Leaving the office, doing a final check on the bike. Any cyclists reading this will think I'm insane for doing this trip on a track bike geared 42/14, but the fact is, I like using reliable equipment, and I didn't have to turn a wrench on this thing the entire three days I was away from home. Didn't even put any more air in the tires. Only damage is that the chain is completely full of mashed up gnats accumulated while riding.
Not even out of Pittsburgh yet, I took a detour to get to Eighth Ave. in West Mifflin and stumbled upon this abandoned warehouse by the railroad. Found this crazy big machine inside.
Hopping the tracks, carrying the bike between a few old rusty cars to get to the Waterfront.
This "Red Waterfall" was about twenty miles into the trail. Apparently the water flowing over the rock is extremely high in iron and sulfuric acid and does horrible things to the landscape. It's one of many byproducts of a hundred years of coal mining in the area.
And here's the same phenomenon in an entire stream, flowing right into the Youghiogeny river. It was pretty eye-opening to see that although the city of Pittsburgh has really cleaned itself up over the past twenty or thirty years, the Midwest is still scarred from the reckless industry of the 20th century.
Another coal mining disaster, "gob piles". Apparently this is what you get when you burn coke (fuel made from coal).
Some kind of big coke storage silo here, it was a landmark on the trail. I picked up five or six big chunks to keep my fire nice and hot and went on my way.
What I look like when I'm alone in the woods. I'd just arrived at my campsite after a good day of riding.
Nice view of the Yough from my campsite, which is called Roundbottom, and was built by Boy Scout troops. The current was pretty wild due to recent rain--this river has some very intense rapids as it gets closer to Ohiopyle.
My lovely campfire from my first evening, which was mostly driftwood (and pieces of hot-burning coke!). I met a guy at this campsite named Serj who was fired from his job as a messenger in Pittsburgh and was now homeless and tramping his way around Pennsylvania. I felt bad for him; he didn't have a bike, and you don't get very far in a day at an average of three miles per hour. He said he'd sold his ride in West Newton for money to eat, and that after he used up his EBT card he didn't know what he was going to do. I guess times really are tough for some people, though I remember thinking if the shit hit the fan for me, the Allegheny Mountains would probably be the last place I'd go.
First thing I saw in the morning after thawing out my feet and leaving camp was this heavily spraypainted old railroad bridge. The sun was barely up and it was still pretty cold. I had my balaclava on and was periodically pulling the bottom part down to eat summer sausage and cold wheat bread.
Of course, when I see a bridge and don't know where it goes, I have to walk across. This ended up being a little scary with the rusty holes in the walkway, but it was fun.
The long haul. I like this shot, it really reminds me of how long that ride in the morning felt. I had a headache, probably from not hydrating well enough, or maybe from drinking too much of the water out of the hand pump (it smelled like rust, but I didn't have a headache the next morning, so maybe I got used to it). I also chose a poor campsite the first night, and was feeling the effects. It was too close to the river and the ground was still a little damp from when the water was higher, not to mention a train went by on the far bank every hour. The temporary solution to the cold ended up being to sleep next to the fire, and throw a log on every time a freight train blew by and woke me up. Honestly though, I had far worse nights in the boy scouts. At least in Pennsylvania you don't have to worry about fire ants, rattlesnakes, scorpions, etc. You just have to check your body for ticks.
When I finally got to Connellsville at ten or eleven that morning, I needed a cup of coffee worse than I can remember. I went to a diner called Valley Dairy and ordered a 6000 calorie country breakfast, and told a woman named Darlene to keep the java coming. I felt a little bit better about life with every ounce of sausage gravy. Oh, and I bought sunscreen. Spending twelve hours a day in a hot dungeon for the last three years of my life has made me forget the effects of the sun on human skin, and by the end of the first day's ride, done in a gray wifebeater (shown above), I was nearly charred.
Aside from the servers at the diner, by the way, people here were fucking assholes. Despite what you might infer from seeing a beautiful, modern street like the one above with a segregated bike lane, I got more GTFOTRs in this town than in the past three months in the 'Burgh put together. I'm never going back there unless it's to have another nine dollar, nine pound breakfast on the way to D.C., or maybe if I have to visit the sleep lab my company has there.
Ramps. For those of you that don't know, they're just wild leeks that grow in Pennsylvania, and maybe the entire region too, I don't know. In any case, for some reason these fuckers are so popular (still!) with trendy chefs that during their peak season, you can't walk into a restaurant that serves anything nicer than grilled stickies without seeing them everywhere on the menu. Don't get me wrong, I like them too, and I'm all about eating things that actually grow out of the earth instead of a test tube in a Monsanto laboratory. It's just that I'm over it, and why would you pay so much for something that basically grows everywhere? Chefs will pay so-called "foragers" an arm and a leg for a bag of these. I saw another varieties of wild leek here too, and millions of wild onions, but you don't see them catching on.
And whaddayaknow, it's a fucking deciduous forest of them! I'm not lying, every one of those green things is a ramp, and I know a ramp when I see one. Look at this! THERE IS A NATIONAL RAMP ASSOCIATION. I really should have brought a giant sack, or maybe a refridgerated truck, I could probably pay off my student loans with that many ramps.
At the waterfall in Ohiopyle. You have to have written permission from the park to jump off that thing in a kayak. I didn't really do too much here except hike around the Ferncliff peninsula and have a few PBRs at the bar next to the outfitter. I'm in pretty good shape, but I'm really not one of those Lance Armstrongy guys that believes if you put good things in your body, it will be good to you.
Okay, I do believe that. But if I ride my bike forty miles in one day, I deserve a beer, dehydrating or not, case closed.
After spending a good part of the day at Ohiopyle, I headed back on the trail and stopped at the grocery in Connellsville to buy dinner. I got a rib steak and a can of beans, and cooked both on my campfire:
My lovely campfire from my first evening, which was mostly driftwood (and pieces of hot-burning coke!). I met a guy at this campsite named Serj who was fired from his job as a messenger in Pittsburgh and was now homeless and tramping his way around Pennsylvania. I felt bad for him; he didn't have a bike, and you don't get very far in a day at an average of three miles per hour. He said he'd sold his ride in West Newton for money to eat, and that after he used up his EBT card he didn't know what he was going to do. I guess times really are tough for some people, though I remember thinking if the shit hit the fan for me, the Allegheny Mountains would probably be the last place I'd go.
First thing I saw in the morning after thawing out my feet and leaving camp was this heavily spraypainted old railroad bridge. The sun was barely up and it was still pretty cold. I had my balaclava on and was periodically pulling the bottom part down to eat summer sausage and cold wheat bread.
Of course, when I see a bridge and don't know where it goes, I have to walk across. This ended up being a little scary with the rusty holes in the walkway, but it was fun.
The long haul. I like this shot, it really reminds me of how long that ride in the morning felt. I had a headache, probably from not hydrating well enough, or maybe from drinking too much of the water out of the hand pump (it smelled like rust, but I didn't have a headache the next morning, so maybe I got used to it). I also chose a poor campsite the first night, and was feeling the effects. It was too close to the river and the ground was still a little damp from when the water was higher, not to mention a train went by on the far bank every hour. The temporary solution to the cold ended up being to sleep next to the fire, and throw a log on every time a freight train blew by and woke me up. Honestly though, I had far worse nights in the boy scouts. At least in Pennsylvania you don't have to worry about fire ants, rattlesnakes, scorpions, etc. You just have to check your body for ticks.
When I finally got to Connellsville at ten or eleven that morning, I needed a cup of coffee worse than I can remember. I went to a diner called Valley Dairy and ordered a 6000 calorie country breakfast, and told a woman named Darlene to keep the java coming. I felt a little bit better about life with every ounce of sausage gravy. Oh, and I bought sunscreen. Spending twelve hours a day in a hot dungeon for the last three years of my life has made me forget the effects of the sun on human skin, and by the end of the first day's ride, done in a gray wifebeater (shown above), I was nearly charred.
Aside from the servers at the diner, by the way, people here were fucking assholes. Despite what you might infer from seeing a beautiful, modern street like the one above with a segregated bike lane, I got more GTFOTRs in this town than in the past three months in the 'Burgh put together. I'm never going back there unless it's to have another nine dollar, nine pound breakfast on the way to D.C., or maybe if I have to visit the sleep lab my company has there.
Ramps. For those of you that don't know, they're just wild leeks that grow in Pennsylvania, and maybe the entire region too, I don't know. In any case, for some reason these fuckers are so popular (still!) with trendy chefs that during their peak season, you can't walk into a restaurant that serves anything nicer than grilled stickies without seeing them everywhere on the menu. Don't get me wrong, I like them too, and I'm all about eating things that actually grow out of the earth instead of a test tube in a Monsanto laboratory. It's just that I'm over it, and why would you pay so much for something that basically grows everywhere? Chefs will pay so-called "foragers" an arm and a leg for a bag of these. I saw another varieties of wild leek here too, and millions of wild onions, but you don't see them catching on.
And whaddayaknow, it's a fucking deciduous forest of them! I'm not lying, every one of those green things is a ramp, and I know a ramp when I see one. Look at this! THERE IS A NATIONAL RAMP ASSOCIATION. I really should have brought a giant sack, or maybe a refridgerated truck, I could probably pay off my student loans with that many ramps.
At the waterfall in Ohiopyle. You have to have written permission from the park to jump off that thing in a kayak. I didn't really do too much here except hike around the Ferncliff peninsula and have a few PBRs at the bar next to the outfitter. I'm in pretty good shape, but I'm really not one of those Lance Armstrongy guys that believes if you put good things in your body, it will be good to you.
Okay, I do believe that. But if I ride my bike forty miles in one day, I deserve a beer, dehydrating or not, case closed.
After spending a good part of the day at Ohiopyle, I headed back on the trail and stopped at the grocery in Connellsville to buy dinner. I got a rib steak and a can of beans, and cooked both on my campfire:
This was the best steak I have ever eaten in my entire life. Yes, that's my messenger bag; I used the waterproof Cordura flap as a plate in lieu of a heavy mess kit, and ate with my hands. I put the can of beans on the fire, stirred it with a stick, and pretty much drank it.
That's the end of the photos from my trip. I slept a lot better last night, having chose a different campsite, and took off at about ten in the morning after dousing my fire with the same rusty sulfur-water I'd been drinking most of the trip. I took a fast pace on the trail, stopping only in West Newton to win ten bucks on a scratch-off card, and actually got back to Pittsburgh in some crazy record time, about two, but didn't get home to Wilkinsburg until around 4:30 due to a misguided detour I tried to take through Sandcastle, a water park that's currently closed. I wanted to take pictures of that ordeal (an empty lazy river is a very surreal thing), but I was trespassing and needed to keep an eye out for the man. When I realized the entrance to Sandcastle was a complete dead end, I turned around and hopped all the necessary fences a second time, and went through Greenfield, one of the hilliest neighborhoods in the city.
That's the end of the photos from my trip. I slept a lot better last night, having chose a different campsite, and took off at about ten in the morning after dousing my fire with the same rusty sulfur-water I'd been drinking most of the trip. I took a fast pace on the trail, stopping only in West Newton to win ten bucks on a scratch-off card, and actually got back to Pittsburgh in some crazy record time, about two, but didn't get home to Wilkinsburg until around 4:30 due to a misguided detour I tried to take through Sandcastle, a water park that's currently closed. I wanted to take pictures of that ordeal (an empty lazy river is a very surreal thing), but I was trespassing and needed to keep an eye out for the man. When I realized the entrance to Sandcastle was a complete dead end, I turned around and hopped all the necessary fences a second time, and went through Greenfield, one of the hilliest neighborhoods in the city.
