The Ohio River Rendezvous is not a sponsored ride. This ride is put together by Jack and Pat Deacon in Kentucky every year. Jack helped us with some of our routes last year and invited us to join his ride. It represents a group of cyclists enjoying the Kentucky backroads and the camaraderie of great friendships. This year, there were more people from out of state than from within Kentucky itself.We gathered in Lexington on Wednesday night to meet the whole group and have dinner at Transylvania University. What a group! There were a few participants that were unable to make the dinner but, still, there were about 40 of us there.
Thursday morning, there was a ride out of Versailles along backroads and large horse farms. Beautiful countryside!! Unfortunately, we had to miss this ride. We had truck problems as we arrived in Lexington so we spent the morning getting the truck towed to the shop and locating a rental car for the next few days. We did, however, manage to meet some of the riders at Wallace Station for lunch.The real ride started Friday morning out of Paris, KY. We loaded our luggage in to the SAG vehicles, readied our bicycles, and we were off. The further north we rode toward Maysville,KY, the hillier it became. Kentuckians may have called these hills 'rollers' but for us Texans they were hills. We couldn't roll the hills and didn't have enough time between hills to recover before we were climbing the next one. We were left with very tired legs by the end of the ride.
Saturday, Day 2, took us from Maysville,KY, to Portsmouth,OH. The first five miles were hilly and then we hit a long downhill and followed along the river, more commonly known as the bottom lands. We heard thunderstorms were headed our way and we could see the black clouds in our mirrors; we got a few sprinkles but no rain. The last half of the route today had some long climbs and a few really bad hills. Sixty three miles later we reached the hotel and rested our legs before dinner.Day 3 (Portsmouth,OH, to Morehead,KY) started out with a heavy fog which we figured was due to being along the Ohio River. This first section was relatively flat and fast. We rode more of the bottom lands and then had two really long, steep climbs. The first bad one was 2.4 miles long at a grade of 8-10% and the second one a little less than a mile but it reached a grade of 19% toward the top. Several people walked part of this hill. We stopped and visited with some people on the way up but we didn't walk any of it. Today we passed many photo opportunities of old barns and farm lands but didn't stop to take a single picture. Guess we were just concentrating on getting over the next hill.
Going in to Morehead,KY, we stopped at Dairy Queen for fries and a blizzard before continuing to the hotel. Several other riders joined us there.Our last day returned us to Paris,KY. Our legs were stressed and this was to be the hilliest day of the tour. We had a couple long climbs and a few hills starting out, turning in to rolling hills for the second section. We passed a lot of covered
bridges today. Half way in to the ride, we rode more rolling hills and it was starting to get hot. The last leg was even more challenging...hills, hills, and more hills. We made it back to Paris, loaded our rental car, said our goodbyes, picked up the truck from the shop, returned the rental car, and headed back to Ohio.We rode a total of 240 miles over 4 days and enjoyed every pedal stroke. This was a great way to tour a part of Kentucky we would not have otherwise seen. Jack and Pat put together a fantastic tour including great SAG support. This was a great bunch of cyclists and we look forward to cycling with them again.
