The Brookstown Inn was once an old textile mill that had been converted to a bed & breakfast but had the feel more of an old hotel. It was long on grandeur, but a little short on staff. All in all though it looked like a nice place to spend a few days. Plus when we arrived that evening they even had some really good cookies for the guests. So, since we were going to ride the rolling hills of the Yadkin Valley, we felt a hand full or two would be in order. They were good.
The next morning we started looking for fellow riders around the breakfast bar. They were not too hard to spot; lycra stretch pants, multi-colored jerseys, walking in funny shoes, and wearing lots and lots of layers of fleece and nylon. All of these funny cloths were intermingled among guests dressed in business suits and briefcases too. It�s great to be off on a Friday.
By 9:30 we all had met and had loaded our bikes for the 20 minute shuttle to our starting point. By ten we were standing in thirty something temperatures waiting for the tandem to be unloaded. I had on so many layers I looked like the Michelin Man. We finally got rolling and the artic blast of wind chill had me wishing I had brought more layers. It wasn�t long though before a few starter hills had me sweating and the first good grade of the day had me even thinking about taking something off, but then the down hills convinced me to keep it all on.
Yeah, they leave these out of the brochures. That�s OK though, because I like that surprise of watching the road start to tilt away from you at such an acute angle that you can�t even see more than a few feet in front of you. I live for that momentary uncertainty of wondering if the road continues on or just drops off into the abyss. Susan on the other hand hates it, and that can make it a little more fun too. I just can�t describe the feeling you get from streaking down a hill at an insane speed. Tears are being ripped from your eyes. Your clothes are wildly flapping in the wind as sound roars through your helmet. Susan pounding away on your back with a water bottle demanding you slow down, and all the while you are tensed for that one little piece of pea gravel that is going to send you sailing end over end at forty miles an hour into the pavement. What a rush! Anyway, most screaming down hills have those strenuous up hills attached to the other side of them and it doesn�t take long before your legs are burning and it�s all you can do to breath. That is good because it doesn�t leave much breath for yelling at your partner for riding too fast. So it�s a win win for everybody. And that�s what makes us such a great team; I whine about the up hills and Susan whines about the down hills and before long we rolled into our first winery of the day, Hanover Park Vineyards.
After an hour or so of riding we rolled into the RayLen Vineyards. It wasn�t long before we were sitting around another wine bar bandying about the subtleties of Chardonnay aged in �new french oak� verses stainless steel. I was still wondering if it would screw up the taste of french fries but decided to hold that question for later. These wine people can get a little pricklely if asked the wrong question. It was about then that Susan had her wine epiphany. She discovered that if the wine did not have the taste of grape or cherry Kool-Aid with the sugar content of Jolt Cola it was going into the dump bucket. They may specialize in dry wines in North Carolina, but if they wanted this girls business they would do better with a bottle of Aunt Jemima with a wine label on it. It was about then that I started drinking her wine shots and my wine shots and that�s a lot of shots. I was about shot when we finally headed to the van for the shuttle back to the hotel. The chardonnays and the pinot giorgio where tag teaming against the cabernets and the merlots in a Texas death match and lord only knows what the zinfandel and white wine port was doing, but it was ugly. I was glad when we finally made it to the room.
That night I had Mahi Mahi for dinner with a nice ice water that complimented my fish just fine. I was just about wined out. Around ten we made it back to our room, and so ended our first day of wining, dining, biking and whining.
