Adventure. Mostly With Bikes

Fortunately, I was in the breakfast room at the hotel before the boys. Otherwise, there was a high probability I would not have had any food to eat. Fortunately, I paid for the breakfast as part of the room cost or at this point we’d be headed to the bank for a loan.

Sure, I drank gallons of A&W root beer crossing Canada, but I only had to pay for the first mug full. I discovered my severe underestimation of food costs, last night after they came in from the airport. We’d played the usual planes, trains, and automobiles game with me taking my rental car to the airport and dropping it off. Then I met them after their flight and we took an Uber back to the hotel. They were, of course, starving because they hadn’t eaten for well over 45 minutes. I took them out to eat and the damages began.

Honestly, if that’s the biggest cost I have to endure in order to have partners on the ride, it’s well worth it. Plus two of the three partners are my grandson’s. I feel incredibly blessed and fortunate to have them in my life and more particularly on this ride. What better opportunity to share with them, be with them, and maybe even educate them a little. In fact, the rule is that we all participate in the three goals each day and then we’ll report in the evening.

We started out this morning with three of us at the hotel and three bikes. By 9:00 we had four of us and still three bikes. My expense all of yesterday and all last night getting here with canceled flights out of San diego. Unfortunately, he didn’t put his bike next to him on the plane and nobody seems to know where it is at this point. Likely someone’s riding it in Florida. I put him in my room so he could sleep for a bit. Caleb, Ridge, and I headed to the submarine, yes there is a real submarine on the Ohio river, and the connected science exhibition.

The submarine was quite interesting and not as claustrophobic as I expected. I just kept thinking happy thoughts :-). The guide that took us through had a lot of interesting information and my brother Mike is very well versed in a lot of World War II history and he’s not even 65. I’ve always said there’s only two things you can do when you hit 65, 1. cook brisket or 2. be a World War II expert. In any case, tons of food, and upwards of 100 men would spend 90 days in this little metal tube. No thank you.

The Pittsburgh Science Center was no less impressive. They had great experiential displays for kids. There was a model train set that was about the size of a big house. It was incredible and beautiful. Caleb and Ridge seemed to really enjoy it and were able to spend quite a bit of time there because we were letting Mike sleep.

Eventually Mike was able to work things out with a local bike trip leader. After our submarine experience, we packed up on our rental bike for Mike and our bikes for the rest of us and went to the start of the gap. It was “only” 3:30 when we finally started our 35 mile ride to West Newton.

The urban riding of downtown Pittsburgh is actually fun and quite interesting. However, you have to constantly be on your toes and look every direction. At one point Ridge almost peddled into a light post as he glanced in another direction. As we moved away from the city and up the Monongahela River, we realized that the other part we definitely would not miss about urban riding was the constant noise.

The trail grew increasingly quiet, green, and pleasant with each mile. We were going uphill, allegedly, but easily maintaining about 10 miles per hour with a nice tailwind. The temperature was quite pleasant. We had all expected to be dying with the heat and humidity, but it was actually almost cool.

We’d been told about a great burger stand near where we were staying in West Newton. So we finished the day with some excellent grease bombs and then settled into the bright morning bed-and-breakfast, Willow House.