
but they are required to put inthis little tag to say hey, you
know what Our friendly airportsecurity people did?
In fact, open your luggage andrummage through it as a safety
precaution.
So I get these.
So what I've started doing andyou saw it on the inside of lid
of my box I have started tapingall of those those little
(22:49):
placards that you get when youdo that and I'm going to
wallpaper the entire inside ofmy box from all of these.
We have inspected your luggagefor safety concerns, so I'm
working on it well, I have anannouncement.
I have built my bicycle, I havetaken it out of the box and, yes
(23:11):
sir, I did have a newnotification that they were in
my box, so I you know I'mthinking we need to start doing
something like maybe maybe nexttime I'll put uh like some candy
in there or something and saythank you very much for
inspecting my box.
(23:32):
I appreciate what you do.
I know it's not an easy job.
I understand this does looklike something that you know I'd
be stashing drugs or some otherillegal paraphernalia.
And here is some candy to makeyour day a little better.
Thank you very much.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
They're gonna you know what they're gonna do.
They're gonna radio up.
They're gonna say hold on.
I want to tell you what they'regonna do.
Give me one second here.
Speaker 4 (23:53):
Yep, this is what's gonna happen, uh uh, could you
please pull mr sharp aside?
This guy thinks he's a wise guy.
We're gonna give him a reallyclose inspection.
I would make sure that he's nottrying to get through with
anything funny.
Speaker 3 (24:13):
Uh, my love, it sounds like he's being a suck up
and definitely trying to getsomething.
But maybe you know like alittle little bag of you know
some nice chocolates orsomething, maybe a little a
bottle of Woodford, stick it inthere and just say thank you for
your service.
I know, you're probably right.
They'd probably like hunt medown and say, okay, this guy is
trying to, that's some kind ofdiversionary tactic, and uh, we,
(24:35):
we're gonna definitely inspectall of his stuff oh, yeah, for
sure, give us your credit cardand stop trying to be funny.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
Um, but you know, um I could tell when I got to
detroit, um, the you rememberhow you and I, outside the
airport, really clamped my bikedown and we really tightened
those straps, they were allloose, and so I was like, oh boy
, and so that's why I alreadybuilt the bike.
I was nervous, and so Iunclipped the case and got all
the webbing off and everythingwas fine.
I mean, bike was fine, luckily.
(25:12):
You know, you and I always putthe pool noodles around the
frame and everything, but theyjust did not tighten it back up
and so, but yeah, well, we'llstart in a little bit of a
chronological order.
So you and I both landed withinminutes of each other.
I had something to do for work,you had something to do real
(25:34):
quick.
We jumped in.
The Sky Club Trip started offsuccessfully.
F flights made it on time.
Um, it was very humorous.
We were almost felt like wewere, uh, going crazy.
They announced that our baggagewas going to come on one
terminal, our one carousel, andthey were spread out from.
It's like like hey, how can wemess with these guys?
(25:57):
They were like everything waseverywhere.
Speaker 3 (25:58):
Two bags down here, two bags all the way at the
other end.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
Yeah.
So then we gathered the bikesand all the bags and we divided
and conquered.
You took the train for the carInstead of us taking everything
on the train.
You went and got the car pickedus up.
Everything fit.
You went and got the car pickedus up, everything fit.
Speaker 3 (26:17):
So Michael walked over, got the car, brought it
back over, while Adam wassetting out front just relaxing.
Huh, okay, that sums it up.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
Well, I did have my laptop out and I was signing
something for my boss that Iforgot.
But yes, you did do that.
And then you got some reallycool magnets.
You were, and so I'll let youtalk about those.
Speaker 3 (26:45):
Well, every day I'm getting these things.
Hey, you can get this specialfrom you know, any one of these
places that sell personalizedtchotchkes to brand your
business.
And they had car signs and Iwas like you know what?
We don't have any cycling menof leisure car signs, but every
time we go on one of these youknow week-long rides or
(27:07):
multi-day rides a lot of timeswe rent a car in the middle or
at the beginning or whatever.
I was like for that price, Ishould just get some.
So I ordered two of them andthey came in.
They look really sharp.
They got kind of maroon aroundthe border and then they have
our logo, cycling Men of Leisure, and then it has, you know,
cycling Men of Leisure RoadAdventure, cycling Men of
Leisure podcast, and so I got acouple of those.
(27:28):
So I took them out and weslapped them on the side, so we
were advertising as we droveacross from Atlanta up to Rome.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
So they look pretty sharp, got a lot of mileage out
of them, if there's somebodydriving by on the interstate and
they go.
Speaker 3 (27:41):
I'm really bored.
Maybe, oh well, let's justlisten to that podcast.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
And coming out of Atlanta we had a little bit of
traffic, which is par for thecourse.
You always have traffic out ofAtlanta, so we got some mileage
out of that.
Speaker 3 (27:59):
We headed on down the road and we were on our way to
rome.
All roads lead to rome, rightso the one.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
We were on dead at least, um.
So I mean from from that point,logistics was worked out great.
We got to our hotel.
We built the bicycles um, tookthem outside with some tools,
did some fine tuning um makingsure everything was went
together.
You did have those five extrapieces, I just don't know where
(28:25):
they went, but um, but you knowwhat we were worried about your
head unit and it never went onbetter than it my pedals in the
head unit.
Speaker 3 (28:35):
I always have trouble with those two things.
They went on flawlessly,especially the head unit,
because if you don't do it rightmy head units designed that if
you don't do it right there'slike five, six pieces in there
that all fit kind of in acircular area and there's like
this this o-ring type thingaround it and if you get it in
too loose, all those five or sixpieces just fall out and then
(28:58):
it's a mess.
Um, put it right in there,tighten it right up, no problems
at all.
So you know I'm.
You know another half a dozentimes I might get this down to
like flawless um.
The next day was officially thefirst day of of brag um which
(29:18):
was kind of weird, becausegenerally we don't get to the
end town or the beginning town.
We take the bus and generallyit's like mid-afternoon, late
afternoon.
We were there all day.
Um, I had to get the the carback.
So, uh, we found out wherepadres was going to be and I
dumped off all of you and all ofthe stuff in the parking lot
(29:40):
and then, fortunately, the carrental place was just like a
mile down the road, so I took,dropped off the car, uh, hiked
it back, didn't take very long.
And you had, we had our, ourswag bags that we'd talked about
on the show.
We created swag bags for theteam, which had, you know,
shirts, uh, which had theirJersey, uh, shirt.
(30:03):
Uh, we did a customized t-shirtfor the ride, um, some other uh
decals, things like that, andthen also some reminder stuff
about our events.
And, uh, then it came in like astring bag that was, you know,
had the logo for the ride andour logo on it.
And when I came back to theparking lot, you had everything
set out there on the boxes readyto go and we were able to put
(30:27):
together those 43 swag bagsright there in the parking lot.
And thanks to yourorganizational skills, we were
able to do that prettyefficiently.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
Thanks to your organizational skills, we were
able to do that prettyefficiently.
Well, you being the history guyof the show, you know that
Henry Ford was the assembly lineguy.
So, being from Michigan, I hadto represent.
I put the assembly linetogether, but I waited.
I'm a smart guy.
I waited for some more help.
Speaker 3 (30:52):
I needed some resources.
None of them were actually likestarted or anything, and if we
were talking about assemblylines, I should have been
calling my union rep.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
but I'll let it go, the cycling man of leisure union
of two.
But we put those together andthen we went to a restaurant
called Harvest Moon, and thereason why that's important is I
kept looking for Neil Young buthe wasn't there.
Speaker 3 (31:27):
No, but let me tell you, they had a lot of local
beers.
We sat in the bar and triedsome of their local brews.
They had some good musicplaying.
So we just spent a couple ofhours just kind of hanging out
there relaxing and kicking backBecause, like I said, this was
new to us.
We don't normally have thatkind of time.
We were waiting for the buses toshow up because we had the swag
(31:49):
bags.
We just had to wait untileverybody started showing up so
that we could start passing themout.
So that we could start passingthem out.
But it worked out really wellbecause we got over there in
enough time to get all of ourbags sitting there ready to go.
So when everybody startedcoming off the bus and stuff, we
(32:10):
were right there next toregistration and people would
see us and come over and we wereable to efficiently get, uh,
our team, their gear and, uh,introduce ourselves to the folks
that we didn't know.
So it was a really nice setup.
It was beautiful Cause wedidn't plan it, it just kind of
happened that way.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
So yeah, it was.
We saw the, the tour buses, sowe so we better go over there.
And then everyone was in linefor the brag trailer to get
registration and their t-shirtand all the license plate and
all the good stuff, and we werethere, so it just worked out.
And then, of course, thatevening, as usual which is one
(32:50):
of the fun things about theseevents we went out to dinner
with our friends and big groupsand good stories and how you've
been and everything else, andthen we went back to Harvest
Moon that evening.
Speaker 3 (33:07):
There's probably 15 of us upstairs sitting on the
upper deck area.
Oh my God, I love the food inthe South.
Oh my God, I love the food inthe South.
All three of us Armando, youand me got these big old plates
of shrimp and grits.
That was incredible.
(33:27):
The grits were awesome, theshrimp was good.
It's just like oh, this is nice, that's something I really
can't get around here.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
But was the shrimp to grit ratio the correct?
That was one of the commentsthat we heard throughout the
week that you have to watch your, watch, your, your shrimp to
grit ratio, and I was likeMichael, have you ever said that
in your life?
Ever so.
Speaker 3 (33:50):
I didn't know there was such a thing, but apparently
there is a shrimp to gritsratio.
We were never able to reallyfind out what that was.
No, there was a lot of talkabout it, but there was never
really an answer to it.
So maybe it's one of thosethings that there's not really
an answer to.
Speaker 2 (34:08):
And that night our camp, the Padres, the area was
decently away from not not anyfault of theirs by any chance,
but decently away fromeverything else, and then we
kind of got our gear ready tostart our trip across the great
(34:30):
state of Georgia.
Yeah and, and You're right,with the bus, normally we're
trying to get our stuff in thebelly of those tour buses and we
fly all day long to go to theeast side and then build our
bikes over on the east side.
It was definitely different tohave the additional time.
(34:50):
As a matter of fact, I didn'tknow what to do.
Speaker 3 (34:53):
I was like what do we do?
It was very relaxing though itwas kind of nice.
We were just like sitting there.
It's like, yeah, we got allthis time.
Everything's ready to go.
We had our swag bags we're justwaiting for people to show up
and it was a nice, relaxingthing.
We weren't on a bus going okay,now we got to.
So it worked out really, reallywell.
(35:15):
And you know, I got to saywe'll talk about Padres a little
later Um, that was a uniqueexperience that we hadn't done.
We did a lot of things firsttime on this on this ride that
we hadn't done before um,experience nature and did the
full service.
Uh, you know, psych cycle intype, concept and so.
(35:38):
But we've got some snippetsfrom those things that we'll
talk about in a little bit.
Speaker 2 (35:44):
I have some highlights from our first day of
writing here.
We rolled out of Rome and well,we made it to our first rest
stop, which is all brag reststops I mean, the sag stops are
just amazing More snacks andnormally peanut butter and jelly
or pimento cheese.
But this first stop had amuseum and there was a
(36:09):
dedication to a former firstlady, which was pretty cool.
Some of the other highlights Ihave here is we stopped at a
brewery at a covered bridgecalled Harley Creek Covered
Bridge, yeah, and we were ableto have honeysuckle blonde beer
(36:30):
from a Cartersville brewery.
Speaker 3 (36:33):
Wasn't it Museum something.
Speaker 2 (36:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (36:34):
Museum, museum, city Beer or something I don't know.
But yeah, it was reallyinteresting.
The old wooden covered bridge,like you'd expect to see in, you
know, madison County, iowa orsomething like that, very cool.
And there's this brewery nextto it and they were just giving
out free beer at I don't know 11o'clock in the morning, 1030.
(36:57):
But it was good, it wasinteresting.
Speaker 2 (36:59):
It's not true.
Um hey, it was actuallyafternoon.
It was afternoon, not true?
Not true at all so, oh, that'sright.
Speaker 3 (37:07):
Yeah well, it was afternoon somewhere exactly
exactly um.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
We had our normal italian.
No we didn't.
No, we didn't.
Speaker 3 (37:22):
That first day our.
Italian ice lady was not there.
That's right, we had the whatdo they call them?
Snow cones.
Snow cones, yeah it wasn't theregular Italian ice.
Speaker 2 (37:35):
Or shaved ice, or whatever.
Speaker 3 (37:36):
Yeah, whatever they call it.
Speaker 2 (37:38):
I don't know what they call it.
Yeah, that's ice, or whatever.
Speaker 3 (37:39):
Yeah, whatever they call it, I don't know what they
call it.
Yeah, that's always a highlight.
The last rest stop of the dayhas like the Italian ice and we
always get one and that's kindof a tradition.
Moon.
Speaker 2 (37:49):
Shadow Concession.
Speaker 3 (37:51):
That's right.
They weren't there until.
Speaker 2 (37:53):
Day two, she had a flat tire.
It happens, yeah, it happens,and in my notes I have that we
went to the Mellow Mushroom and,as usual like we always do on
these trips we invited othercyclists to our table and we got
to sit with Stephen.
Speaker 3 (38:15):
So that was great, which we didn't know, and he was
down there by himself and it'slike oh, come on up and sit with
us.
So you know, it's all aboutcommunity and making friends and
, yeah, a lot of fun.
Speaker 2 (38:29):
My notes show that the next day was the team jersey
day and we started our morningoff with not only our team
picture, which I can go into,but also some fun pictures with
our rivalry, which I'll let yougo into.
So we were able to get 35 ofthe 43 team members.
(38:51):
As you mentioned the swag bagswe put, please meet at 650 and
join us for the team picture.
Truth be told, a few people hadto go home early and bow out,
and so we're hoping in the besthealth and recovery.
And then some people had hadhotels, that it wasn't really
(39:11):
logistically feasible to comeback for just a photograph.
We completely understand.
But we were able to get 35 ofthe 43 team members, which was
really cool, and that's on ourfacebook page if you want to
check that out.
Speaker 3 (39:26):
but we also took some fun pictures with another team,
oh yeah our friend savannahstarted up a new team this year
and thought it would be fun forthis year to have a rivalry name
to cycling men and women ofleisure.
So she and her friend created ateam named cycling women
(39:52):
against leisure.
Speaker 2 (39:54):
Now, who would be against leisure I?
Speaker 3 (39:58):
just crazy talk is what I think.
But you know, and to be fair,there was conversation
beforehand with us between usand her.
She wanted to make sure thatyou know, everything was cool
and that you know there wasn'tgoing to be any, you know, hard
feelings or anything like that,and we all worked it out and we
(40:21):
all came to the conclusion that,yeah, it was cool to do that.
So she had a team of 10 or 11and they were doing their
pictures on the other side ofthe building and she called us
up and said hey, you know, I'dlike to get some pictures of you
guys.
So as soon as we got done withour team pictures on one side of
the building, we went directlythrough the building to the
other side and, uh, got somepictures with them, and not just
(40:45):
with their, their team and andour, you know, you and I.
Uh, we did some fun picturesbetween her and what I think was
an Ann and Anna Okay, um, whowere kind of the two captains of
the team, and we did some fungoofing around pictures of this
(41:05):
rivalry thing where we lookedlike we were fighting Adam and I
were fighting them, and thenone where we were all shaking
hands and that type of thing.
And then, what was interesting Ibelieve it was yesterday,
savannah put together this thingthat looked like a newspaper
article where it's like you know, brag team rivalry, and it had
a picture of us doing thefighting thing and then at the
(41:27):
another page of it showed, youknow, the rivalries ended, we're
all friends and we're allsitting there shaking hands.
So that was really, really cuteand it was a lot of fun.
I mean, people were like kindof asking us.
There were some people that'slike what's this all about?
And things like that.
It's like no, no, it's just allin fun.
And on the back of their shirtthey, instead of saying how we
(41:48):
always say it's a great day fora bike ride, um, they put on
there something like it's it's agreat day for the brag rivalry,
yeah, so it was.
It was a lot of fun.
We had a good time with it.
Speaker 2 (42:00):
So 99.9% of the people who saw that, you know,
they laughed and said, oh, youguys are silly.
And then that one lady at thelast rest stop.
You and I were waiting for moonshadow concessions Italian ice
and this woman was like.
So let me ask you, what is thisfight all about?
Speaker 3 (42:20):
Like no, it's not really a fight and we're all
friends and yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:26):
Well, all good, Savannah, Great job.
I have another note from theteam, Besides the photographs as
we headed down the road.
I have that we went on the.
Now I'm going to give creditwhere credit is due.
Franklin says that the road wascalled Johnson Mountain or
(42:49):
Johnson Mountain Road.
But I kind of like Mandalu, Ilike her description of it,
which is the Three Medusa Hill.
Speaker 3 (42:57):
Oh, three-headed Medusa.
Three-headed Medusa Hill.
Oh, three headed Medusa.
Three headed Medusa.
Yeah, yes, that was probablythe longest and steepest hill
that we climbed all week, and Ithink it was around 14%, if I am
correct.
Speaker 2 (43:10):
I think it was even more, but yeah it was just long
and it went up.
Speaker 3 (43:15):
And then the reason why I should kind of called it
the three headed Medusa, becauseyou had a section where you're
going up and then you kind ofturn and do another section and
then you turned again and didanother section and, and I would
say in the, with the, the, thewriters that I was around, I
would say 98% of them had towalk it.
(43:37):
It was, it was painful.
I had to walk.
So well, you know, uh,ironically, there was a guy in
front of me who fell down causehe, literally he was going so
slow that he was trying and hekind of fell to the side and I
was right there.
So I was like, oh, I stopped anduh was lifting up the bike and
(43:58):
his pedal was still, you know,his cleat was still attached and
I helped him get back on hisbike and he was all okay.
Um, it was just that he wasn'tgoing fast enough to stay
balanced.
So at that point I can't lie, Iwas kind of happy.
It's like well, I can't juststart recycling on this level of
grade, so I guess I'll justhave to walk a bit.
(44:20):
So I was not unhappy to hop offthe bike and help him, because
it gave me a convenient excusenot to get back on the bike for
a chunk of that hill, becauseeven if I'd have wanted to, I
couldn't have.
But trust me, I was needing abreak, so I walked it.
Speaker 2 (44:38):
I was riding with our our team member, gary, and, and
he and I were both talking,talking, talking, you know, like
oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, and hewas telling me a story.
Um, he unfortunately got hit bya car and so luckily he is okay
.
And all of a sudden they said Igot, I got to stop talking.
And he said, yeah, I got tostop talking.
(44:58):
And so we both stopped talkingand we both were writing and he
kind of said are you ready?
And I said I'm ready, I wasn'tready, I was not ready.
So I think I tried about Idon't want to lie, I'm not going
to say halfway up, probably athird of the way up.
Speaker 3 (45:20):
And then all of a sudden I'm like I'm not going to
make it.
I mean it was just burning yourlegs.
I was about almost halfway upwhen the gentleman fell and,
yeah, my legs were justscreaming at me and it was.
I was almost to the point whereI was going so slow that I
could have easily fallen over.
I mean, it was just ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (45:41):
In my notes I could have easily fallen over.
I mean, it was just ridiculous.
In my notes I also have herethat loud traffic at night.
Nothing against Padre, that'snot their fault, but just while
we were camping that road keptme up a little bit.
Some people up there was EMSgoing back and forth.
Speaker 3 (45:58):
I don't think it kept you up, didn't even hear it.
Speaker 2 (46:03):
You can sleep through a rapture.
Speaker 3 (46:06):
Pretty much.
There could have been a semi-gosix inches from my head, I
would not have heard it, I wasjust out.
But then that took us into thetown of cartersville
cartersville, yeah, and then thenext day we went from
(46:27):
cartersville to jasper, if Iremember correctly we did and we
were.
Speaker 2 (46:32):
in my notes here I have that we were introduced
from our friend margaret.
We were introduced to to Chriswho has a cycle park, and we
made a connection with that andwe're going to reach out to him.
We'll try to see if we can'tget something going for our
future show.
He was wonderful and just togive you an idea, this cycle
(46:53):
park takes donations andbasically and basically he used
to work at an old factory therenearby, yeah, and they had a lot
of things like he.
Speaker 3 (47:08):
He recycles a lot of stuff and they had like some of
these big wheel cog things Idon't know what kind of machine
it was on, but he had takenthose and used them as as sides
for benches and it createdbenches and everything that he's
used is like recycled stuff andhe's got benches out there.
He's got a picnic cover typething built there.
(47:32):
There's a big map of the trailsand the road areas.
He even had one of these bigelectric industrial box things
that you'd see like on a side ofa building and when you opened
it up it had like things forcyclists.
There was extra tubes in there,there was first aid supplies,
all of this stuff.
There was bathroom facilities,there was a couple of shower
(47:55):
facilities.
I mean, this guy and this isjust on his like private land
this guy had went all out tomake this cycle park and some of
our friends um, that's kind ofwhere they ride out every week
and is from that facility, butthat's like the coolest facility
I had ever seen and, uh, that'swhere we had one of our rest
(48:16):
stops and it was just reallycool, so it'll be interesting if
we can get him on the show totalk about he's done that and
he's done some other things foryou know, getting bikes for
underprivileged kids and thattype of stuff.
Speaker 2 (48:31):
I'm going to mention one thing about that.
And he said, oh, I would loveto be on the podcast.
And he told us a story aboutcollecting money for bicycles
for underprivileged kids, whichwe'll hope to touch more on that
.
And he said, well, how do I dothe show?
And I said, well, we do it onthe Internet.
And he said, oh, he said that'sgoing to be a problem, there's
(48:51):
no Internet around here.
And I said, well, we could doit by phone.
He said, oh, that it by phone.
He's like, oh, that'll work.
So, um, but uh, a couple of thenotes I have from there is we
got our first pimento cheesesandwich.
Speaker 3 (49:08):
Um, at the rest stop, you had a very small issue with
your derailleur that we wereable to fix right on the side of
the road it was not the hanger,which is funny because I
actually had a conversation withthree different people about
the derailleur hanger and one ofthe guys was like you know what
?
It's weird because we've neverthought about it.
We carry derailleur hangers forour mountain bikes when we go
(49:29):
mountain biking.
But he goes.
I never thought about it for my, for my road bike.
So he was actually had gottenderailleur hangers for his road
bikes as well, was actually hadgotten derailleur hangers for
his road bikes as well.
But, yeah, I had a slightproblem where I had to do some
repairs on the road because itwasn't shifting right and I
didn't get it quite put back,aligned, the way it should have
(49:53):
been.
And we got you fixed up.
Yeah, we just a matter oftaking it off and putting it
back on.
So everything was good.
Speaker 2 (50:03):
When you were um making a small adjustment on the
side of the road, I pulled offon the right side by this old,
old building.
Used to be like a general store,but it was like this log cabin
from like 1890 looking buildingso the reason why is because
there was shade there and I justpulled my bike in front and I
(50:23):
kind of was leaning over myhandlebars, as cyclists do,
taking a break, and I looked tomy right and there was a very
funny sign and the sign saidthis vehicle is protected by a
high-speed wireless device andthere was a picture of a glock
and I just thought it was sofunny.
Speaker 3 (50:38):
Well, it's wireless and it is high speed.
So yeah, it was pretty funny.
Speaker 2 (50:44):
And I definitely took a photograph of that.
But you know, when we got toJasper, what an accommodating
city.
They had these beautifulgo-karts and I mean I mean,
sorry, golf carts I apologize,Golf carts, Cause where we
finished was very low down in in, like the bottoms near the
river um and or Creek orwhatever it was.
(51:07):
But um and the the city gotreally involved and, which is
something that we kept seeing atheme of, each of the cities
were really involved and veryhappy to have us there.
But they had golf carts andshuttles to get you up the hill,
and so you and I decided thatwe would head into town and we
(51:29):
saw our friend Sarah at a winery.
You and I went to a distillery,Wouldn't you know it?
We didn't just go to anydistillery, wouldn't?
Speaker 3 (51:39):
you know it, so are you.
We didn't just go to anydistillery, we went to the only
I repeat, only legal distilleryin jasper georgia.
Speaker 2 (51:50):
So here we are.
We're in the shark topdistillery having an
old-fashioned.
Wouldn't you know that the menof leisure are here?
Speaker 3 (52:07):
while it is a small distillery, it is very classy.
It's very, very well done andthis old-fashioned that we're
drinking extremely good.
I've never had it with thesmoked cinnamon before.
I haven't either the theability to smoke cinnamon, and
there's a cinnamon stick inthere, which I don't normally
like the sweet stuff or thecinnamon, the fiery thing, but
it's very mellow For sure.
Speaker 2 (52:27):
So the gentleman here said they are the first legal
distillery in Jasper Georgia andI found that that was very
funny that they introducedthemselves as legal distillery.
Speaker 3 (52:41):
But it's named after a local mountain, they said.
A lot of moonshining hasoccurred in the past and still
may be occurring today, so younever know.
Speaker 2 (52:53):
I think it still is.
He said hypothetically, but I'msure he meant that it still is.
Who am I to question?
Well, since the barrels areback there and the still only
holds 50 gallons, yes, they showus a still and it's sitting in
the corner.
Speaker 3 (53:09):
We have pictures of it.
It's a 50-gallon still andthey've got a ton of you know,
they've got the big 55-gallonbarrels in the back and I'm like
how many runs do you have tomake in a 50 gallon still to
fill up a 55 gallon barrel?
Because you don't, you know,you don't get 50 gallons.
No, and I mean, to me it wouldseem like I don't know.
(53:30):
The math just seems a littleweird to me.
Speaker 2 (53:32):
We should ask them before we leave how many gallons
you get off of a 50 gallonstart.
Speaker 3 (53:37):
Because they've got brandies, they've got bourbons,
they've got whiskey, they've gotmoonshine, and then they've got
flavored moonshine.
Speaker 2 (53:43):
So I'm like and they had gin, but we decided against
the gin.
Speaker 3 (53:48):
Well, I already cleaned all my bicycle parts, so
we're good.
Speaker 2 (53:52):
I do need to put some lube on my bicycle before we.
Speaker 3 (53:55):
I have some.
Speaker 2 (53:56):
Oh.
I can hook you up.
I got some too.
If I can't find it, I'll cometo you as a secondary, but yes,
I figured along the way.
We need to get these pieces forour show.
We've got a wonderful team.
Today we had 41 members, acouple gentlemen, one gentleman,
(54:17):
one woman had to go home.
Speaker 3 (54:20):
We had team photos this morning.
I think we got 35 or 37, 35, Ithink, showed up for the photos,
so that's fantastic.
Speaker 2 (54:30):
We do know that a few of our friends didn't make the
photo, but they're still ourfriends.
Speaker 3 (54:36):
And we've been getting a lot of excitement
about our activities onWednesday, our pasting at the
distillery and our dinner teamdinner that we're having, so
that should be fun.
Speaker 2 (54:47):
It should be a good time.
So I figured we would just geta little snapshot.
So that was in Jasper and wehad a good time in Jasper.
It was a good night.
Yes, that was in Jasper and wehad a good time in Jasper.
It was a good night.
Yes, it was.
Do I have any notes about Jasper?
(55:08):
I do not have any notes aboutJasper.
I do have a note that we'll getinto.
We need to thank some of ourteam members for some gifts that
they brought us.
So we'll get into that.
And from Jasper we headed downthe road to Dawsonville.
(55:35):
Dawsonville oh, I do have thecamaraderie.
During the distillery that wegot to meet Jeff Armando was
there and had a nice old fashion.
He really enjoyed it.
There you go, connie, there'stwice that I've mentioned
Armando.
You said that he only listensbecause he hears his name.
(55:57):
So now it's twice.
So three times now.
But yeah, I'm just searching myoutline here.
Next day we pedaled toDawsonville and we got to see
some friends on the road for thefirst time.
We were concerned because wehadn't seen Natalie and Audra,
(56:18):
and we got to see some somefriends on the road for the
first time.
We were concerned because wehadn't seen natalie and audra
and we got to see those ladies.
Um, I have a note of a verypicturesque rest stop and then
oh, and the massive hillafterwards.
Okay, so there was this reallyneat, intimate, like space to
have an event, almost like asmall wedding or whatever.
(56:40):
It was, like this waterfall,these people's houses.
But what was so teasing aboutit is as you came into the rest
stop and had these big arrowsand it's okay.
Now you know you can come hereand get, get a snack, get
something to eat or, you know,get something to drink.
But you knew when you came outthere was a really big climb
coming out.
So it's kind of like, reallylike messing with you a little
(57:01):
bit.
So let's see, here I have, oh,that night I have in our notes
that our friends Juan and Amircame into town and we went to a
restaurant called, of all things, the Blue Bicycle.
Pretty fitting to go to arestaurant called the Blue
(57:22):
Bicycle on a bicycle trip.
Um, and then from there mynotes, I have our escapades in
Dawsonville.
But you know what I think weshould do?
I think we should.
Actually, we were able to sitdown with Padre, cycle, in with
(57:45):
Jimmy and Dave, and you think weshould play that interview?
Speaker 3 (57:49):
Yeah, you know we tried their cycle in and out.
This is the first time we'dever really did a full service
charter and I got to say it wasreally cool and it really
spoiled me.
But we did get a chance to sitdown and talk to them, so why
(58:10):
don't we play that clip andlisten to what they had to say?
Sounds good.
Speaker 2 (58:15):
Well, here we are.
We are with Padre Cycle Inn andwe've had a wonderful week,
hopefully.
Jimmy and Dave, what do youguys think?
How do you think it's gone sofar?
Speaker 5 (58:25):
We're happy with it.
It's been a great week.
It's always great meeting newpeople and hanging out with
cyclists.
Cyclists are just greatattitudes that enjoy cycling and
enjoy our services, appreciateus, and so we always enjoy being
at every event, and this hasbeen a great one, with pretty
good weather as a whole.
Speaker 2 (58:40):
Well, we think you've done a phenomenal job,
absolutely, even putting up withour shenanigans.
Last night in the rain with ourfriend Savannah, who came down,
but she's gonna be with you atRAGBRAI, so I'm sure she wanted
to come check it out.
You know, one of the one of thethings that was really neat all
week is we've peddled with ourfriend Armando and we'd like to
tease him, and you've seen ustease him.
(59:01):
But his idea of not having toworry about a spot I can't
express that enough for yourcompany as a spokesman, to be on
the road to listen to him sayyou know what I have all day, I
can relax, I know where I'mcoming tonight, I don't have to
worry about getting it Before hewas always like I got to go.
Speaker 3 (59:19):
I got to go because I got to get the good spot.
And all this week he's like I'mgoing to get the good spot
because Padres has already gotit for me.
So you could definitely see hisanxiety level.
Where will he go down?
And I think he actually enjoyedthe ride better.
So I mean that's just anotheradded benefit to your guys'
service is, when I get in, Idon't have to find a spot inside
.
I don't have to find a place, Idon't have to put up a tent, I
(59:41):
just show up and guess what myluggage is there, the tent's put
up.
I mean you don't make my bed,but that's okay.
Speaker 5 (59:48):
I think Armando's smile got bigger and bigger and
bigger each day that he cameinto camp.
Speaker 2 (59:53):
I truly think so, and I kept waiting for a chalk on
my pillow, but as hot as it wastoday, there would be no chalk.
Speaker 5 (59:59):
Would just be a nice little smear chalk.
That looks okay.
Speaker 3 (01:00:03):
But no, it's been a great week.
You guys have this thing down,pat, I think.
Like I told you guys early inthe week, it's like things could
be on fire, but you guys didn'tshow that it was on fire.
And I'm sure there's thingsthat happened behind the scenes
that were like oh my gosh, buteverything was smooth.
All your staff was superprofessional.
And one thing I'll mention I gota friend of ours gave me a
(01:00:24):
bottle of wine.
I didn't have any place to putit so I just stuck it in one of
my bags.
It wasn't wrapped, it was justin my small carry-on bag and I
was like this may or may not getthere and it may just be wine
dripping out.
You know what?
It got there in one piece.
And my point to this wholestory is I've seen you guys run
around here with the luggage andyou're not grabbing it and
(01:00:45):
tossing it like the airportpeople, you're picking it up and
bringing it over to one pileand stuff like that.
So I think that's somethingthat I super appreciate is
you're not just like grabbing itand he-powing it.
Speaker 2 (01:00:55):
And I kept our old team name really proud with Team
Sherpa.
I brought way too much crap.
Speaker 3 (01:01:03):
Good thing they didn't weigh your bags, or you
might have had some issues.
Speaker 5 (01:01:07):
Oh well, we'll leave it at that I don't think we
needed to weigh them, youalready knew they.
Speaker 3 (01:01:11):
Oh well, we'll leave it at that.
I don't think we needed toweigh them, yeah.
Speaker 5 (01:01:13):
You already knew.
Speaker 2 (01:01:13):
They went to two urgent cares along the way to
get back shots and everythingelse, so they did get lighter
throughout the week.
I keep giving stuff away, so wejust want to express our
appreciation for staying withyou guys.
We really, really enjoyed it.
I have to say that having aplace to come to every night was
definitely peaceful, but one ofthe perks that you have that
(01:01:33):
even Savannah didn't understandis you get an air mattress as
well, and so, yeah, when she,when she found that out last
night, she's like really, andshe was just organically excited
it's not just an air mattress,it's an air mattress all week.
Speaker 5 (01:01:46):
If there's an issue with it, we can replace it.
Yeah, and that's a lot of theconcern with bringing your own
stuff is you have one airmattress and if it goes bad,
then you're sleeping on theground.
Speaker 3 (01:01:56):
You're waiting for that next stop.
Speaker 2 (01:01:57):
They've got plenty of spares that we'll use, and your
crew is fantastic.
I would even go to write on theboard.
You have a board you write on.
I'd go to write on it.
He goes, I got it, I got it, Igot it and.
Speaker 3 (01:02:08):
The final thing I'll say is for those who haven't
tried your service.
Another really cool thing isjust the relationship and the
community within the community,because you've got the brag
thing going on.
But then I mean, right nowwe're looking and there's like
15, 20 people sitting underneathyour tents enjoying some cool
refreshments and snacks and justtalking and that type of thing.
Speaker 5 (01:02:28):
Yep, and a lot of those people didn't even know
each other six days ago.
That type of thing, yep, and alot of those people didn't even
know each other six days ago.
Speaker 3 (01:02:32):
Yeah, we were.
We were sitting at the finalrest stop and there was seven of
us.
There was seven of us sittingthere, yeah, and this one gal
walked up and it's like hey,it's the Padres group and we
were all with Padres and wedidn't plan it, we weren't all
riding together.
Speaker 5 (01:02:49):
It's just really kind of cool.
We see that at the downtownarea when oh you're good, we
have phones too.
Speaker 2 (01:02:55):
I'm the one who usually on the show does that.
We'll see that at the downtownareas.
Speaker 5 (01:02:58):
When you're down there and all of a sudden people
will see other people that theyknow from camp and they're like
hey.
Speaker 3 (01:03:03):
Yeah, for sure, really great job.
Speaker 2 (01:03:06):
No, great job.
Thank you so much, thank youvery much.
Those.
Those guys did a great job and,and you know that that whole
model that they have, I mean youcould see that they were very
uniform, um, very pattern ofpractice of what they were doing
.
They had a, they had it down toa science and, um, even though,
(01:03:29):
fantastic, fantastic, and Iknow they.
Speaker 3 (01:03:31):
They are uh have a few other events that they're
going to be at.
I know they're going to be atbrag or, excuse me, rag bride,
and uh, they're going to be atthe bourbon country burn and uh,
I believe they're going to beup at shoreline.
So if you're doing any of thoserides and you really want to
just relax and enjoy theexperience uh, you experience
(01:03:52):
you might check out theirservices.
I know some of those rides.
They still have a couple ofspots left, so check it out.
I was very, very impressed.
Speaker 2 (01:04:01):
I'm going to mirror everything you said.
I'm going to only add one piece.
They're also going to be atDahlmack.
The only thing I don't know isif they have any more space for
Dahlmack.
I don't want to misspeak.
You would definitely have tocontact padre cycle, padres
cycle incom, um, but yeah,they're going to be both of
those.
So, um, in michigan as well.
Um, so um, the next day we werein dawsonville and, um, I'm
(01:04:30):
gonna do this very strategically.
Uh, don't want to mess this up,but we, you and I, while we
were friends and we normallynever compete with each other
when you're on a car track, yougotta compete with each other
right, it's a racetrack yeahit's like mario kart, but like
(01:04:52):
real life, that's right.
So I'm gonna, I'm gonna playthis clip here and I'm gonna be
very strategic about it.
All right?
Well, here we are.
We're at the, the AMP cartracing.
We just got off the track andoh, and what?
(01:05:17):
To find that out?
I'm going to bring you back topart two, as you mentioned
earlier in this show, part twoof our Brag 2020-2025 recap.
Here's what you can lookforward to.
You can find out who betweenthe two of us left it all out on
(01:05:39):
the track.
You will also get to hear theexecutive director of Bragg, mr
Franklin Johnson.
We sat down with him earlierthis evening.
We got his final thoughts.
We do have some information,such as how many riders we got
his final thoughts.
We do have some information,such as how many riders we got
an injury report.
There's a couple things there.
If you're curious, you can findthat out.
You and I gave our closingthoughts from the airport and to
(01:06:06):
find all of that out, we'regoing to ask you to oh, and you
will have another at that timeon that episode another listener
spotlight.
Speaker 3 (01:06:17):
This is a good one too, so we'll see how many
people can get this one.
Speaker 2 (01:06:22):
With that being said, I'll repeat it again, but the
last seven days for us was anexcellent day for a bike ride,
for a bike ride.
Speaker 3 (01:06:31):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (01:06:35):
Thank you for coming along with Adam and Michael on
Road Adventures with Cycling Menof Leisure.
If you have enjoyed this,please subscribe to the show on
the podcast app of your choice.
Well, it's time for Road Adventures with Cycling Men
of Leisure, the podcast forcyclists who understand that
riding is not just about gettingto the destination, but the
experience along the way.
Now here are the originalCycling Men of Leisure Adam and
Michael.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Welcome to Road Adventures of Cycling Men of
Leisure.
I am Adam and again I am joinedwith my good friend, mr Michael
Sharp.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
Hey Adam, how we doing.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
You know I am good.
I'm back in the land ofMichigan after our wonderful
adventure.
How was your flight home?
Uneventful, which is the way welike it.
It landed where it was supposedto.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
It did.
Indeed, it was a little late,but you know, you know, we got
there.
We're happy about that.
Uh, no problems.
How about yours?
Speaker 2 (01:09):
I was delayed as well .
You, you actually texted me andsaid you were delayed and that
was about an hour delay.
They took me down to the end ofd and uh, like three flights
leaving from like a 10 minute, a10 foot spot.
It was kind of crazy.
People just kept pushingforward.
I'm like, is there like a, likea, like a plank that people are
(01:30):
jumping off of back?
There's nowhere to go downthere.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
So at least they didn't make you fly out of the
outpost t.
Yes, now all the way there onthe end what are we talking
about?
Speaker 2 (01:40):
we're talking about our adventure across georgia.
We had a phenomenal time.
Yes, we, uh, we were lucky, we,we were able to complete the
well.
No, no mechanicals, no flats nomechanicals it was a good thing
(02:01):
all the hotels, all of yourhard work with the rental cars.
This is the first time I'mgoing to mention armando in the
show.
Armando was huge to us and tookyou into south carolina for a
rental car.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
So hard to find a rental car on a saturday in
heartswell, georgia, but he wasnice enough to detour, go up
north, drop me off.
So it all worked and we had acouple of very successful team
events as well.
We'll talk a little bit aboutthat and, just to give everybody
kind of expectations, I thinkwe're turning this into a
(02:39):
two-parter.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
Two-parter?
Yeah, definitely.
After looking at all of theadventures across the great
state of Georgia, we've beenable to interview some people.
We'll put those interviews inthere.
We've got some good stuff foryou.
We're pretty excited.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
So tell you what Excuse me, while I, pour some
cycling mental leisure, bragKansas City style whiskey there.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Nice, nice, that speakeasy we had, we'll get into
a little bit later.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
Oh, that was good too .
We had a.
It was just.
It was a good ride.
I will tell you which youalready know, but I will tell
our listeners and our viewers.
I will tell you which youalready know, but I will tell
our listeners and our viewers.
(03:36):
Northern Georgia is really thebase of the Appalachian
Mountains.
There was some long climbs andthere was some very steep climbs
.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
So that made for a fun and interesting time.
So yesterday I had to ride thebus home and I drove my car to
work, but I unfortunately had alittle bit of a radiator leak
and so it's getting repaired inmy van.
And so I booked myself a ridehome on the bus and a passenger
(04:03):
I saw I used to drive when I wasdriving and she said, oh, she
said I didn't realize, you stillworked for Letts.
And I said, yeah, I still do.
And she said she said oh, shesaid what happened?
I said, well, I came back fromthe airport and unfortunately
flew it under my van, yada, yada, yada.
And I said so I had to book abus ride home.
(04:25):
She said, oh, where were you?
I said I was in Georgia ridingmy bicycle.
She said, well, it's flat,right.
And all I could think about waswell, maybe 75 is flat, but
where you and I were wasdefinitely not flat.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
So not flat, but we'll talk about that.
It was a good ride and we'vegot a lot of interesting stories
.
We did do a better job thistime.
I will let me give you kudos.
You produced a reel for usevery day to kind of keep people
who are following us on our, onour Facebook page or on our
(04:57):
inner on the internet keep themkind of informed of of what we
were doing.
And we also did manage to get afew clips.
We've always had trouble in thepast like getting clips because
we get carried away.
We do have a few clips andwe're going to share those, uh,
throughout these next twoepisodes let me, we can
definitely do that.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
So, um, let's start with some of the basics.
We had a team of 43.
We were the third, uh, threeyears in a row, um, uh, we had
the largest team.
We did have a little bit of arivalry, and so we'll get into
(05:41):
that, um, which was all good andfun.
Okay, yeah, we'll talk aboutthat.
I mean 43 to 10.
I don't know if it's muchrivalry, but anyway, we do love
you, savannah, so we'll justkeep going with that.
But, uh, um, no, all good andfun, but, um, you know the thing
I think we should do first,since we mentioned that we had a
(06:03):
team of 43, why don't we payhomage to our team?
We'll go first name only.
Here.
I think we should mention ourteam members and thank them.
We had such a wonderful time.
I'll go first here.
Credit to Peggy, jean, lynette,amy, sandy, natalie, virginia,
(06:27):
carrie, lisa and Tamara, whichwas our ladies team, and Audra.
Thank you, ladies, thank youvery much.
And then we have Tommy, william, armando, gary, mark, joe, don
and Bill, and I'm going to letyou go with the rest.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
All right, and we also had David Scott, harold
Will, david, different David,steve, neil Trip, two guys named
Michael and Adam Alex, adifferent.
Michael, stephen, zach, brian,paul, david, john Jeffrey.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
Doug, another Paul, Larry and Audra, and then we had
some who did Brag Light.
And then let's get into ourhonorary member, Gary.
He had a wedding to go to.
As you teased him, he shouldhave went virtually, but he did
send me a photograph.
His family he was asharp-dressed man and looked
sharp with his family,great-looking family.
But every girl's crazy About asharp-dressed man.
(07:39):
That's right.
Okay, you too, please don'tblock us.
That's right.
Okay, you too, please don'tblock us.
We also want to mention a veryspecial young man, honorary team
member of ours, Phoenix.
Phoenix did not qualify becausethey did not consider him an
adult.
I don't think I qualify as anadult either sometimes, but
(08:02):
that's okay.
Probably not, but you and I wereable to come together and get
this man an honorary team memberof ours, which was really
interesting because when we toldthe story to other team members
, other teams have done the samething where they honored him,
and not just Phoenix, butsomeone who was not an adult.
(08:25):
But so I know that we are soappreciative of our team.
We had a great time.
Many, many people returned and,luckily for us, we actually had
some.
You and I did some advertisingthrough the show and we got some
organic writers and met somenew people and just had a great
(08:48):
time.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
Fantastic, fantastic time, fantastic turnout.
Thank you everybody.
It was great meeting a lot ofnew people that we've never met
before first-time riders.
And then it was really great tojust see some of our friends
that we've been riding with foryears, not just at the Georgia
ride but at, you know, michiganand Kentucky and in different
(09:12):
places.
So always a good time.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
So, before we go into the deep dive of our adventure,
I think that we do need toclose a loophole.
We ended our last show, like wealways do, with a listener
spotlight, so could you give ussome clues?
Speaker 3 (09:33):
and I need to, uh, organically search for the
guesses while you're reading theclues, because we had people
coming out of the woodworks withguesses we had a lot of guesses
, so we'll we'll see if any ofthem are right, but I will give
you the hints that I provided onour last episode.
This city began in the early1860s.
(09:57):
Its name changed twice beforethe railroad selected its
current name.
It was named in honor of anative chief.
Historically, it is best knownfor a disaster that occurred in
(10:25):
the vicinity, and here is thefinal one Snow helped elevate
this town into notoriety.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
So, I'm not sure the order.
I usually take a.
We've been.
We've been working tirelesslyto get these shows together, so
I do apologize the order, butI'm going to go with our, our,
our good friend Steven, whowrites us all the time, who said
love the show so much.
Guys, one of these days we'llride together.
(10:58):
Guest for this listener.
Spotlight is Truckee.
California had a privilege totake the California Zephyr from
Emeryville, california, toChicago in 2023, thanks to the
Amtrak conductor for pointingout the park and the monument to
the settlers who perished whenthey failed to negotiate the
Donner Pass through SierraNevada mountain range.
(11:19):
Before October, the snowstormalong the section for I-80,
trucks being stuck for days.
Truckee, indeed, is named afterthe Indian chief who had two
English names before beingrenamed.
Keep up the great work.
Our monthly supporter.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
Alex, I'm sorry.
I just had to laugh because youwere talking about the Donner
Party and it's like they wereunable to navigate.
It was just the way you said.
It was just very, very humorous.
That's why I was laughing.
It's like, well, that wasn'ttheir only problem, let me tell
you.
But anyway, go ahead.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
They had other problems no they had a lot of
other problems uh, our friendalex, um and uh says.
Here's my guest for thisepisode's listener spotlight
truckie, california.
Truckie was named for theCentral Pacific Railroad in the
1860s during the construction ofthe first transcontinental
railroad.
Previously names were Gray'sSection and Coburn Station.
(12:15):
The town name comes from theP-A-I-U-T-E Pawtee Chief, whose
friendly greetings to earlysailors or heroes were choque.
Meaning all is right wasmistaken for his name.
The Donner Party tragicallyoccurred in 1846 to 47 after a
(12:36):
heavy snowstorm trapped 87pioneers traveling west.
41 have died.
The survivors restored,resorted, not restored, resorted
to cannibalism.
See you guys in a few more days, which we had a wonderful time
with him.
Um, you know, I do know.
(12:58):
Oh, here's another one.
Uh, uh, our friend from Ohiowho gave us a ride, and uh and
our first brag and stored ourbike boxes.
Um, uh, Matt, um.
He says listener, spotlight,Truckee, California, gray
station, Everybody gets the sameone Wow.
(13:18):
I know and then I do know.
I'm trying to find it.
I know our friend Jeffdefinitely mentioned Truckee.
Speaker 3 (13:31):
And then, I believe, armando put in a guess.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
He did, and I think that's in our resident thread
with Armando, and it's adifferent city, so I want to
make sure I get to that.
So give me just one second here.
Speaker 3 (13:48):
Everybody's really going on this town in California
, aren't they?
Speaker 2 (13:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
Won't they be surprised when I announce it's
St Louis?
Speaker 2 (13:58):
Oh man, really, I'm just kidding.
So am I?
I don't know, I'm trying tofind it here.
Speaker 3 (14:13):
And then just to, while you're doing that, I'll
fill some time here.
We will not have, because it'sa two-parter.
There will not be a listenerspotlight at the end of this one
.
There will be a listenerspotlight at the end of the
second part of this, uh, thisepisode as part of the
conclusion.
So, and right now we just lostlike 50 of our listeners.
(14:35):
It's like oh, oh man, they'renot gonna.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
Um, listening to the broadcast just found out that
you're doing Padres.
I am as well.
Uh, great minds think alike.
Um, yeah, I know, he said adifferent city.
Do you have that?
Speaker 3 (14:57):
I believe he said someplace in Nevada.
I don't know, I didn't lookbecause I didn't look, but
Armando did it, did do anotherguess Someplace.
That was not what everybodyelse guessed, yeah, anyway.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
Unfortunately I can't find it, but I assumed that
when four people came withTruckee oh, you know, dead space
kills radio.
I know I can cut it out, though, but no, uh, I cannot find it,
(15:43):
but I know that he was.
He talked about it whilewriting and I was thinking to
myself well, buddy, I think theworld of you before people came
out I'm gonna go with truckiecaliforn California, the fifth
guess, are you sure?
Speaker 3 (15:57):
Well, I mean, if it walks quacks smells, I'm giving
you a chance to opt out and trysomething else.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
No, no, I'm going to go with Truckee.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
Well, apparently I'm making these things way too easy
now, because Trocay, californiais in fact the listener
spotlight for this episode.
Okay, let me tell you a littlebit more about it.
It was founded in 1863.
(16:25):
The name changed twice, which Ibelieve, uh, alex, I believe,
mentioned it was gray stationand coburn station.
And then the railroad, thecentral pacific railroad, came
in and says, uh, we're going toname it Trocay I believe it's
pronounced Trocay In honor of anative chief.
(16:46):
And then the Donner Party yeahright, not too far outside of
town, donner Party in 1846 raninto little problems.
They started out on the OregonTrail and they had some
infighting and they were tryingto take some shortcuts and they
(17:07):
just didn't get along.
And then they had an early snowand things just spiraled
downhill from there and thensnow.
Actually, this is the.
The hilltop lodge was one ofthe first snow lodges to have
(17:30):
lifts, you know, like ski lifts,and it is one of the snowiest
you know resort areas in America.
So there you go.
So congratulations to all fourpeople.
We've never had four people getit.
I must be slipping, but that'sokay, I'm glad people are
(17:54):
getting that.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
Does Cycling man of Leisure have an R and D
department?
Speaker 3 (18:01):
Uh, we can certainly have one.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
We need to get a better one, because we need to
make them harder.
No, just kidding.
Oh well, I can.
Speaker 3 (18:08):
Oh, don't even give me that.
You know there's always beenthat question.
It's like, well, this is toohard or too easy.
I don't want to make them tooeasy, like I've said, but then I
don't want to make it so hardthat no one can ever guess it.
But you know we've I've eitherbeen making them easier the last
few months or I'm not thinkingthey're any easier.
(18:30):
I'm thinking people are juststarting to figure out kind of
how I develop my clues and andare putting more effort into
them.
So I'm not going to say it's me.
I'm going to say they'restarting to to get into it more
and really do more research.
Beep.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
This is a show edit.
You guys are geniuses.
Thank you very much.
No, no, I'm I'm glad peopleinteract and everything with
this show.
But all right, let's get intoit.
Speaker 3 (19:05):
We did have a lot of comments about the listener
spotlight this last week on theride.
So thank you all for the verypositive comments and the fact
that you guys really kind ofenjoy that, uh, that trivia,
trivia, part of our show.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
So you, you are absolutely right all right um
what do we got now?
Well, we, if you do notregularly listen to the show,
and we do know that we have somenew listeners who asked us
about the show when they were inGeorgia and saw the jerseys and
the shirts- Lots of peopleasking about the show.
yes, and we know that there'sbeen some new listenership
(19:43):
because we saw from when Braggwas going on and over.
We obviously have some statsand we could see we had some new
listeners and so we really wantto just thank anyone who's new
here.
You and I went on an adventureacross the great state of
Georgia this was our fourth yearin a row doing that and I
(20:06):
figured without going, and thenwe went here and then we went
there.
We could we could just givesome highlights of some things
that we that we, yeah, let's dothe highlights of brag 2025
there were some hills.
Thank you, have a nice day.
I'm just kidding, there weresome hills.
We had a big team.
(20:28):
We know we've been we you knowanyone who does a bike adventure
.
There's some logistics thatcome into play somehow.
Some way you got to get fromthe start.
You're going to get to the endon the bicycle traditionally,
and then you've got to get backhome, and you and I, because
it's such a long drive, weusually fly when we go to
Georgia.
(20:49):
So it's the, you know, takingthe bike apart, which we've
gotten a lot better and we weredefinitely apprehensive at first
.
But you know, it's kind of parfor the course for us now.
I mean, only twice we've hadextra screws on yours.
Speaker 3 (21:02):
I'm up to five, five extra screws.
Ever since I started reputtingmy bike together, I keep a
little bag of the extra piecesand parts.
Yeah, and all these years I'veonly got five little extra
pieces, so apparently theyweren't important.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
Don't worry about that shifting, it's not
important.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
I'm kidding.
I'm kidding, I don't wantpeople to think I'm driving a
bike with no brakes or something.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
Tell the story of what you really do with the
notification you get.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
Oh, because we've got these huge bike boxes, our
friends at the at the airportwho are responsible for our
safety, and let me tell youright now I appreciate what they
do.
It is not an easy job and Ireally don't mind that.
They have to go looking throughmy luggage, as long as they
(21:57):
don't, like you know, ripeverything out and then just
kind of throw it all back in.
Almost every single time and Ihaven't checked this time, I'll
be honest you get the littlenotification because they see
these big boxes and they'rethinking, oh yeah, they've got
something good in there.
So they always pop them allopen and they're going oh, it's
just a bike and some shoes andyou know bike pieces and parts,
(22:23):
but they are required to put inthis little tag to say hey, you
know what Our friendly airportsecurity people did?
In fact, open your luggage andrummage through it as a safety
precaution.
So I get these.
So what I've started doing andyou saw it on the inside of lid
of my box I have started tapingall of those those little
(22:49):
placards that you get when youdo that and I'm going to
wallpaper the entire inside ofmy box from all of these.
We have inspected your luggagefor safety concerns, so I'm
working on it well, I have anannouncement.
I have built my bicycle, I havetaken it out of the box and, yes
(23:11):
sir, I did have a newnotification that they were in
my box, so I you know I'mthinking we need to start doing
something like maybe maybe nexttime I'll put uh like some candy
in there or something and saythank you very much for
inspecting my box.
(23:32):
I appreciate what you do.
I know it's not an easy job.
I understand this does looklike something that you know I'd
be stashing drugs or some otherillegal paraphernalia.
And here is some candy to makeyour day a little better.
Thank you very much.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
They're gonna you know what they're gonna do.
They're gonna radio up.
They're gonna say hold on.
I want to tell you what they'regonna do.
Give me one second here.
Speaker 4 (23:53):
Yep, this is what's gonna happen, uh uh, could you
please pull mr sharp aside?
This guy thinks he's a wise guy.
We're gonna give him a reallyclose inspection.
I would make sure that he's nottrying to get through with
anything funny.
Speaker 3 (24:13):
Uh, my love, it sounds like he's being a suck up
and definitely trying to getsomething.
But maybe you know like alittle little bag of you know
some nice chocolates orsomething, maybe a little a
bottle of Woodford, stick it inthere and just say thank you for
your service.
I know, you're probably right.
They'd probably like hunt medown and say, okay, this guy is
trying to, that's some kind ofdiversionary tactic, and uh, we,
(24:35):
we're gonna definitely inspectall of his stuff oh, yeah, for
sure, give us your credit cardand stop trying to be funny.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
Um, but you know, um I could tell when I got to
detroit, um, the you rememberhow you and I, outside the
airport, really clamped my bikedown and we really tightened
those straps, they were allloose, and so I was like, oh boy
, and so that's why I alreadybuilt the bike.
I was nervous, and so Iunclipped the case and got all
the webbing off and everythingwas fine.
I mean, bike was fine, luckily.
(25:12):
You know, you and I always putthe pool noodles around the
frame and everything, but theyjust did not tighten it back up
and so, but yeah, well, we'llstart in a little bit of a
chronological order.
So you and I both landed withinminutes of each other.
I had something to do for work,you had something to do real
(25:34):
quick.
We jumped in.
The Sky Club Trip started offsuccessfully.
F flights made it on time.
Um, it was very humorous.
We were almost felt like wewere, uh, going crazy.
They announced that our baggagewas going to come on one
terminal, our one carousel, andthey were spread out from.
It's like like hey, how can wemess with these guys?
(25:57):
They were like everything waseverywhere.
Speaker 3 (25:58):
Two bags down here, two bags all the way at the
other end.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
Yeah.
So then we gathered the bikesand all the bags and we divided
and conquered.
You took the train for the carInstead of us taking everything
on the train.
You went and got the car pickedus up.
Everything fit.
You went and got the car pickedus up, everything fit.
Speaker 3 (26:17):
So Michael walked over, got the car, brought it
back over, while Adam wassetting out front just relaxing.
Huh, okay, that sums it up.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
Well, I did have my laptop out and I was signing
something for my boss that Iforgot.
But yes, you did do that.
And then you got some reallycool magnets.
You were, and so I'll let youtalk about those.
Speaker 3 (26:45):
Well, every day I'm getting these things.
Hey, you can get this specialfrom you know, any one of these
places that sell personalizedtchotchkes to brand your
business.
And they had car signs and Iwas like you know what?
We don't have any cycling menof leisure car signs, but every
time we go on one of these youknow week-long rides or
(27:07):
multi-day rides a lot of timeswe rent a car in the middle or
at the beginning or whatever.
I was like for that price, Ishould just get some.
So I ordered two of them andthey came in.
They look really sharp.
They got kind of maroon aroundthe border and then they have
our logo, cycling Men of Leisure, and then it has, you know,
cycling Men of Leisure RoadAdventure, cycling Men of
Leisure podcast, and so I got acouple of those.
(27:28):
So I took them out and weslapped them on the side, so we
were advertising as we droveacross from Atlanta up to Rome.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
So they look pretty sharp, got a lot of mileage out
of them, if there's somebodydriving by on the interstate and
they go.
Speaker 3 (27:41):
I'm really bored.
Maybe, oh well, let's justlisten to that podcast.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
And coming out of Atlanta we had a little bit of
traffic, which is par for thecourse.
You always have traffic out ofAtlanta, so we got some mileage
out of that.
Speaker 3 (27:59):
We headed on down the road and we were on our way to
rome.
All roads lead to rome, rightso the one.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
We were on dead at least, um.
So I mean from from that point,logistics was worked out great.
We got to our hotel.
We built the bicycles um, tookthem outside with some tools,
did some fine tuning um makingsure everything was went
together.
You did have those five extrapieces, I just don't know where
(28:25):
they went, but um, but you knowwhat we were worried about your
head unit and it never went onbetter than it my pedals in the
head unit.
Speaker 3 (28:35):
I always have trouble with those two things.
They went on flawlessly,especially the head unit,
because if you don't do it rightmy head units designed that if
you don't do it right there'slike five, six pieces in there
that all fit kind of in acircular area and there's like
this this o-ring type thingaround it and if you get it in
too loose, all those five or sixpieces just fall out and then
(28:58):
it's a mess.
Um, put it right in there,tighten it right up, no problems
at all.
So you know I'm.
You know another half a dozentimes I might get this down to
like flawless um.
The next day was officially thefirst day of of brag um which
(29:18):
was kind of weird, becausegenerally we don't get to the
end town or the beginning town.
We take the bus and generallyit's like mid-afternoon, late
afternoon.
We were there all day.
Um, I had to get the the carback.
So, uh, we found out wherepadres was going to be and I
dumped off all of you and all ofthe stuff in the parking lot
(29:40):
and then, fortunately, the carrental place was just like a
mile down the road, so I took,dropped off the car, uh, hiked
it back, didn't take very long.
And you had, we had our, ourswag bags that we'd talked about
on the show.
We created swag bags for theteam, which had, you know,
shirts, uh, which had theirJersey, uh, shirt.
(30:03):
Uh, we did a customized t-shirtfor the ride, um, some other uh
decals, things like that, andthen also some reminder stuff
about our events.
And, uh, then it came in like astring bag that was, you know,
had the logo for the ride andour logo on it.
And when I came back to theparking lot, you had everything
set out there on the boxes readyto go and we were able to put
(30:27):
together those 43 swag bagsright there in the parking lot.
And thanks to yourorganizational skills, we were
able to do that prettyefficiently.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
Thanks to your organizational skills, we were
able to do that prettyefficiently.
Well, you being the history guyof the show, you know that
Henry Ford was the assembly lineguy.
So, being from Michigan, I hadto represent.
I put the assembly linetogether, but I waited.
I'm a smart guy.
I waited for some more help.
Speaker 3 (30:52):
I needed some resources.
None of them were actually likestarted or anything, and if we
were talking about assemblylines, I should have been
calling my union rep.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
but I'll let it go, the cycling man of leisure union
of two.
But we put those together andthen we went to a restaurant
called Harvest Moon, and thereason why that's important is I
kept looking for Neil Young buthe wasn't there.
Speaker 3 (31:27):
No, but let me tell you, they had a lot of local
beers.
We sat in the bar and triedsome of their local brews.
They had some good musicplaying.
So we just spent a couple ofhours just kind of hanging out
there relaxing and kicking backBecause, like I said, this was
new to us.
We don't normally have thatkind of time.
We were waiting for the buses toshow up because we had the swag
(31:49):
bags.
We just had to wait untileverybody started showing up so
that we could start passing themout.
So that we could start passingthem out.
But it worked out really wellbecause we got over there in
enough time to get all of ourbags sitting there ready to go.
So when everybody startedcoming off the bus and stuff, we
(32:10):
were right there next toregistration and people would
see us and come over and we wereable to efficiently get, uh,
our team, their gear and, uh,introduce ourselves to the folks
that we didn't know.
So it was a really nice setup.
It was beautiful Cause wedidn't plan it, it just kind of
happened that way.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
So yeah, it was.
We saw the, the tour buses, sowe so we better go over there.
And then everyone was in linefor the brag trailer to get
registration and their t-shirtand all the license plate and
all the good stuff, and we werethere, so it just worked out.
And then, of course, thatevening, as usual which is one
(32:50):
of the fun things about theseevents we went out to dinner
with our friends and big groupsand good stories and how you've
been and everything else, andthen we went back to Harvest
Moon that evening.
Speaker 3 (33:07):
There's probably 15 of us upstairs sitting on the
upper deck area.
Oh my God, I love the food inthe South.
Oh my God, I love the food inthe South.
All three of us Armando, youand me got these big old plates
of shrimp and grits.
That was incredible.
(33:27):
The grits were awesome, theshrimp was good.
It's just like oh, this is nice, that's something I really
can't get around here.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
But was the shrimp to grit ratio the correct?
That was one of the commentsthat we heard throughout the
week that you have to watch your, watch, your, your shrimp to
grit ratio, and I was likeMichael, have you ever said that
in your life?
Ever so.
Speaker 3 (33:50):
I didn't know there was such a thing, but apparently
there is a shrimp to gritsratio.
We were never able to reallyfind out what that was.
No, there was a lot of talkabout it, but there was never
really an answer to it.
So maybe it's one of thosethings that there's not really
an answer to.
Speaker 2 (34:08):
And that night our camp, the Padres, the area was
decently away from not not anyfault of theirs by any chance,
but decently away fromeverything else, and then we
kind of got our gear ready tostart our trip across the great
(34:30):
state of Georgia.
Yeah and, and You're right,with the bus, normally we're
trying to get our stuff in thebelly of those tour buses and we
fly all day long to go to theeast side and then build our
bikes over on the east side.
It was definitely different tohave the additional time.
(34:50):
As a matter of fact, I didn'tknow what to do.
Speaker 3 (34:53):
I was like what do we do?
It was very relaxing though itwas kind of nice.
We were just like sitting there.
It's like, yeah, we got allthis time.
Everything's ready to go.
We had our swag bags we're justwaiting for people to show up
and it was a nice, relaxingthing.
We weren't on a bus going okay,now we got to.
So it worked out really, reallywell.
(35:15):
And you know, I got to saywe'll talk about Padres a little
later Um, that was a uniqueexperience that we hadn't done.
We did a lot of things firsttime on this on this ride that
we hadn't done before um,experience nature and did the
full service.
Uh, you know, psych cycle intype, concept and so.
(35:38):
But we've got some snippetsfrom those things that we'll
talk about in a little bit.
Speaker 2 (35:44):
I have some highlights from our first day of
writing here.
We rolled out of Rome and well,we made it to our first rest
stop, which is all brag reststops I mean, the sag stops are
just amazing More snacks andnormally peanut butter and jelly
or pimento cheese.
But this first stop had amuseum and there was a
(36:09):
dedication to a former firstlady, which was pretty cool.
Some of the other highlights Ihave here is we stopped at a
brewery at a covered bridgecalled Harley Creek Covered
Bridge, yeah, and we were ableto have honeysuckle blonde beer
(36:30):
from a Cartersville brewery.
Speaker 3 (36:33):
Wasn't it Museum something.
Speaker 2 (36:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (36:34):
Museum, museum, city Beer or something I don't know.
But yeah, it was reallyinteresting.
The old wooden covered bridge,like you'd expect to see in, you
know, madison County, iowa orsomething like that, very cool.
And there's this brewery nextto it and they were just giving
out free beer at I don't know 11o'clock in the morning, 1030.
(36:57):
But it was good, it wasinteresting.
Speaker 2 (36:59):
It's not true.
Um hey, it was actuallyafternoon.
It was afternoon, not true?
Not true at all so, oh, that'sright.
Speaker 3 (37:07):
Yeah well, it was afternoon somewhere exactly
exactly um.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
We had our normal italian.
No we didn't.
No, we didn't.
Speaker 3 (37:22):
That first day our.
Italian ice lady was not there.
That's right, we had the whatdo they call them?
Snow cones.
Snow cones, yeah it wasn't theregular Italian ice.
Speaker 2 (37:35):
Or shaved ice, or whatever.
Speaker 3 (37:36):
Yeah, whatever they call it.
Speaker 2 (37:38):
I don't know what they call it.
Yeah, that's ice, or whatever.
Speaker 3 (37:39):
Yeah, whatever they call it, I don't know what they
call it.
Yeah, that's always a highlight.
The last rest stop of the dayhas like the Italian ice and we
always get one and that's kindof a tradition.
Moon.
Speaker 2 (37:49):
Shadow Concession.
Speaker 3 (37:51):
That's right.
They weren't there until.
Speaker 2 (37:53):
Day two, she had a flat tire.
It happens, yeah, it happens,and in my notes I have that we
went to the Mellow Mushroom and,as usual like we always do on
these trips we invited othercyclists to our table and we got
to sit with Stephen.
Speaker 3 (38:15):
So that was great, which we didn't know, and he was
down there by himself and it'slike oh, come on up and sit with
us.
So you know, it's all aboutcommunity and making friends and
, yeah, a lot of fun.
Speaker 2 (38:29):
My notes show that the next day was the team jersey
day and we started our morningoff with not only our team
picture, which I can go into,but also some fun pictures with
our rivalry, which I'll let yougo into.
So we were able to get 35 ofthe 43 team members.
(38:51):
As you mentioned the swag bagswe put, please meet at 650 and
join us for the team picture.
Truth be told, a few people hadto go home early and bow out,
and so we're hoping in the besthealth and recovery.
And then some people had hadhotels, that it wasn't really
(39:11):
logistically feasible to comeback for just a photograph.
We completely understand.
But we were able to get 35 ofthe 43 team members, which was
really cool, and that's on ourfacebook page if you want to
check that out.
Speaker 3 (39:26):
but we also took some fun pictures with another team,
oh yeah our friend savannahstarted up a new team this year
and thought it would be fun forthis year to have a rivalry name
to cycling men and women ofleisure.
So she and her friend created ateam named cycling women
(39:52):
against leisure.
Speaker 2 (39:54):
Now, who would be against leisure I?
Speaker 3 (39:58):
just crazy talk is what I think.
But you know, and to be fair,there was conversation
beforehand with us between usand her.
She wanted to make sure thatyou know, everything was cool
and that you know there wasn'tgoing to be any, you know, hard
feelings or anything like that,and we all worked it out and we
(40:21):
all came to the conclusion that,yeah, it was cool to do that.
So she had a team of 10 or 11and they were doing their
pictures on the other side ofthe building and she called us
up and said hey, you know, I'dlike to get some pictures of you
guys.
So as soon as we got done withour team pictures on one side of
the building, we went directlythrough the building to the
other side and, uh, got somepictures with them, and not just
(40:45):
with their, their team and andour, you know, you and I.
Uh, we did some fun picturesbetween her and what I think was
an Ann and Anna Okay, um, whowere kind of the two captains of
the team, and we did some fungoofing around pictures of this
(41:05):
rivalry thing where we lookedlike we were fighting Adam and I
were fighting them, and thenone where we were all shaking
hands and that type of thing.
And then, what was interesting Ibelieve it was yesterday,
savannah put together this thingthat looked like a newspaper
article where it's like you know, brag team rivalry, and it had
a picture of us doing thefighting thing and then at the
(41:27):
another page of it showed, youknow, the rivalries ended, we're
all friends and we're allsitting there shaking hands.
So that was really, really cuteand it was a lot of fun.
I mean, people were like kindof asking us.
There were some people that'slike what's this all about?
And things like that.
It's like no, no, it's just allin fun.
And on the back of their shirtthey, instead of saying how we
(41:48):
always say it's a great day fora bike ride, um, they put on
there something like it's it's agreat day for the brag rivalry,
yeah, so it was.
It was a lot of fun.
We had a good time with it.
Speaker 2 (42:00):
So 99.9% of the people who saw that, you know,
they laughed and said, oh, youguys are silly.
And then that one lady at thelast rest stop.
You and I were waiting for moonshadow concessions Italian ice
and this woman was like.
So let me ask you, what is thisfight all about?
Speaker 3 (42:20):
Like no, it's not really a fight and we're all
friends and yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:26):
Well, all good, Savannah, Great job.
I have another note from theteam, Besides the photographs as
we headed down the road.
I have that we went on the.
Now I'm going to give creditwhere credit is due.
Franklin says that the road wascalled Johnson Mountain or
(42:49):
Johnson Mountain Road.
But I kind of like Mandalu, Ilike her description of it,
which is the Three Medusa Hill.
Speaker 3 (42:57):
Oh, three-headed Medusa.
Three-headed Medusa Hill.
Oh, three headed Medusa.
Three headed Medusa.
Yeah, yes, that was probablythe longest and steepest hill
that we climbed all week, and Ithink it was around 14%, if I am
correct.
Speaker 2 (43:10):
I think it was even more, but yeah it was just long
and it went up.
Speaker 3 (43:15):
And then the reason why I should kind of called it
the three headed Medusa, becauseyou had a section where you're
going up and then you kind ofturn and do another section and
then you turned again and didanother section and, and I would
say in the, with the, the, thewriters that I was around, I
would say 98% of them had towalk it.
(43:37):
It was, it was painful.
I had to walk.
So well, you know, uh,ironically, there was a guy in
front of me who fell down causehe, literally he was going so
slow that he was trying and hekind of fell to the side and I
was right there.
So I was like, oh, I stopped anduh was lifting up the bike and
(43:58):
his pedal was still, you know,his cleat was still attached and
I helped him get back on hisbike and he was all okay.
Um, it was just that he wasn'tgoing fast enough to stay
balanced.
So at that point I can't lie, Iwas kind of happy.
It's like well, I can't juststart recycling on this level of
grade, so I guess I'll justhave to walk a bit.
(44:20):
So I was not unhappy to hop offthe bike and help him, because
it gave me a convenient excusenot to get back on the bike for
a chunk of that hill, becauseeven if I'd have wanted to, I
couldn't have.
But trust me, I was needing abreak, so I walked it.
Speaker 2 (44:38):
I was riding with our our team member, gary, and, and
he and I were both talking,talking, talking, you know, like
oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, and hewas telling me a story.
Um, he unfortunately got hit bya car and so luckily he is okay
.
And all of a sudden they said Igot, I got to stop talking.
And he said, yeah, I got tostop talking.
(44:58):
And so we both stopped talkingand we both were writing and he
kind of said are you ready?
And I said I'm ready, I wasn'tready, I was not ready.
So I think I tried about Idon't want to lie, I'm not going
to say halfway up, probably athird of the way up.
Speaker 3 (45:20):
And then all of a sudden I'm like I'm not going to
make it.
I mean it was just burning yourlegs.
I was about almost halfway upwhen the gentleman fell and,
yeah, my legs were justscreaming at me and it was.
I was almost to the point whereI was going so slow that I
could have easily fallen over.
I mean, it was just ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (45:41):
In my notes I could have easily fallen over.
I mean, it was just ridiculous.
In my notes I also have herethat loud traffic at night.
Nothing against Padre, that'snot their fault, but just while
we were camping that road keptme up a little bit.
Some people up there was EMSgoing back and forth.
Speaker 3 (45:58):
I don't think it kept you up, didn't even hear it.
Speaker 2 (46:03):
You can sleep through a rapture.
Speaker 3 (46:06):
Pretty much.
There could have been a semi-gosix inches from my head, I
would not have heard it, I wasjust out.
But then that took us into thetown of cartersville
cartersville, yeah, and then thenext day we went from
(46:27):
cartersville to jasper, if Iremember correctly we did and we
were.
Speaker 2 (46:32):
in my notes here I have that we were introduced
from our friend margaret.
We were introduced to to Chriswho has a cycle park, and we
made a connection with that andwe're going to reach out to him.
We'll try to see if we can'tget something going for our
future show.
He was wonderful and just togive you an idea, this cycle
(46:53):
park takes donations andbasically and basically he used
to work at an old factory therenearby, yeah, and they had a lot
of things like he.
Speaker 3 (47:08):
He recycles a lot of stuff and they had like some of
these big wheel cog things Idon't know what kind of machine
it was on, but he had takenthose and used them as as sides
for benches and it createdbenches and everything that he's
used is like recycled stuff andhe's got benches out there.
He's got a picnic cover typething built there.
(47:32):
There's a big map of the trailsand the road areas.
He even had one of these bigelectric industrial box things
that you'd see like on a side ofa building and when you opened
it up it had like things forcyclists.
There was extra tubes in there,there was first aid supplies,
all of this stuff.
There was bathroom facilities,there was a couple of shower
(47:55):
facilities.
I mean, this guy and this isjust on his like private land
this guy had went all out tomake this cycle park and some of
our friends um, that's kind ofwhere they ride out every week
and is from that facility, butthat's like the coolest facility
I had ever seen and, uh, that'swhere we had one of our rest
(48:16):
stops and it was just reallycool, so it'll be interesting if
we can get him on the show totalk about he's done that and
he's done some other things foryou know, getting bikes for
underprivileged kids and thattype of stuff.
Speaker 2 (48:31):
I'm going to mention one thing about that.
And he said, oh, I would loveto be on the podcast.
And he told us a story aboutcollecting money for bicycles
for underprivileged kids, whichwe'll hope to touch more on that
.
And he said, well, how do I dothe show?
And I said, well, we do it onthe Internet.
And he said, oh, he said that'sgoing to be a problem, there's
(48:51):
no Internet around here.
And I said, well, we could doit by phone.
He said, oh, that it by phone.
He's like, oh, that'll work.
So, um, but uh, a couple of thenotes I have from there is we
got our first pimento cheesesandwich.
Speaker 3 (49:08):
Um, at the rest stop, you had a very small issue with
your derailleur that we wereable to fix right on the side of
the road it was not the hanger,which is funny because I
actually had a conversation withthree different people about
the derailleur hanger and one ofthe guys was like you know what
?
It's weird because we've neverthought about it.
We carry derailleur hangers forour mountain bikes when we go
(49:29):
mountain biking.
But he goes.
I never thought about it for my, for my road bike.
So he was actually had gottenderailleur hangers for his road
bikes as well, was actually hadgotten derailleur hangers for
his road bikes as well.
But, yeah, I had a slightproblem where I had to do some
repairs on the road because itwasn't shifting right and I
didn't get it quite put back,aligned, the way it should have
(49:53):
been.
And we got you fixed up.
Yeah, we just a matter oftaking it off and putting it
back on.
So everything was good.
Speaker 2 (50:03):
When you were um making a small adjustment on the
side of the road, I pulled offon the right side by this old,
old building.
Used to be like a general store,but it was like this log cabin
from like 1890 looking buildingso the reason why is because
there was shade there and I justpulled my bike in front and I
(50:23):
kind of was leaning over myhandlebars, as cyclists do,
taking a break, and I looked tomy right and there was a very
funny sign and the sign saidthis vehicle is protected by a
high-speed wireless device andthere was a picture of a glock
and I just thought it was sofunny.
Speaker 3 (50:38):
Well, it's wireless and it is high speed.
So yeah, it was pretty funny.
Speaker 2 (50:44):
And I definitely took a photograph of that.
But you know, when we got toJasper, what an accommodating
city.
They had these beautifulgo-karts and I mean I mean,
sorry, golf carts I apologize,Golf carts, Cause where we
finished was very low down in in, like the bottoms near the
river um and or Creek orwhatever it was.
(51:07):
But um and the the city gotreally involved and, which is
something that we kept seeing atheme of, each of the cities
were really involved and veryhappy to have us there.
But they had golf carts andshuttles to get you up the hill,
and so you and I decided thatwe would head into town and we
(51:29):
saw our friend Sarah at a winery.
You and I went to a distillery,Wouldn't you know it?
We didn't just go to anydistillery, wouldn't?
Speaker 3 (51:39):
you know it, so are you.
We didn't just go to anydistillery, we went to the only
I repeat, only legal distilleryin jasper georgia.
Speaker 2 (51:50):
So here we are.
We're in the shark topdistillery having an
old-fashioned.
Wouldn't you know that the menof leisure are here?
Speaker 3 (52:07):
while it is a small distillery, it is very classy.
It's very, very well done andthis old-fashioned that we're
drinking extremely good.
I've never had it with thesmoked cinnamon before.
I haven't either the theability to smoke cinnamon, and
there's a cinnamon stick inthere, which I don't normally
like the sweet stuff or thecinnamon, the fiery thing, but
it's very mellow For sure.
Speaker 2 (52:27):
So the gentleman here said they are the first legal
distillery in Jasper Georgia andI found that that was very
funny that they introducedthemselves as legal distillery.
Speaker 3 (52:41):
But it's named after a local mountain, they said.
A lot of moonshining hasoccurred in the past and still
may be occurring today, so younever know.
Speaker 2 (52:53):
I think it still is.
He said hypothetically, but I'msure he meant that it still is.
Who am I to question?
Well, since the barrels areback there and the still only
holds 50 gallons, yes, they showus a still and it's sitting in
the corner.
Speaker 3 (53:09):
We have pictures of it.
It's a 50-gallon still andthey've got a ton of you know,
they've got the big 55-gallonbarrels in the back and I'm like
how many runs do you have tomake in a 50 gallon still to
fill up a 55 gallon barrel?
Because you don't, you know,you don't get 50 gallons.
No, and I mean, to me it wouldseem like I don't know.
(53:30):
The math just seems a littleweird to me.
Speaker 2 (53:32):
We should ask them before we leave how many gallons
you get off of a 50 gallonstart.
Speaker 3 (53:37):
Because they've got brandies, they've got bourbons,
they've got whiskey, they've gotmoonshine, and then they've got
flavored moonshine.
Speaker 2 (53:43):
So I'm like and they had gin, but we decided against
the gin.
Speaker 3 (53:48):
Well, I already cleaned all my bicycle parts, so
we're good.
Speaker 2 (53:52):
I do need to put some lube on my bicycle before we.
Speaker 3 (53:55):
I have some.
Speaker 2 (53:56):
Oh.
I can hook you up.
I got some too.
If I can't find it, I'll cometo you as a secondary, but yes,
I figured along the way.
We need to get these pieces forour show.
We've got a wonderful team.
Today we had 41 members, acouple gentlemen, one gentleman,
(54:17):
one woman had to go home.
Speaker 3 (54:20):
We had team photos this morning.
I think we got 35 or 37, 35, Ithink, showed up for the photos,
so that's fantastic.
Speaker 2 (54:30):
We do know that a few of our friends didn't make the
photo, but they're still ourfriends.
Speaker 3 (54:36):
And we've been getting a lot of excitement
about our activities onWednesday, our pasting at the
distillery and our dinner teamdinner that we're having, so
that should be fun.
Speaker 2 (54:47):
It should be a good time.
So I figured we would just geta little snapshot.
So that was in Jasper and wehad a good time in Jasper.
It was a good night.
Yes, that was in Jasper and wehad a good time in Jasper.
It was a good night.
Yes, it was.
Do I have any notes about Jasper?
(55:08):
I do not have any notes aboutJasper.
I do have a note that we'll getinto.
We need to thank some of ourteam members for some gifts that
they brought us.
So we'll get into that.
And from Jasper we headed downthe road to Dawsonville.
(55:35):
Dawsonville oh, I do have thecamaraderie.
During the distillery that wegot to meet Jeff Armando was
there and had a nice old fashion.
He really enjoyed it.
There you go, connie, there'stwice that I've mentioned
Armando.
You said that he only listensbecause he hears his name.
(55:57):
So now it's twice.
So three times now.
But yeah, I'm just searching myoutline here.
Next day we pedaled toDawsonville and we got to see
some friends on the road for thefirst time.
We were concerned because wehadn't seen Natalie and Audra,
(56:18):
and we got to see some somefriends on the road for the
first time.
We were concerned because wehadn't seen natalie and audra
and we got to see those ladies.
Um, I have a note of a verypicturesque rest stop and then
oh, and the massive hillafterwards.
Okay, so there was this reallyneat, intimate, like space to
have an event, almost like asmall wedding or whatever.
(56:40):
It was, like this waterfall,these people's houses.
But what was so teasing aboutit is as you came into the rest
stop and had these big arrowsand it's okay.
Now you know you can come hereand get, get a snack, get
something to eat or, you know,get something to drink.
But you knew when you came outthere was a really big climb
coming out.
So it's kind of like, reallylike messing with you a little
(57:01):
bit.
So let's see, here I have, oh,that night I have in our notes
that our friends Juan and Amircame into town and we went to a
restaurant called, of all things, the Blue Bicycle.
Pretty fitting to go to arestaurant called the Blue
(57:22):
Bicycle on a bicycle trip.
Um, and then from there mynotes, I have our escapades in
Dawsonville.
But you know what I think weshould do?
I think we should.
Actually, we were able to sitdown with Padre, cycle, in with
(57:45):
Jimmy and Dave, and you think weshould play that interview?
Speaker 3 (57:49):
Yeah, you know we tried their cycle in and out.
This is the first time we'dever really did a full service
charter and I got to say it wasreally cool and it really
spoiled me.
But we did get a chance to sitdown and talk to them, so why
(58:10):
don't we play that clip andlisten to what they had to say?
Sounds good.
Speaker 2 (58:15):
Well, here we are.
We are with Padre Cycle Inn andwe've had a wonderful week,
hopefully.
Jimmy and Dave, what do youguys think?
How do you think it's gone sofar?
Speaker 5 (58:25):
We're happy with it.
It's been a great week.
It's always great meeting newpeople and hanging out with
cyclists.
Cyclists are just greatattitudes that enjoy cycling and
enjoy our services, appreciateus, and so we always enjoy being
at every event, and this hasbeen a great one, with pretty
good weather as a whole.
Speaker 2 (58:40):
Well, we think you've done a phenomenal job,
absolutely, even putting up withour shenanigans.
Last night in the rain with ourfriend Savannah, who came down,
but she's gonna be with you atRAGBRAI, so I'm sure she wanted
to come check it out.
You know, one of the one of thethings that was really neat all
week is we've peddled with ourfriend Armando and we'd like to
tease him, and you've seen ustease him.
(59:01):
But his idea of not having toworry about a spot I can't
express that enough for yourcompany as a spokesman, to be on
the road to listen to him sayyou know what I have all day, I
can relax, I know where I'mcoming tonight, I don't have to
worry about getting it Before hewas always like I got to go.
Speaker 3 (59:19):
I got to go because I got to get the good spot.
And all this week he's like I'mgoing to get the good spot
because Padres has already gotit for me.
So you could definitely see hisanxiety level.
Where will he go down?
And I think he actually enjoyedthe ride better.
So I mean that's just anotheradded benefit to your guys'
service is, when I get in, Idon't have to find a spot inside
.
I don't have to find a place, Idon't have to put up a tent, I
(59:41):
just show up and guess what myluggage is there, the tent's put
up.
I mean you don't make my bed,but that's okay.
Speaker 5 (59:48):
I think Armando's smile got bigger and bigger and
bigger each day that he cameinto camp.
Speaker 2 (59:53):
I truly think so, and I kept waiting for a chalk on
my pillow, but as hot as it wastoday, there would be no chalk.
Speaker 5 (59:59):
Would just be a nice little smear chalk.
That looks okay.
Speaker 3 (01:00:03):
But no, it's been a great week.
You guys have this thing down,pat, I think.
Like I told you guys early inthe week, it's like things could
be on fire, but you guys didn'tshow that it was on fire.
And I'm sure there's thingsthat happened behind the scenes
that were like oh my gosh, buteverything was smooth.
All your staff was superprofessional.
And one thing I'll mention I gota friend of ours gave me a
(01:00:24):
bottle of wine.
I didn't have any place to putit so I just stuck it in one of
my bags.
It wasn't wrapped, it was justin my small carry-on bag and I
was like this may or may not getthere and it may just be wine
dripping out.
You know what?
It got there in one piece.
And my point to this wholestory is I've seen you guys run
around here with the luggage andyou're not grabbing it and
(01:00:45):
tossing it like the airportpeople, you're picking it up and
bringing it over to one pileand stuff like that.
So I think that's somethingthat I super appreciate is
you're not just like grabbing itand he-powing it.
Speaker 2 (01:00:55):
And I kept our old team name really proud with Team
Sherpa.
I brought way too much crap.
Speaker 3 (01:01:03):
Good thing they didn't weigh your bags, or you
might have had some issues.
Speaker 5 (01:01:07):
Oh well, we'll leave it at that I don't think we
needed to weigh them, youalready knew they.
Speaker 3 (01:01:11):
Oh well, we'll leave it at that.
I don't think we needed toweigh them, yeah.
Speaker 5 (01:01:13):
You already knew.
Speaker 2 (01:01:13):
They went to two urgent cares along the way to
get back shots and everythingelse, so they did get lighter
throughout the week.
I keep giving stuff away, so wejust want to express our
appreciation for staying withyou guys.
We really, really enjoyed it.
I have to say that having aplace to come to every night was
definitely peaceful, but one ofthe perks that you have that
(01:01:33):
even Savannah didn't understandis you get an air mattress as
well, and so, yeah, when she,when she found that out last
night, she's like really, andshe was just organically excited
it's not just an air mattress,it's an air mattress all week.
Speaker 5 (01:01:46):
If there's an issue with it, we can replace it.
Yeah, and that's a lot of theconcern with bringing your own
stuff is you have one airmattress and if it goes bad,
then you're sleeping on theground.
Speaker 3 (01:01:56):
You're waiting for that next stop.
Speaker 2 (01:01:57):
They've got plenty of spares that we'll use, and your
crew is fantastic.
I would even go to write on theboard.
You have a board you write on.
I'd go to write on it.
He goes, I got it, I got it, Igot it and.
Speaker 3 (01:02:08):
The final thing I'll say is for those who haven't
tried your service.
Another really cool thing isjust the relationship and the
community within the community,because you've got the brag
thing going on.
But then I mean, right nowwe're looking and there's like
15, 20 people sitting underneathyour tents enjoying some cool
refreshments and snacks and justtalking and that type of thing.
Speaker 5 (01:02:28):
Yep, and a lot of those people didn't even know
each other six days ago.
That type of thing, yep, and alot of those people didn't even
know each other six days ago.
Speaker 3 (01:02:32):
Yeah, we were.
We were sitting at the finalrest stop and there was seven of
us.
There was seven of us sittingthere, yeah, and this one gal
walked up and it's like hey,it's the Padres group and we
were all with Padres and wedidn't plan it, we weren't all
riding together.
Speaker 5 (01:02:49):
It's just really kind of cool.
We see that at the downtownarea when oh you're good, we
have phones too.
Speaker 2 (01:02:55):
I'm the one who usually on the show does that.
We'll see that at the downtownareas.
Speaker 5 (01:02:58):
When you're down there and all of a sudden people
will see other people that theyknow from camp and they're like
hey.
Speaker 3 (01:03:03):
Yeah, for sure, really great job.
Speaker 2 (01:03:06):
No, great job.
Thank you so much, thank youvery much.
Those.
Those guys did a great job and,and you know that that whole
model that they have, I mean youcould see that they were very
uniform, um, very pattern ofpractice of what they were doing
.
They had a, they had it down toa science and, um, even though,
(01:03:29):
fantastic, fantastic, and Iknow they.
Speaker 3 (01:03:31):
They are uh have a few other events that they're
going to be at.
I know they're going to be atbrag or, excuse me, rag bride,
and uh, they're going to be atthe bourbon country burn and uh,
I believe they're going to beup at shoreline.
So if you're doing any of thoserides and you really want to
just relax and enjoy theexperience uh, you experience
(01:03:52):
you might check out theirservices.
I know some of those rides.
They still have a couple ofspots left, so check it out.
I was very, very impressed.
Speaker 2 (01:04:01):
I'm going to mirror everything you said.
I'm going to only add one piece.
They're also going to be atDahlmack.
The only thing I don't know isif they have any more space for
Dahlmack.
I don't want to misspeak.
You would definitely have tocontact padre cycle, padres
cycle incom, um, but yeah,they're going to be both of
those.
So, um, in michigan as well.
Um, so um, the next day we werein dawsonville and, um, I'm
(01:04:30):
gonna do this very strategically.
Uh, don't want to mess this up,but we, you and I, while we
were friends and we normallynever compete with each other
when you're on a car track, yougotta compete with each other
right, it's a racetrack yeahit's like mario kart, but like
(01:04:52):
real life, that's right.
So I'm gonna, I'm gonna playthis clip here and I'm gonna be
very strategic about it.
All right?
Well, here we are.
We're at the, the AMP cartracing.
We just got off the track andoh, and what?
(01:05:17):
To find that out?
I'm going to bring you back topart two, as you mentioned
earlier in this show, part twoof our Brag 2020-2025 recap.
Here's what you can lookforward to.
You can find out who betweenthe two of us left it all out on
(01:05:39):
the track.
You will also get to hear theexecutive director of Bragg, mr
Franklin Johnson.
We sat down with him earlierthis evening.
We got his final thoughts.
We do have some information,such as how many riders we got
his final thoughts.
We do have some information,such as how many riders we got
an injury report.
There's a couple things there.
If you're curious, you can findthat out.
You and I gave our closingthoughts from the airport and to
(01:06:06):
find all of that out, we'regoing to ask you to oh, and you
will have another at that timeon that episode another listener
spotlight.
Speaker 3 (01:06:17):
This is a good one too, so we'll see how many
people can get this one.
Speaker 2 (01:06:22):
With that being said, I'll repeat it again, but the
last seven days for us was anexcellent day for a bike ride,
for a bike ride.
Speaker 3 (01:06:31):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (01:06:35):
Thank you for coming along with Adam and Michael on
Road Adventures with Cycling Menof Leisure.
If you have enjoyed this,please subscribe to the show on
the podcast app of your choice.
Popular Podcasts
Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club
Welcome to Bookmarked by Reese’s Book Club — the podcast where great stories, bold women, and irresistible conversations collide! Hosted by award-winning journalist Danielle Robay, each week new episodes balance thoughtful literary insight with the fervor of buzzy book trends, pop culture and more. Bookmarked brings together celebrities, tastemakers, influencers and authors from Reese's Book Club and beyond to share stories that transcend the page. Pull up a chair. You’re not just listening — you’re part of the conversation.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com