The fog is just lifting to reveal an overcast morning as I approach the trailhead to the Virginia Creeper Trail in Abingdon. I’m only two blocks from Main Street but already I feel much farther away.

“Regardless of whether you’re 90 or 2 years old, you can enjoy the Creeper,” my ride from Sundog Outfitters, where I rented a mountain bike, said to me as we drive towards the trailhead.

Although I’m far from an outdoorsman, I was born well after the Woodrow Wilson administration. I’m feeling confident. 

My plan is to spend the morning biking the trail for 17 miles back to my car that is resting in the Sundog parking lot in Damascus, Va., a town of 900 people that marks the halfway point between the trail’s beginning in Abingdon and the end in White Top, Va.

The most popular route on the Creeper is to ride from White Top to Damascus. An elevation change of nearly 1,600 feet creates a path where the first 14 miles are on a steady downhill grade.

Although the downhill leisure ride sounds tempting, I decide I probably should look into the other half of the trail, too. I decide to take heed to the words of Robert Frost and choose to begin in Abingdon. I will take the road less traveled.

Quickly I learn that my choice is not nearly as brave as I imagined. The ride from Abingdon is relatively flat and never terribly challenging. A crushed gravel path is rocky enough at times to vibrate my handlebars but never intense enough for me to fear that I may actually fly over them.

The first five miles is a heavily wooded area and is the most crowded stretch of the trail I experience all day. I pass joggers, walkers, mothers pushing strollers, a pair on horseback, hiking families and several other bikers. Each person looks me in the eye and says hello.

Ahead of me I see a Labrador retriever who appears to be walking its owner.

“There was a rabbit in the trail,” the woman says with a smile of concession to the dog’s power that is unnecessarily apologetic.

After half dozen miles the trail springs out of the woods and begins to wind through the pasture. Gold and purple wild flowers sway with the wind and I have to get off my bike a few times to let myself through a series of gates that are in place to keep cows off the trail.

Until this point I was unsure why I was told that anyone below the age of two could not hike this trail, now I understand. These gates are definitely toddler proof.

Shortly after I pass the marker indicating the eighth mile I reach the Old Alvarado Station. I’m not particularly hungry but knowing that this is the last stop on the trail where I can get a bite to eat before I reach Damascus, I buy a sandwich. With survival skills like this, you’ll be surprised to learn that I was a Cub Scout dropout.

The second half of my ride is very similar to the first. The Holston River runs next to and occasionally below the trail and provides a spectacular backdrop. I learn that pausing in order to admire the view from several of the large wooden bridges on the trail is a wonderful way to excuse a stop that is made primarily to give my legs a rest. I stop at most of the bridges.

Almost three hours after I begin in Abingdon I reach Sundog Outfitters in Damascus.

I feel every like bit like Lance Armstrong after the guys at Sundog tell me that I’ve made the 17 mile trek slightly faster than the average biker. 

I try not to remember that the times of both 90 and 2 year olds factor into the average.