Back in 1979 when I first moved to Maryland I bought a Schwinn LeTour 12 speed "road bike" and started riding around Maryland. I saw a 37 mile ride in the "Greater Washington Area Bicycle Atlas" (now out of print since 1998, I think) called the "Prettyboy Reservoir Challenge" about 20 miles north of Baltimore. The description said "If you are in search of hills, this ride is for you."
At the time I worked at Ft. Meade, and one summer day I threw the bike on the car, and went in to work early so I could leave at 3:30pm to drive up and do this ride. The first 10 miles kicked my ass - by the time I got to mile 15, I was walking up hills and it was starting to get dark. I turned around and slunk back to my car.
About 20 years later, in 1999 or so, I decided to try again - this time on my Trek 520 touring bike that had 21 gears to choose from - including a very low granny gear that made the ride doable. Many beautiful views, but a tough ride.
I decided to try this one again, now another 18 years or so later, on my new Trek bike. No more granny gear, but it is 10 lbs lighter than the 520, and I'm actually in better cycling shape than I was back then. This is not a very long ride, but the hills are all steep - lots of 10-12% sneaky stinger grades. I've been doing longer rides lately, but not real hilly ones - a good test for the new bike.
I started early to try to beat the heat, as July was starting to be July-like - temps were to go into the mid 90s. One annoying feature of this ride is that the toughest part is the first 10 miles - which is also the last 10 miles. That means that after getting through that section at the start, all I could think of was "Oh, crap - 17 miles from now, when it is even hotter, I have to do this section again." About 2000 feet of the 2900 feet of total climbing were in that section.
At the northern end of that section, a very ornate church was for sale. You don't see many churches with both fancy stained glass windows and satellite dishes. From there the route circumnavigated the reservoir.
There aren't that many views of the water from the road, other than from one bridge and from the dam, but Prettyboy does live up to its name. Well, to the "pretty" part anyway, as "Prettyboy" to me brings to mind some old lady's parrot. There are never many boats on the reservoir. It is expensive to get a kayak/canoe/rowboat license for the waters and you have to swear to only use that boat in this reservoir. Since Prettyboy is an active part of Baltimore's water supply, they are very aggressively trying to keep out invasive species like zebra mussels, yet another gift from Russia.
The new bike passed the test - all the hills were doable with its gearing and my knees did not feel worse for the wear. I averaged a little under 14 mph overall, with one rest stop at about mile 21. The disc brakes proved their worth, as twice on downhills deer came leaping out. There were more deer on most roads than cars - this ride is on very low traffic roads, even though there have been a lot more houses built since my last ride. The upside of all that new development is the roads are in much better shape - a lot of new fun-to-ride asphalt compared to conditions 20 years ago.
