D20 NE Lost Love

We are still loving Pennsylvania, but a little of that love was lost in our ride today. If you haven’t ridden a bicycle on the street you won’t appreciate the picture above. If you have, then you realize the shoulder is only wide enough for a tire and your handlebars are sticking out into traffic – not to mention your arms. As we continued to follow PA Bicycle Route A, there were a few areas that they forgot it was a bicycle route.

They also, it seemed, had taken a little sinister approach to route planning with what I came to call twofer, threefer, and yes, even fourfer hills. The trick was that as you approached a hill you thought you could see the top. You struggled up it only to find that the real top had been hidden to you by the road construction. And in some cases that was a fourfer – four times on the same hill they would trick you into thinking you had reached the top!

The picture above isn’t mine, but it shows another place where “they forgot” this was a bike route. We were on a busy highway, trying to stay alive by riding on the sidewalk. Apparently, in a cost saving measure (or more likely considering the hill construction a sinister effort) the utility company and sidewalk people put the poles in at the same time. It made for really “fun” riding when the bushes were overgrowing the sidewalk already.

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It was a rough day I admit. The rain also fell much of the day but at least wasn’t constant. Mostly it would just rain once we dried out, were negotiating a busy street, or climbing a hill. But this area is beautiful. It reminded me of the Smoky Mountains – or at least how I remember them. The small towns were fun to ride through and people generally friendly.

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We only know one person from Pittsburgh, our good friend Anne. Or at least we thought she was our friend. She knew we were riding our bikes into Pittsburgh, but she never warned us.

After 55 miles in the hilly countryside, we came into the Pittsburgh area. Apparently this is where the song was written “over hill, over dale, we will bite the dusty trail” or something like that. I thought I was just tired as I struggled up some of the hills in the last miles of our ride. I thought surely I’d ridden up harder hills in Colorado. Then today at church a member of the congregation took us – by car – to the steepest, paved road in the US! It’s in Pittsburgh.

Gloria had noted that we hadn’t seen any other bicyclist in Pittsburgh. When we went to the steepest hill we found all of them. There were dozens testing themselves and clearly struggling, standing up, on lightweight bikes, in their easiest gears, barely making it up the hills. I felt better about myself immediately. Look at the picture above on the right and you will see them down the “cliff” at the bottom.

Anne’s husband Jon is from Hawaii. And I think he’s our good friend too, but I wonder if/when we go to Hawaii, if Jon will tell us its a volcano…..