Heavy rain soaked us last night. The humidity keeps stuff from drying. Hanging it up, just makes it more damp as it collects moisture form the air.
As a result tonight we are all trying to balance clothing needs for the next few days. By now I have my outifts prioritized for the distance, the terrain, the weather etc. I know which shorts and which jersey I like for the centuries and then which for the hills. Looking ahead at our upcoming days I am doing hte calculus of drying time and when I need clothes for what days.
Not only are our wet clothes a concern. The rest of our wet gear is a problem. My stuff got absolutely soaked and got packed soaked so it sat wet in my luggage and made sure to get everything else damp. My pillow is sour. My duffel bags actually have a sour odor. My tools are rusty and even the brand new spare chain is showing some exposure.
In addition, my cell phone seems to have given up as well. Won't hold a charge. Won't stay on even when iti s plugged in. I can't even get the numbers out of my phone book and I only have Mom and Dad's home memorized. What to do? what to do?
Today was okay. Lots of roller hills. It looked like it might rain so I dressed in arm warmers and tights to be at least warm if not dry while riding. I also swapped out my sunglass lenses for pink/rose lenses for better vision.
Mist and hanging moisture are backdrops in all my pictures.
As I get roling with Steve and the Kids, the weather felt like Seattle. As we climbed the hills in town it felt like the Downtown Seattle Hills and as we passed near an old college it definitely reminded us Pill Hill in Seattle. The old architecture is really fun to pay attention and one of the joys for me as we work our way east and into colonial areas.
Here I am in my leggings and wamr clothing just to give a sense of the day.
Leaving the college we cruise through this great old neighborhood where the houses are just so scenic.
Leaving these periphiral edges of Pittsburgh we get into a valleys and a state park where the fog is beautiful. Here is what it looked like to the normal eye.
Here is how it looks to me through my rose sunglasses.
The rosey colors gives the fog a very surreal and fairy tale feeling. It makes everything so much more beautiful which lifts my mood and sweeps away my worries of being wet.
This little covered bridge looks like it belongs in in a jigsaw puzzle.
I love it as one of the atractions during our serenely non-traffic ride through the state park.
Coming out of the state park we are into another large industiral town. One thing that strikes me about all these larger towns is how all the churches are lined up along a a given road. With each denomination showing off and trying ot out build the one next to it. This develops into one of my favorite mental games from the ride which I think of as a "Church find" sort of liek a word find. How it works is as you ride down the street you see a church and check it off on the mental checklist and then see how many churches you get.
sort of like this... Oh there are the Methodist on the Left, oh 2nd on the right are the presbysterians, oh and 3rd are the Baptists. A.M.E. is 4th. Catholics on the Left. Calvary chapel and even a Mormon church. Hey a sinagogue. Have we seen the Lutherans? Where are the Lutherans. By now we are getting tot he end of hte road and need to turn. I am starting to worry about the Lutherans when just as we make the turn left onto a bridge I see see the Lutherans have the corner lot. Okay, we seem to have everyone here.
As we cross the bridge over the Ohio river we stop to watch the barge traffic and catch some water.
Major barge/river shipping traffic remains a novelty to me. SInce we are excited about just having a stream in our river beds, having enough water to reliably float a barge is unbelievable.
We climb out of the river valley and for the downhills we relish, we grind out the uphill climbs like this.
A bit down the road, I don't get a picture of it but in this little valley there is a wrecking yard and graveyard for dead cars. Piled 4 and 5 high there are thousands of dead cars in this salvage valley and it really is both remarkable and distrubing how many there are. The environmental impact of al those cars rusting and leaking is all I can think of as we ride past. Somewhere in all the wreckages I ride through some glass and get a flat.
Steve pulls over with me and we fix the flat. I reallize I am out of tubes and borrow one from Steve. Fortunately he has a tube. I get it changed, put the wheel in the bike, spint he wheel and BANG. The tube blows. I had pinched teh tube and not seated the tire properly. Fortunately, God told Steve to bring 2 tubes today and so I take the other tube and with more care we change the tire again and are rolling eventually.
So far the first 25 miles of hte day have gone quickly. The subsequent miles draw on. We get to a bike trail that we will follow for 15 miles. Fortunately there is a bike shop there and I can buy tubes to replace Steve's and get a spare for myself.
15 miles down the bike trail and we expect lunch to be provided by a past rider. Marty goes and gets a humongous sandwich and offers to share it. I comtemlate this as we only have 15 miles but I am hungry now. Indeed I indulge and share half of Marty's hero sandwich and it is SOOO good.
Heading down the trail it is an old rail line,
recovered into a bike trail so the grad is VERY flat. The surface is packed gravel, much like kitty litter. Not great for ourtires, but we actually do better than I expect. I pull ahead and ride solo and just fall into the lull of the trail and following hte tire tracks ahead of me. A few miles into the the trail, there is a fallen tree all the way across the trail. A path has been worn to climb over it. I stop and wait for Steve. Steve comes quickly with his head down. He doesn't see the tree. I yell at him to stop and he pulls to a skid at the last moment. Another 2 feet and he would have been launched headfirst over the bike and neither one of us want to thinkn about the outcome.
We climb over and had the bikes over and now use this as a warning to not let the trail lull us out to much.
Riding along we are seeing animals again. A yearling doe. It had to be a doe. It just moved in that graceful feminine way. Then her mother and another yearling dart across the trail. An unidentifiable creature runs across the trail. Smaller than a marmot, but much larger than squirrel or possum. We don't know what it could be. Finally at a picnic clearing I see another.
Our mystery creature turns out to be one of these...
A GROUNDHOG
Riding along, Steve and I separate into solo riding and our own little worlds. The trail goes on...
and on...
and on.
This riding wears me down and I hate it. There is a river to our left, that we can only hear. There are also train tracks because again we can hear the trains but not see them. All we can se is the natural tunnel of plants and gravel trail.
It is straight.
It is flat.
It is a constant width.
It is uniformly lit.
It is uninterupted.
And you have now concept that youa re getting anywhere near your destination. As the 15 mile marked comes and goes, there is not lunch or even a lunch stopping place. Just more trail. This becomes so defeating as I have mentally prepared and paced myself for this stip. I give it the benefit of the doubt. 17 miles no lunch. 20 miles no lunch. 22 miles no lunch. Now I am getting hungry and fuel is becoming and issue and there is no sense of lunch anywhere around.
And being stiuck in this trail it seems pseudo clostophobic. It isn't so close that I feel like it is closing is on me, but I get the sense that I am trapped in a forever maze and will never exit it. Of course that is not rational, but primal fears are innately irrational and it is all I do to not have a panic attack in the saddle.
AT 25 miles, finally there is lunch and an outlet and other riders and such a sense of relief. Fred and Marilyn provide a wonderful lunch and their welcome is so appreciated. I have survived the trap!
Good old Lambert is at the lunch stop and it is soothing to have lunch with him and let the negative feelings of the trail fall away.
Dave and I finally get a look at the river that has been flowing next to us. WE lay down on benches and actually get about a 60 minute nap.
Leaving I stop to ponder this sign to Washington, D.C.
My brain can't quite comprehend the reality. This sign is on a bike trail. Obviously other people have biked from this spot to D.C. This is the first sign we have seen for Washington and the task now seems to be in our hand. Only 280 miles over the next 4 days. How very doable is that. Can I really be this close?
We ride off and continue on the trail.
We are riding the trail fast now, mostly at my urging just to get off of it,
but the scenery is now changing.
Side streams cut across the trail and the bridges over them provide great photo locations.
Old train tressles give us a birds eye view of valleys beneath and also a scenic element to focus on.
We meet "the kids", where Ben is changing a flat at a beautiful overlook.
Tired of riding fast, Lambert hangs with the kids which suits us fine as I really just want to hammer these reaming miles out.
At another train tressel I stop and watch white water rafters and kayaks navigate a tricky section of the river.
Finally another 7 or 8 miles and I into camp. Camp is in a commercial campground at the bass of an earthen dam. We are leary of the dam, but if it goes, we decide there really isn't much we can do and try to put it out of our minds. Dinner is excellent and we hear resloution on the drama from several days ago. Fortunately the compromise solution that had been suggested and that we all hoped for was indeed agreed upon.
Kathy tries to take me for an emergency laundry run to wash and dry my now 2 day damp and soggy clothes. No luck. The laundromat has closed and the next closest laundromat is 3 towns away and still closed at now 8pm. Kathy buys me ice cream instead and uses me as an excuse to get herself some as well... just like when my dad would offer to get me a cookie as kid and would always manage to get himself one as well. I smill at the gesture and we return to camp with still wet luandry.
The day has been exhausting. The air has been heavy and thick and all day and now at the bass of a dam in camp, the air actually takes the oppressive presense of a solid mass. The parking lights beam through the trees and you can see the air as if it were an object. As you walk along you instinctively duck your head so as not to hit it on the object that you see out of the corner of your eye. It is hot heavy air and sleeping is not even an option. How I will get to sleep have no idea. but I must for tomorrow is Mt. Davis, The highest point in Pennsylvania.
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