2018 Chocolate Tour

2018 CHOCOLATE TOUR

The other weekend (August 3-5) Danimal Clarke and myself heading north to participate in the Penn State Chocolate Tour bike ride.  Not a century this time, our goal was the 75 mile route.  Spoiler alert .. one of us was over that distance and one of us was under ... you guess?

First let me throw many kudo's in Danimal's direction.  One is he's got a sweet F150.  Pretty much like the ride below.  And you know what an F150 can do?  That's right, it tows!

Danimal's F150 Ride

Popup City

What Danimal doesn't do is drive the F150 when towing, so yours truly got that assignment.  The ride up was uneventful (as opposed to the ride back).  We drove up Friday to Harrisburg East Campground.  This was a surprisingly nice campground.  It was your basic pile in the RV's in a small area, but the grounds and facilities were a step up from the rest.

We arrived, popped the pop-up and and played charades.  Well, no charades, but we did hang out at the site until we got sleepy.  The other really nice part about riding with Danimal is that he's an heating/air conditioning guy.  Focus on the air conditioning.  It was a very muggy kind of evening and then turned torrential rain.

This saved us

I haven't seen rain that hard or that substantial in a very long time.  It absolutely poured on us all night until 5AM. And the popup kept us dry and the air conditioning kept us cool.  Dang that is sweet machine.
We got up early, drove over to Hershey for the start of the race and never thought twice about the rain the night before.  However, Hershey tends to be the highlands of the area.  The 75-mile bike route takes us through the lowlands.  It wasn't too far into the ride before we found all that rain.

Here's a picture of the first rest stop.  Remember, this ride is just outside Hershey so what do you think is piled high at every rest stop?  No issues with getting a sugar high on this ride.  Notice the Payday's are gone, I took 5.  No worries, there were huge stores of this stuff under the table.

Plenty sugar for everyone

Now I'd like to show everyone the wrong way and the proper way to cross a flooded road.  Notice the video on the left.  Danimal straight up pedals through the water.  Notice the soaked shoes and the monkey butt .. well, you can't see his monkey butt but believe me he's got it now.

On the right side is the preferred method to cross flooded roads.  Notice how dry and safe everyone stays.

Danimal did really well on this ride through 37 miles.  To his credit, he made it that far with absolutely no training, no dieting, no preparation, no strategy or forethought.  Way to go Danimal!  You really know how to tackle a course!

That's supposed to be a road

Moo!

So Danimal hopped in the SAG vehicle and road around for a couple hours delivering water to riders and helping the distressed.  So here's a third kudo for Danimal, he definitely is willing to help people in need.  I kept riding, ignored those in need, and found those "3 moderate climbs" the ride definition mentioned.  Overall this course was pretty much flat with very mild rolling hills.

We met up at the finish line for some mac-n-cheese and various non-candy items.  Then headed back to the campground and hit the pool!  Yep, that campground had a very nice pool.  It was quite relaxing to sit in the a floaty chair, feet on the coping, and closing my eyes.

Like a seasoned pair of campers we are: Danimal forgot the steaks and I forgot the grill.  So we headed out for a tremendous steak dinner.  Again, an awesome night of sleep in a cold pop-up.  I did make omelette's in the AM.  I had to cook at least one meal.

As I mentioned the ride home was a little more exciting as I almost wrecked into a car.  I'm pretty sure that car would have taken the brunt of it.  Overall, a peaceful weekend away and a good time to boot!

Danimal is targeting the Great Pumpkin Ride in Fauquier County on Oct 27.  It's a 67 mile ride.  Let's see how Danimal prepares :-)

Strava Statistics Here