The first twenty miles of the ride were surprisingly flat. While it wasn't marked on the map we were using, the road we chose ended up following a stream. For the longest time, I thought explorers followed rivers only because they could travel by boat and they needed a source of drinking water , but now I've learned that if you follow a river, it is the flatest way to get from point A to point B. This bit of wisdom is particularly useful when you're trying to find your way across the mountains on a bicycle and you don't have a topographical map. Finding the easiest way to get from here to there is a crap shoot, but if you take roads that follow streams and aren't really crooked, you have a good chance of having a fairly enjoyable ride.

Unfortunately, after our 20 miles of flat riding, the stream began to get thinner and thinner until finally it had dried up. We had reached its mouth. Ahead of us, the road darkened as the forrest began to get thicker and our nice, flat, trail began to point upward. Now, the site of the road heading up isn't nearly as imposing as some of the mountain passes in the Rockies, and no single climb in the east is as difficult as the marathon climbs in the west, but it's what the site of the first climb symbolized that was imposing. The climbing in the Appalachians never stops. You climb one 2-mile, 14 percent grade climb, then you drop down that hill and have to immediately climb up another mountain. It's relentless and never ending. It only ends when you call it quits for the day.