‍The temp wasn't too bad at the start but the wind was very cold and blowing very hard so I dressed a bit up for the conditions and was pretty comfortable. The open fields surrounding town were very tough with such conditions. It took seemingly forever to work my way up into the forest and hills where the wind was mostly blocked. I headed up forest service road 955 in Johns Mountain WMA(Chattahoochee National Forest) and it was open and not gated for a long while. A bit too much gravel so it was rather uneven but not bad. I had decided to explore every dead end here and I didn't think upon planning that anything would go through over the mountains and back out to another road. A lot of this was improperly mapped so I only had a rough idea of what to expect. The road like most NF roads was graded wonderfully so not many steep pitches. I did a couple roads that ended randomly and kept on following tracks past gates(ones just for stopping motorized traffic) and eventually found my way past a gate way back in the forest that had a lot of horse tracks near and around. This one was narrower and had less gravel and I kept on following it down and down and dreading having to climb back up to the top of the mountain again. But then it just kept going and going until it popped out at a FS gate at a paved back road(Artesian Well road). I decided that rather than retrace my tire prints I would just continue on this road, explore a bit along the way and come back to route via heading up and over the mountain via Pocket road. Largely this was what I ended up doing. First I explored the end of Artesian Well road which led into the National forest too and I spent way too much time checking out the dead ends. I ended up riding a narrow fire break around a very recent burn which was mostly decent riding. It ended up doing a little p loop which was convenient. Afterwards I got back on track and climbed up and over Horn mountain but first did a long dead end road, Deerfield Lane which had some crazy steep but very fun rolling hills. After descending from the Pocket I rode Everett Springs road south all the way back in to town basically, still making up the ride as I went along. Since this was a bit shorter than the route planned to come back to Rome from the west side, I did several dead ends along the way hoping to make it a century. In the end I arrived back at the library a half mile short but decided not to worry about it. Great ride despite the blustery day. 🎷🐛 71.64 new miles -- From Wandrer