| Ride Stats |
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Time: 03:11:00
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Route:
SoapStone Church
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Distance:
36.50 miles
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Avg Speed:
11.47 mph
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Max Speed:
0.00 mph
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Altitude Gain:
0 ft
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Terrain: Road: Hills
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Bike: Gary Fisher Rail Road
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Club: Clydesdales |
| Weather Conditions: |
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The Soapstone Baptist Church is one of the older black churches in the area. It was established in the 1860s by freed slaves. They have a "Fish Fry" on the third Saturday of the month to raise money for the church and for the historic items on the property. Today the Spinners moved their monthly destination ride from Hagood Mill to Soapstone Baptist. I drove up to Gateway Park in Travelers Rest where around 50 of us headed out to ride to the old area of Liberia outside of Pumpkintown to join in the "Fry." Ken had put out a call for slower riders to ride together. Ken and I cut away from the group about half way to Dacusville. We stopped a couple of times to see some historic items or take in a scenic view. We also had a min-pin and a female pit bull came out and chased us. The min-pin was calling the shots and egging the pit bull to stay after us. But they did give up after a while. We heard that the group had a run in with dogs. One place that Ken and I stopped we had 6 or 7 dogs come down to greet us. The little dogs barked from a distance while a female coon dog came down and slowly approached and sniffed the both of us. We talked to her and she walked off. We finally got to Pumpkintown Road and after we had been on it for a while the group turned out from another side road. We rode a short with them then turned off Pumpkintown Road and climbed a very steep hill to get to the church.
The church attracts a fair amount of people come in for the food, but today they were mixed in with a bunch of cyclists wearing their "Easter Egg" outfits. I had some light and dark turkey with dressing and gravy, collard greens, carrots, a roll, and a glass of lemonade. A good time was had with eating and chatting with the cyclists and the others at the church. After the group of cyclists left Ken, Don, Linda, Stewart, and I stayed to look at the historic slave cemetery. The church got it's name from a large outcropping of soapstone on the property.
The five of us headed out long after the other cyclists were gone. We followed their route from the church, but Stewart missed a turn and rode down to Highway 11. Linda can really whistle and tried to call him back up the hill, but he didn't hear her. I rode down the hill and told him that we had to climb back up the hill to catch the turn. At that turn we were on a route that I had ridden a couple of times, so we knew where we were then. We followed that route back to Pumpkintown Road about 4 miles from Marietta and turned toward Marietta. Once there a couple of our riders wanted to ride on Highway 276 to get home. I never realized wha a climb out of the river bottom 276 was when leaving Marietta. We climbed until my legs were really tired. When we came into Travelers Rest we had passed the end of the group riding in. Our shortcuts only cut off about two miles from the ride, but we still came in with 36 miles and 2700 feet of climbing.
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